Shortly after closing his eyes, Kichirou opened them once more. However, he did not wake up to see the signature wall-mounted television and messy lounge table characteristic of Jane's living room, but, rather, to something entirely different.
'This is the place I was in when I got knocked out in that alleyway!'
Kichirou stood up on his two feet with only the nothingness underneath his feet to support him.
'There's no video from my body this time. It must be because my body's asleep in the real world right now, so It's just displaying a dark screen which makes it look like there's nothing there.'
Kichirou had no real reason to be there at the time, but something must have made Kichirou end up in this place.
'There must be some reason why I'm here… right? I wouldn't just be here for no reason. Where's the guy from before, he did that magical looking thing with my eyes and then suddenly I woke up. Wait, my eyes…'
Just then, as he had done by accident before, Kichirou focused the energy coming from his eyes into his pupils, turning the usual purple-blue glow into the distortive air from before. Suddenly, millions of dim lights of varying color appeared around Kichirou. After taking in the lights, Kichirou's attention was brought to something that seemed to be the centerpiece of the area.
"Wait a minute… What's that?"
Kichirou's eyes drifted over to what appeared to be a stone sphere, floating in the air adorned with 5 lights, with unique colors that matched all of the dim lights of that same color that filled the area.
'Maybe if I disperse some of the energy in my eyes, I'll be able to ignore all of the dimmer lights filling the area.'
Kichirou unfocused his concentration of the energy within his eyes, and became unable to see the dim lights, but was still able to see the brighter, bolder lights decorating the stone sphere
'Let's go! Maybe I'm starting to get the hang of this…'
Just as he said that, Kichirou lost all his focus and suddenly became unable to see the lights at all
'Or maybe not.'
Kichirou, feeling utterly embarrassed despite the lack of any onlookers, recentered the energy in his eyes in such a way as to only be able to see the brighter lights and the stone tablet. He walked over to the stone tablet and looked at it closely. When he knocked on the sphere, it made a deeply pitched sound.
"It sounds like this thing's hollow on the inside. Maybe there's something on the inside. You never know with how strange things are here."
Kichirou was slowly getting accustomed to the peculiarities of the void around him. Curiosity slowly creeping its way into Kichirou's mind, he gave into his urges and slowly reached out to touch the light blue glow emanating from a point on the sphere. It just so happened to be the one closest to him.
'Ngh-!'
Kichirou felt a searing sensation in his brain, almost as if it were on fire. Strange images started to appear in his head. First, he saw some sort of biped that looked humanoid, though it had fur and fangs, in a sort of religious gathering. Next, the feeling of death itself ravaged Kichirou's mind, nearly debilitating him in pain. He felt the feelings of betrayal, sadness, and anger that would be felt by those close to the dead, and the feeling of helplessness and unreadiness of someone on their deathbed all at once.
"Ahh!!!"
Kichirou fell to his knees clutching his head in agony.
"Make it stop! Ngh!!"
Yet it wouldn't stop, not for another 5 minutes, which felt, to Kichirou, like an eternity. At the end of his mental torture, the last image was transported into Kichirou's head. It appeared to be a symbol of some kind, a spiked circle that spiraled into itself for 3 loops before coming to an end. Kichirou didn't know what to do about it so he simply committed the strange scene and the symbol to memory.
Suddenly, Kichirou had an overwhelming feeling that something was complete. He wasn't quite sure what exactly it was that he had accomplished, but he was overcome with a feeling that his reason for being in the void no longer existed, and that he should leave as soon as possible. Almost as if answering that feeling, the void seemed to start crumbling around Kichirou as white cracks began to appear around him on nothing, as though the space of the void itself was cracking. Soon after the area around him started breaking down, Kichirou closed his eyes, and when he opened them, he awoke on the same couch he had slept on the night before. The incessant beeping of an alarm clock on the lounge table told Kichirou that it was around 6:30 am, the time he'd been told to wake up every day.
"Ugh, so damn early…"
Kichirou's voice trailed off as he lazily swung his arm over in an attempt to turn it off, succeeding, though it took him a few tries. He rolled out of bed before sauntering over to the kitchenette area adjacent to Jane's bedroom, opening the fridge, hoping to find some easily preparable food. Though Kichirou had spent most of his recent years in the wilderness alone, he still remembered the basic appliances and mundanity of everyday life. He didn't find any food that was already ready to be eaten, but he did find some ingredients. At this moment, the skills Kichirou had gathered living alone in the wilderness would be put to use. He'd spent most of his time looking for the next meal, and he'd eventually learned how to hunt for his food and cook after the perishables in the markets were no longer good. Kichirou pulled out a thawed piece of pork and cut it in half, putting the other half away before cutting that piece into small bits. He set a pan to start heating up before pulling out an assortment of different vegetables and dicing them into chunks. After that was done, he simmered the vegetables and pork on the stove for around 30 minutes, before seasoning them with various herbs, spices, and sauces for flavor, and finally let it cook for another 15 minutes before stopping.
'Finally, a good meal!'
Before eating, Jane walked out of her room and got a whiff of the aroma generated by Kichirou's food.
"Oh, you made this for the both of us? Thanks!"
A look of profound disappointment flashed across Kichirou's face before an overly happy-looking smile replaced it.
"Yeah, of course! Yeah…"
Kichirou sat down on the floor by the lounge table, bringing with him 2 plates of food for him and Jane, who shortly joined him. As he ate, Kichirou's mind began to wander back to the events of the night before.
'I wonder what that was about in that void-like area before. There was that sphere floating around with all the lights around me, and then I touched that light blue light…"
The image of the spiked circle with a spiral pattern from before popped into Kichirou's head.
'I still don't quite understand what it means, but there has to be some sort of importance to that symbol. Otherwise, why would it be one of the few things I'd be allowed to see?'
Just then, Jane spoke out
"Hey, Kichirou. What's wrong? You look like you're really thinking something over."
Kichirou tried to explain to Jane the events that occurred in his dreams, and how it had affected his control over the energy in his eyes in the real world.
"Okay, so what you're trying to say is that you touched this blue light in some sort of alternate plane of reality, and you received visions of a religious people, and then some sort of symbol you don't even know the meaning of?
Kichirou left out the details of the excrutiating headache he experienced, decided it was inconsequential to the overall situation he underwent.
"Yeah, that's pretty much it."
Jane decided to start with the positive things they learned from the ordeal.
"Well if there's anything we can take away from this, it's your heightened control over the mysterious energy centered in your eyes. Is there any way for you to bring it to other parts of your body?"
Kichirou was taken aback! He'd never even considered it a possibility until now, but he didn't see any reason he wouldn't be able to. He tried bringing the energy from his eyes down to his arms, and eventually down to his fingertips, where it began to flow out of his index finger, which picqued Jane's interest.
"Ooh! See if you can try drawing out that symbol you saw. Maybe that way I can get a better image of it."
Kichirou began slowly drawing out the spiked, spiraled circle he'd seen in his mind. As soon as he finished drawing the symbol, Kichirou immediately slumped forward, feeling sick. His vision had clearly improved from his own point of view, and his Improved hearing had allowed him to even hear the scurrying of the ants outside. Even his "sixth sense" had improved, and it felt like he could feel where everything around him was, even if he couldn't directly see it.
"Huerg-"
The sudden increase in perception hadn't been all good, though. Even though his vision had improved, the gentle sway of his body now felt like the rocking of a ship. The sensitive hearing that allowed him to hear the ants outside, made it sound like Jane, who had begun to worry due to his state, sound like a booming engine. And the "sixth sense" he now had was something completely foreign to him, and his body wasn't accustomed to it.
"Can you turn it off?! What's going on?!"
Jane's booming voice in his ear made Kichirou want to be anywhere else at that moment, but he knew he had to control it somehow, so he started trying anything at all he could think of. Drawing X's and slashes in the air to no avail. Eventually, he decided to disperse his energy out of his body, which finally achieved what he'd wanted.
"Ughh- I figured it out."
"What even happened to you?!"
Jane was extremely worried for Kichirou, grabbing him by the shoulders and patting him all over, checking for anything out of order, which made Kichirou feel a bit weird
"W-what are you doing?"
"O-oh, sorry…"
Jane's voice trailed off as she shrunk away from him. Kichirou almost felt bad for the woman. He didn't know Jane particularly well, and neither did she know him, but he knew that there wouldn't be anyone without a story in a world where there were only a few hundred million people left. A few seconds of strange silence followed, before Jane broke through.
"So what is it that happened there, anyway?"
Kichirou tried his best to explain all the sensations he felt during the period of time, which Jane tied to the symbol he'd drawn in the air.
"Maybe you can use this newfound ability of yours during the combat training later today. It sounds like this power would be quite helpful in a fight if you learned to control it, hm?"
Kichirou muttered under his breath
"Oh god…"
He wasn't exactly enamored by the idea of enhancing his perception using that strange emblem another time, but he knew what he had to do.
'I need to use everything I have to my advantage. If there's something I can do that nobody else can, I'll make sure to make as good a use of it as I can, as long as it means I can get an edge on everyone else.'
Jane interrupted his thoughts.
"Well, with that done, it's time to start studying for your written exam, so let's clear off the table and get ready!"
Jane clapped her hands together and put on an overly flashy smile, letting Kichirou know she derived some sort of sick enjoyment from this.
'Dear lord…'