Passing by the main reunion table, we sat in zio's separate oak solo desk, he on his leather chair behind it and us on the two leather chairs in front of it, me on the right and Yeji on the left.
"Why does it feels like I've been caught causing trouble?" To my surprise, she broke the ice, focusing her eyes on the salad fruit she's still holding, using the chopsticks to pick the strawberries. Seems like she likes them more than the other fruits.
Passing my weight to my right, I turned my attention to her, loving how unnerving she gets, knowing she may not look back but she can feel my eyes on her for sure. Then I held the pie in my right hand and began to eat it with my left hand. "You get used to it, ajumma."
"He speaks from experience," zio mocked. "He's constantly getting into trouble, though good trouble, like you with your arson episodes. You have no reason to worry, we won't judge you, even if you kill somebody."
Yeji slowly raised her head, this time, there was resignation in her blue eyes, and anger, burning so bright and dangerously I felt her darkness drawing me in, hers mirroring my own, "Good, because I plan on killed whoever caused the train accident, and I'm not going let anyone stop me from cleaning the earth with their corpses. I'll turn them into ashes the same way they caused my family to be in now," then she glared at me.
"I ain't stopping you, ajumma. I'm very comfortable with violence, and I don't mind murder at all. You will find no mundane morals in me, nor guilt for whatever I do, because I always do it on purpose. If I ruin someone, I'll do it with the intent of doing it," grinning mischievously, I stuffed my mouth with a spoonful of lemon pie, and she wasn't quick enough to look away before her eyes followed the movement of my lips this time.
And though she quickly looked away, it was too late, I already saw her looking. It doesn't take much thought to know what just passed by that pretty brain of hers. Especially when I've been thinking the same thing even before I met her in person, though she doesn't need to know that.
The way she bit her bottom lip and swallowed only made it clearer to me that I'm not alone on those dirty thoughts taking over my mind.
"I didn't take you for someone moral either way, ahjussi, it's not a surprise that you are so clear about that," she scoffed, focusing on her fruit salad again, and I couldn't help watching as the damned chopsticks touched her full round red lips as she picked another strawberry. "So, appa, what is it that you want to talk to me about?"
Pressing my lips together, I turned my eyes to my plate again.
"I… well, there is no easy way to tell you this," he sighed, and I did my best to stuff my mouth with pie again, to avoid speaking or making any sound, which would be hard if my mouth is empty. "If I told you magic is real and us neathers are able to use it, would you believe me?"
Her chopsticks froze halfway up to feed her a kiwi this time, and she stared at him, blankly, blinking, then turned to me. "Uh… ahjussi? Did you just hear what he said? Or am I hallucinating?"
"He said what he said, ajumma," I purred, swallowing some pie.
Stunned, she turned to him again, "Appa, are you, perhaps, high?"
There goes my pie, into the wrong place and now I'm choking as if I would die. Jesus Christ, she's really audacious to speak with him like that, I love it. But given how he's glaring at me, I think he doesn't like my strong reaction. Well, too bad.
"Wanna help, thunder boy?" He glared at me, annoyed.
Forcing the pie down my throat, I set my half-empty plate over the top of his desk and turned my roller chair to her, "Do you believe in magic, ajumma? Of any kind?"
She frowned and glared at me as if I had grown a second head. "You can't be serious, ahjussi. Magic doesn't exist."
"If I show it to you, would you believe in me?" I asked softly.
Gulping she poked at zio, then back at me, "Are you serious?"
A nod, "Yes. If I told you I can use magic, you wouldn't believe me, would you? But what if I prove it to you?"
"What… what kind of magic are you talking about, ahjussi?" She eyed me suspiciously. Very understandable.
"Each person has an elemental magic within their core, ajumma. I do, you do, your father does, everyone does. Nevertheless, only us neathers are able to awaken and use that source of power," I leaned closer, lowering myself and resting my forearms on my thighs. "The whole speaking with animals things? That's only the tip of the iceberg, and it's the innate power that separates neathers from mundanes in a clearer level. Each neather has three types of power inside them, the Spoken which is the ability of talking with certain animals, the Elemental which is the ability to dominate one of the main or of the deviant elements, and the Soul which corresponds to the innate power within your soul and is directly proportional to the amount of Spoken abilities one possess. Soul powers come in a range not even we are able to catalogue fully, which only proves that nothing is impossible."
"While the Spoken ability comes naturally and you are born with it unlocked, normally being awakened at the age of 5, the others are… not so naturally. To use magic, you have to believe in it, which is why it is very important for neathers to be raised by those who know of their abilities, if not, a dangerous void is opened into your soul and both your Elemental and your Soul powered get swapped inside it, growing at the pace you grow older, turning you into a… almost literal ticking bomb. Depending on the nature of your powers, categorized into four classes: Supportive, Defensive, Offensive, and Catastrophic, which is separated by the amount of damage each can result it; remaining in dark can become dangerous both for you and for those around you."
"Let me give you an example," I said softly. "Healing magic is of the Supportive class, barrier magic is of the Defensive class, super strength is of the Offensive class, and telekinesis is of the Catastrophic class. Those are Soul abilities. Someone with healing magic, if bottle up, they won't destroy anything, but the force of the liberation of the pressure their power was in, could damage their core and their souls in the process. On the other hand, someone with telekinesis, if bottle up for years, could kill an entire city of innocents in the process of their late awakening, given the grandiose of the pressure the telekinesis was in while bottle up."
"You are a smart girl, you went to MIT, you will understand this. In physics, when you lock something in a vessel and put pressure on it, and keeps raising the pressure more and more, slowly, what's going to happen?" I asked her.
"It either explodes or implodes," she whispered.
"And in that case, what would be a more destructive? If the object was filled with rose petals or nuclear energy?" I smiled encouragingly.
She swallowed, "Nuclear energy."
A nod, "That's the same with magic. If someone has their powers unlocked for too long, it will be dangerous. Because every neather has at least one Elemental and one Soul magic, and all elements, both main and deviant, become dangerous if bottle up for too long. All because they either had no idea they had magic because they grew up in a mundane family, or because they do not believe in magic. And that could cause their deaths and the death of everyone around them, and all they need for that is a trigger that makes them lose their tamper hard enough to explode. It's lethal."
When she finally realized what that meant for her, whose been in the dark for 18 years, and has about five Soul and one Elemental magic all but waiting to explode inside her, she turned ashen pale. "Show it to me," her voice was a whisper. "If it… if it really exists, since you talk to cats, you have it, don't you?"
"We all do," I said softly.
"What… what's yours?"
"I'm a deviant elementalist of lightning, call it what you desire," then I raised my left hand between us and commanded the magic within me to travel through my body and condense in my hand, making little rays of lightning dance in my hand. "It's dangerous for me to use it in here, and it took quite a long time for me to control it, and I still do not know the depth of how many power I have it in me."
"He could easily take down all the electricity of the US," zio giggle with excitement when he saw the pure shock on Yeji's widened eyes.
Her jaw dropped, "Is that why you have the lightning tattoo?" She pointed to my naked neck, to the mark that goes down pretty much my full body, in thin spaced dark purple nearing black lines, that look like ink.
"I have many tattoos, Yeji, but this ain't one of them," I grinned.
"What?" She gasped.
"I was… clumsy," I pressed my lips together, feeling my face burn, "when I awakened at 5 years old, I end up hitting myself with it. It didn't kill me, because you cannot be killed by your element, but it marked me. Then I kept clumsily hitting myself with it every time I tried to control it, until I was 14. But by then I had been hit so many times, the scars slowly spread down my body, from my neck to everywhere else, though in my hands and feet they are almost translucent and hard to see," I handed her my open right hand.
Slowly, her small hands took a hold of it, and she used her emerald green sharp nails to draw the lightning scars in there. "This is insane," she breathed and gasped in shock. "You are like… like Thor."
"Don't we make a good team? Thor and Loki?" I winked.
And she laughed, she laughed openly at my joke, but this time she didn't stop herself, and seeing that smile lightning her drop-dead gorgeous face made my heart skip a beat. It made me want to fucking kiss her, to do so much mote than that. Which made me swallow and clench my jaw.
"You're an idiot, ahjussi," she rolled her eyes, still smiling.
"I hear that a lot, ajumma," I grinned.
"What's your… Soul ability?" Her eyes bloomed with curiosity.
"Why don't you try to guess it?" I purred.
She frowned, "Can't you just tell me?"
"Where's the fun in that?" I countered.
Rolling her eyes, she turned to her dad, "What about-" before she could even ask, his competitive ass was already conjuring a mini whirlwind in the palm of both his hands… well, two whirlwinds that were growing more and more, making a mess of the papers in his desk. "Wind!" Yeji beamed. "You are an Airbender, appa," she chuckled, and I could help chuckling at how nerd she is too, and the fact that she also likes Avatar.
A condescending smug took over his lips with her excited reaction and he was petty enough to side-eye me with a shite-eating grin, then back to her, with the hugest smile I've seen on his face, "Aren't I amazing?"
"Fuck yeah," she gasped.
"Four took after him," I rolled my eyes. "Same element."
"Wait, what about Ari," then she stopped us before we could say a word, "no, I'll get it. She's obsessed with blue, there's no way her element isn't water. It's water, isn't it?"
"Spot on, ajumma," I scoffed.
"Yeah, it's water," zio said proudly. "Papa is also wind, mama is water, Victoria is wind, and her mother is wind as well. A ratio of 5:2 for wind and water. I have a feeling the element in your mom's core was fire, but there was no way to know for sure, since mundanes don't awaken."
"You're not water, nor wind," I told her.
She frowned, "How do you know that?"
"You almost died drowning, and you're scared of heights. No water elementalist would drown even if they wanted to, because out elements do not harm us. No wind elementalist has fear of heights, because their natural habitat is on high heights. I don't think it's earth either. It's either fire or a deviant element like mine," I grinned, leaning back in my chair again.
Yeji blushed, "Okay, I could see it being fire."
"We actually have a bet going on," her dead beamed, "80% of us are betting on it being fire, the other 20% think it'll be a deviant element!"
"Because that's not weird at all," she scoffed.