Kaizer eventually managed to calm Rina down, and the situation became slightly awkward. Rina now had confirmation that her beloved felt the same, but was not ready to delve into this kind of relationship yet. However, she didn't seem to know why… nor did he.
Kaizer, too, had been forced to recognize his feelings, realizing why he never went a step further with those other dates despite many being willing, and also why he didn't want any other man to have Rina, even if he died.
Rina eventually left after the two promised to train together from tomorrow, allowing Kaizer to breathe a sigh of relief and lean back into his bed. He gazed at the ceiling once more; his dark thoughts of being attacked and piercing through the esper world were now replaced by youthful shyness and thoughts about love.
The next day, he came to the mansion's training room and found that Rina was already there in a newly bought gym attire from yesterday, which was actually quite conservative. She wore a sports bra and shorts that were covered by an opaque white t-shirt that was XXL, looking oversized for her form and concealing her curves.
"Yo, ready to get stronger?" Rina greeted with a smile, the awkwardness from the day before gone as she seemed to come to terms with it.
Kaizer nodded. "First things first, we have to devise a suitable training regime for you. I am not 100% sure about how your power works fundamentally and what your limits are, so you should consult Anir about this."
Rina gave a lively thumbs-up. "Already have, we spoke a lot yesterday. I've just been waiting on you to start."
Oh?
Kaizer was intrigued as to how an interaction between the fiery Rina and the cool Anir would be like, but that was something private to the two of them who shared the same body. Rather than that, he began his own exercises, delving into them with the kind of intense focus that someone on a weight-loss journey would.
Rina glanced at Kaizer and watched him for a bit curiously before realizing that Kaizer's training was not very exciting and very boring. As such, she soon lost interest and began her own work, which was actually quite strange.
First off, how do you train a power related to death in a place devoid of corpses or death?
To that, Anir answered that their power did not necessarily need people to die, only that it was empowered by it. Just like how Anir released a domain of death energy that almost swallowed the entire campus, Rina possessed her own stock of death power, akin to 'mana'.
Second off, what kind of abilities did her death power even have apart from killing people or reviving them?
Once again, Anir answered that it was the same as any ability that manipulates an elemental or an energy. You could use it directly, merge it with conceptualized utilities, or enhance yourself in order to fight.
So, Rina could fire death balls (similar to the fireball of the fire element, not that other planet-destroying technique), use death energy to possess a corpse to resurrect it as a conceptualized ability, or imbue herself with death power to increase her 'stats' and imbue every attack with death power.
The range of her application was limited to how smart and creative she could be, basically.
For the purposes of training, Anir suggested that Rina perform the various basic methods of sensing the death power in the first place. External death power was unavailable and its usage was advanced, so she first had to start by understanding the death power she innately possessed and how to even draw it out.
Thanks to the psychic ability she got from Kaizer, she was able to do this; otherwise, Anir would have been necessary for such utility. Even so, the psychic power that Rina received was too little, as it had been shared when they were kids, and she had no way to grow it. So, her attempts to sense her energy were met with failure multiple times.
By the time the training session was over, Rina felt like she had made no progress whatsoever and complained to Kaizer, who seemed pensive.
"Well, if you inherited my psychic ability, then it's the same as me. Your death power requires you to train in order to grow your ability to use it, and so does the psychic power," Kaizer explained slowly.
"Huh? So basically, if I continue to train, both my death ability and the psychic power you gave me will increase together, forming a virtuous cycle?" Rina asked for confirmation with raised eyebrows.
Kaizer nodded. "Basically. Anyway, you have to understand that there is a reason your entire subconscious decided to split off a new psyche for you just to handle your power. If you had it so easy, there would not have been a need for Anir."
Rina accepted this and seemed to regain her spirits, clenching her fists as the fire burned in her eyes. Kaizer felt that it was an irony and also quite a pity that his red-haired cousin did not inherit flame-related powers but rather the power of death, which would have been ironically more suited to him.
There was a knock on the door, and Charlene came in along with Katherine. The two older women were dressed in refreshing home-wear gowns, looking as maternal as ever and making one feel relaxed.
"Darlings, come and have some lunch. You two have been working hard and need to rest a bit," Katherine offered with a gentle smile.
"Sure, mom, let's go, Kaizer!" Rina said, pulling Kaizer by the arm and taking him to the upstairs small dining room for smaller meals.
Katherine and Charlene saw this and showed surprise, then shared a look. A smile involuntarily appeared on their faces as they realized that something must have changed between their two darling children because their intimacy was much closer to that of their youth!
After eating, Kaizer had a shower and went to his room to continue watching any series or piece of media surrounding psychic-related powers, this time adding those with death-related powers as well. The wide applications gave him many new ideas, some which he knew he could try and some he didn't dare to.
For the span of an entire week, Kaizer did not go out, having learned his lesson. If he kept interrupting his training to go to school or to leave the house, there would be an event that would put him into a life-and-death situation, so he planned to reach the limit of his current power before going out again.
His initial plan was to do this for a month, but it was only a week later when his father summoned the family to his office, his expression grim. When Rina and Kaizer entered the room, especially, he glanced at the two, and a flicker of uncertainty flashed in his eyes.
"Well, the news is in. I checked my mailbox today and received this folder from an anonymous source, but it is exactly what we need. Take a look, you two," Keith stated directly without wasting time, throwing a folder over to the young duo.
Immediately, Kaizer and Rina looked over, their faces changing when they saw the cover.