[Kōmei Foundation for Gifted Children · Brochure, p. 1] "Every child is more than their category. Let us help you find out how much more."
* * *
Ikazuchi Village School — October 2057
The school clock had been running ten minutes fast for a month before Mr. Kondo noticed.
He noticed because the AI tutor tablet chimed for the end of the lesson while the wall clock already said twenty past. He looked at the clock. Then at the tablet. Then, slowly, at the twelve children in front of him, who were all being very well behaved.
"Who," he said, "has been touching the clock?"
"Nobody touched it, sir," said Hana Morita, which was true.
Mr. Kondo had been teaching in Ikazuchi for nineteen years. He'd taught most of these children's parents. He knew exactly what a classroom looked like when every child in it was trying not to look at the same person.
He looked at the same person.
Akio Arashi, seven years old, sat at his desk by the window with his hands folded and his wooden pointer laid neatly beside his notebook. He looked back at his teacher with the calm interest of someone watching a television programme he quite liked.
"Arashi."
"Yes, sir?"
"Have you been doing something to my clock?"
Akio gave the question serious thought.
"I haven't touched it, sir," he said. "It's on the wall. I'm not allowed near the wall sockets."
"That's not what I asked."
"The clock just goes a bit faster when I'm in the room. I think it likes me."
The class made a noise like a kettle trying not to boil.
Mr. Kondo walked over to the clock, took it off the wall, and looked at the back. It was a cheap battery clock. The battery inside was brand new, and much fuller than a battery had any right to be, and the little motor was spinning just slightly faster than it should. Every hour, it gained about a minute and a half. Over a school day, that was ten minutes.
He did the sum in his head. Ten minutes a day, five days a week, for a month.
That was over three hours of school his class had never had.
"Arashi," he said. "Stay behind at lunch."
"Yes, sir."
Akio stayed behind at lunch. He wasn't punished, exactly. Mr. Kondo spent the hour making him read the history chapter out loud, all of it, from the start of the quirk era to the Kobe riots. When Akio finished, his teacher asked him one question.
"Why did you do it?"
"Hana's little brother is sick," Akio said. "Her mum works at the shop until four. Hana has to get home to look after him. Ten minutes helps."
Mr. Kondo looked at him for a long time.
"You could have asked me," he said.
"You'd have said no, sir. It's against the rules."
"..."
It was. He would have.
"Next time," said Mr. Kondo, "ask anyway."
He put the clock back on the wall that afternoon, and he didn't take the battery out. Hana Morita kept getting home ten minutes early until her brother was back on his feet, about a week later. Then Mr. Kondo set the clock to the right time again, Akio left it alone, and nobody mentioned it again.
* * *
He was seven now, and things were easier.
He didn't need the rod every day anymore. He'd learned to hold the fizz still inside himself, the way you hold your breath underwater. He could let a little out on purpose, into a drill or a light or a clock, as gently as breathing. He could feel every person in the valley, about a kilometre in every direction, as a soft warm hum, and he knew most of them by now the way you know voices.
He'd hurt nobody since the night of the field.
His mother still had the scar on her arm, a pale fern that ran from her wrist toward her elbow. She never covered it.
He was still looking at the clock and thinking about Hana's brother when he felt the car.
It was a long way off. All the way down at the bottom of the mountain road, at least four kilometres, further than he had ever felt anything. He only felt it because it was so big. It had a battery in it like the battery wall at home, but ten times stronger, packed tight and cold and humming.
Nobody in Ikazuchi owned a car like that. Nobody in Ikazuchi knew anybody who did.
And in the back seat of the car, there was a person.
Akio frowned.
It was a person. He was sure of that. But it didn't hum like a person. It hummed like a lot of people. Like a crowd of voices all talking at once, one on top of another, packed into a single shape. Some of them were loud. Some of them were so quiet he could barely feel them at all. And some of them—
He couldn't describe it. It was like holding a jar with something alive in it, trying to get out.
"Arashi?" Mr. Kondo had stopped writing on the board. "Is something wrong?"
"Someone's coming up the road, sir."
"Who?"
Akio thought about how to say it, and couldn't, so he said the closest thing.
"I think," he said, "it's a lot of people."
* * *
The Arashi House — Two Hours Later
The man in the car was called Mr. Sōma, and he had very good shoes.
That was the first thing Ayaka noticed about him. They were black leather, polished, and completely clean, despite the fact that he'd just walked up a muddy mountain path to reach her front door. She looked at them, and then at his coat, which was charcoal grey and cost more than her house, and then at his face, which was kind.
It was a genuinely kind face. Fifty or so, lined around the eyes, with a tired, patient smile, like a doctor at the end of a long shift.
"Mrs. Arashi?" He bowed, exactly the right depth. "Please forgive me for arriving without an appointment. My name is Sōma. I'm with the Kōmei Foundation for Gifted Children, in Tokyo. I wonder if I might have a few minutes of your time. It concerns your son."
Ayaka's hand tightened on the door frame. Since the day of his screening, she had never once mentioned her son to anyone from outside the valley. Not to Dr. Mano. Not to anyone.
"What about my son?"
"Nothing bad, I promise you." His smile was patient. "His screening record came to our attention. I think it may be good news. But it's the kind of news both parents should hear together."
She looked past him, down the path. A long black car was parked at the bottom of the slope by the shrine steps, with a driver standing beside it. It was electric. Its paintwork shone like water.
She didn't want this man in her house. But she wanted even less to leave him standing on her doorstep where half the valley could see him, and more than either of those, she wanted to know what he knew.
"My husband's working in the shed," she said. "I'll fetch him. Please come in."
"Thank you. I'd be glad to speak to you both."
* * *
They sat at the low table in the kitchen. Kazuo had come in from the shed with grease on his hands and hadn't washed it off, which was his way of saying something without saying it. Ayaka had made tea because it would have been strange not to.
Granny Tome came in five minutes later, without knocking, in her good coat.
Ayaka had sent her a message as soon as she saw the car. It had said only: someone from tokyo is here about akio. Tome had been eighty for three months now. She had walked up the hill in under ten minutes.
"My husband's grandmother," Ayaka said, which wasn't true, and which Mr. Sōma accepted with another polite bow.
He laid a brochure on the table.
It was printed on thick, creamy paper, which was the first strange thing about it. Nobody printed things anymore. The front had a photograph of a beautiful white building surrounded by trees, and a line of text in an elegant font: Every child is more than their category.
"Our foundation looks for children who've been under-categorised," he said. "It happens more often than you'd think. The screening machines are old, the technicians are overworked, and a child's quirk at one month old is often very different from the same quirk at seven years. We review screening records from all over the country, looking for families where the parents' quirks suggest something more."
"Like mine," said Ayaka.
"Like yours, if you'll forgive me. Weathersense is a remarkable quirk. Mothers with atmospheric quirks often have children with much more than a Category E." He smiled. "Our school in Tokyo is fully funded. Small classes. The best quirk training in Japan. And of course, for families in rural areas, we provide a monthly allowance to the household to make up for the loss of a child's help at home."
"How much?" said Kazuo.
Ayaka looked at him sharply.
"I'm asking," Kazuo said. "I'm not agreeing. I'm asking."
"Three hundred thousand yen a month," said Mr. Sōma. "Until he's eighteen."
Nobody said anything.
Three hundred thousand yen a month was more cash than Kazuo saw in a year. The village still owed money on the transformer. Granny Tome's medical tablet had been held together with tape since 2050. With that much money, Ikazuchi could have a road that didn't close every time it rained.
It was a very good number. It had been chosen by someone who knew exactly how poor the village was.
Mr. Sōma knew this. He had read Dr. Mano's report, all forty pages of it, including the paragraph on the village's economic condition, and the line about the transformer, and the note on page nine about a woman with Weathersense and a burned arm.
He didn't mention any of that. He didn't need to. He just let the number sit on the table and waited, kindly, for the parents to look at it.
Granny Tome had not looked at the number. She was looking at the brochure.
She picked it up. She ran her thumb along the edge of the paper, slowly, the way you would feel a fabric you were sure you had touched before. She turned it over and studied the small logo on the back.
"I've seen this before," she said.
"Oh?" Mr. Sōma tilted his head. "We do send brochures to a number of families."
"Not this exact one." Tome put it down. "The same paper. The same printer, I think. It was for a school in Nagoya. A Special Development School. They gave one to a family in the valley, nine years ago."
"There are several schools that serve gifted children. We often share suppliers." He said it easily, without a pause.
"That school promised the family a message about their daughter every week," said Tome.
"I'm sure they were very busy."
"They never sent one."
Mr. Sōma's expression didn't change at all. It was still kind, and patient, and tired. But for just a moment, something behind it went very still, the way a cat goes still when it hears something move in the grass.
"I'm sorry to hear that," he said. "That's very sad. I'll look into it, if you'd like. Do you remember the family name?"
"No," said Tome. "I'm eighty. I forget things."
She didn't forget anything, and everybody at the table knew it.
* * *
That was when Akio came home.
He came in through the back door without a sound, still in his school shoes, and stood in the kitchen doorway looking at the man at the table.
He'd left school without asking. Mr. Kondo would be angry. He would deal with that tomorrow.
Up close, it was worse. The crowd of voices inside the man was so loud that Akio could barely feel his own parents next to him. Hundreds of hums, thousands, all packed into one body and pressed together tight. Some of them were strong and clear. Some of them were faint and grey, like coals that had almost gone out.
And some of them were pulling the wrong way.
"Ah," said Mr. Sōma, turning. His smile widened, warm and delighted. "You must be Akio. I've been hoping to meet you."
Akio looked at him.
"Why," he said, "do you have so many people inside you?"
* * *
The kitchen went completely silent.
Kazuo's hand stopped halfway to his tea. Ayaka went pale. Granny Tome closed her eyes very briefly, the way a person does when a glass falls and there is nothing to do but wait for it to hit the floor.
Mr. Sōma did not move.
Children said strange things. He had met hundreds of children, in hundreds of kitchens like this one, and many of them said strange things to strangers. It would be very easy to laugh. To say, What a funny thing to say. To turn back to the parents and the number on the table.
He looked at the boy instead, and the boy looked back at him with pale grey eyes and no fear in them at all.
It had been a very long time since anyone had surprised him. He found that he had missed it.
"That," he said slowly, "is a very interesting question. What makes you say that?"
"You feel like a lot of people."
"Feel?"
"Hum," said Akio. "Everyone hums. You hum like a crowd."
Mr. Sōma thought about this. Then he smiled again, and this time the smile reached his eyes properly, and somehow that was worse.
"I see," he said. "Category E. Inherited atmospheric sensory." He turned the words over gently, as if tasting them. "How very modest of the screening machine."
* * *
He asked if he could speak with the boy alone, just for a few minutes.
"No," said Kazuo and Ayaka together.
"On the porch, then. Where you can see us both through the window. I just want to hear what he thinks about school. Children are often more honest without their parents listening."
Kazuo opened his mouth to say no again.
"It's okay, Dad," said Akio. "I want to."
His father looked at him. Akio looked back steadily. After a long moment, Kazuo nodded once, and didn't sit back down. He stood at the window with his greasy hands at his sides, watching through the glass.
* * *
The porch looked out over the valley. From here you could see the whole slope going down, the roofs of the village, the shrine steps with the black car parked at the bottom, and further down, catching the afternoon sun, the shine of the Glass Field.
Mr. Sōma sat on the edge of the porch with his good shoes on the step. Akio sat a metre away from him. Not closer.
"That's it, isn't it," said Mr. Sōma, looking at the field. "The superbolt."
"Yes."
"It's beautiful."
"It's Ren's family's rice," said Akio. "They had to move to Gifu."
"Ah." Mr. Sōma nodded slowly, as if this were also very interesting. "And how do you feel about that?"
Akio looked at the shine on the field for a while before he answered.
"Bad," he said. "Their family grew rice there for six generations. I broke it in one night, and I can't fix it." He pulled his knees up. "I carried the tiles for their new house. Three hundred. It didn't fix it either. But it was something I could do."
"That's a lot of tiles."
"I dropped four."
Mr. Sōma laughed. It was a real laugh, warm and unexpected, and Akio felt it go through the crowd of hums inside him like a breeze through a forest.
He held out his hand. He wore a silver ring on the middle finger.
"I didn't introduce myself properly," he said. "Shall we shake hands?"
Akio looked at the hand, and at the ring.
"No metal," he said. "It's a rule."
"Ah. Of course." Mr. Sōma lowered his hand without any sign of disappointment. "What else are the rules?"
"Rubber boots outside. Don't touch Dad's tools. Don't touch the dish on the hall roof." Akio paused. "Don't talk to strangers."
"And yet here you are."
"You're not a stranger. You told us your name."
"Did I?"
Akio looked at him. "No," he said. "You told us a name."
Mr. Sōma went quiet.
'He's checking whether I'm guessing,' Akio thought. He couldn't tell for sure. He could feel the man's hums shift, the crowd of them all turning toward him at once, like a room full of people looking up from their tables. But he couldn't tell what they were thinking.
He had never been able to tell what anyone was thinking. He just didn't know that yet.
"What do you want to be, Akio?" Mr. Sōma asked, after a while. "When you grow up?"
"A god," said Akio.
He said it the way other children said a fireman or a doctor. Without any drama. As if it were simply a sensible job.
"A good one," he added.
Mr. Sōma looked at him for a long time.
"I've met a lot of people who wanted to be gods," he said. "Some of them were very powerful. Some of them were even quite clever. I've never met one who was good."
"Then I'll be the first."
"How?"
Akio thought about it.
"I carry tiles," he said.
It wasn't a joke, but Mr. Sōma laughed again anyway. He laughed quietly, shaking his head, for longer than the first time.
"You know," he said, "I think I like you."
"Some of them don't like you," said Akio.
The laugh stopped.
"Some of who?"
"The people inside you." Akio was looking at the man's chest, not his face. "Most of them are quiet. Like they're asleep. But some of them are pulling the wrong way. Like they want to get out."
* * *
For one long moment, nobody on the porch moved.
Inside, at the window, Kazuo saw the man's face change. He couldn't have said exactly how. It didn't get angry. It didn't get anything. It just went smooth, the way a pond goes smooth when the wind drops.
Then Mr. Sōma stood up, brushed off his very good coat, and smiled down at the boy.
"Thank you for talking to me, Akio," he said. "I enjoyed it very much."
He went back inside. He thanked Ayaka for the tea. He told them both that he didn't need an answer today, that he would be in the area until tomorrow afternoon, and that he'd come back then to hear what they had decided.
He left the brochure on the table.
Then he walked down the path to the long black car, and his driver opened the door, and he got in, and the car drove away down the mountain road.
Akio stood on the porch and felt it go. One kilometre. Two. At three kilometres, it stopped.
It didn't leave. It parked.
* * *
The Kitchen — That Evening
"We say no," said Kazuo.
"Of course we say no," said Ayaka. "That was never a question."
"Three hundred thousand a month."
"Kazuo."
"I'm not saying yes. I'm saying it out loud so we both know exactly what we're saying no to." He rubbed his face with both hands. "And because he knew. He knew exactly how much would make me look."
Granny Tome had the brochure in her lap. She had been holding it for an hour.
"It's the same paper," she said. "I'm sure of it now. The Hayashis' brochure was the same."
"That doesn't mean it's the same people," said Kazuo. "Lots of schools could use the same—"
"Kazuo." Tome looked up at him. "Do you believe that?"
"..."
He didn't. Nobody at the table did.
"Then what do we do?" said Ayaka. "Run? Where? We've got no money, no car, a boy who can't sit in an electric vehicle, and the road closes every time it rains. Do we go to the police? And tell them what? A nice man offered our son a scholarship?"
"He's not going to wait for tomorrow," said Akio.
They all turned.
He was sitting by the rod in the corner. He'd been sitting there all evening, not because his hair was floating, but because the rod was solid, and he liked having his back against something solid tonight.
"How do you know?" asked his father.
"He fizzes," said Akio, "like Isamu-san does when he's already decided to film something."
Nobody laughed at that. It was too accurate to be funny.
"He said he'd come back tomorrow," said Kazuo slowly.
"He said that so we'd go to sleep."
Kazuo looked at his son. Then at his wife. Then at the window, at the dark, where somewhere three kilometres down the mountain, a very expensive car was parked by the side of the road with its lights off.
He got up, went to the shed, and came back with the biggest wrench he owned.
"Nobody sleeps in separate rooms tonight," he said.
* * *
The Mountain Road — 11:40 p.m.
The man who had called himself Sōma that afternoon sat in the back of the car with the window down, listening to the insects in the cedars.
Sōma wasn't his name. He had used it for three days, and he would use a different one next week. He had stopped counting his names a very long time ago.
His driver had been with him for nine years and had never once asked a question. That was why he had been with him for nine years.
"Sir," the driver said now, which was almost a question. "A message from Kyushu. They've found him again. The holder."
"Where?"
"Kagoshima. He's been seen at the port. They think he'll try for a boat to Okinawa within the week."
The man in the back seat nodded slowly.
He had been hunting the holder of his brother's power for six years. Six years, across four prefectures and two failed traps. Every holder of that stubborn little flame had been the same: cautious, then clever, then gone. This one was the worst yet. He'd started to think about him in the bath.
It was the most important thing in his life. It had been the most important thing in his life for a very long time.
And tonight, for the first time in six years, he'd forgotten about it for an entire afternoon.
"Tell them to hold their position," he said. "I'll be in Kagoshima the day after tomorrow."
"Yes, sir."
He looked out of the window at the dark slope of the mountain, where a single house still had its lights on near the top.
A legal route would have been cleaner. A signature, a school, a quiet car to Tokyo, and in ten years a very grateful young man who'd be told his parents had sold him. It was a method he'd used many times. He liked it. Nobody ever came looking for a child whose parents had signed the form.
But the old woman had recognised the brochure. And the mother had stopped smiling the moment he'd said the word Tokyo. They were going to say no. He could see it from here.
He had never liked waiting to be told no.
And the boy—
Some of them are pulling the wrong way.
The man touched his own chest, lightly, just once. Then he opened the car door and stepped out onto the road.
"Wait here," he said. "I won't be long."
* * *
At the top of the valley, in the dark, Akio Arashi sat up on his futon.
His mother and father were asleep on either side of him. His father had the wrench across his knees. His mother had one hand on his ankle, even in her sleep, as if he might run off into a field again.
Outside, every dog in Ikazuchi stopped barking at the same time.
The crowd was walking up the hill.
* * *
— ⚡ —
Ikazuchi Village School · Incident Log · Mr. Kondo
Oct 2: Wall clock running 10 minutes fast. Investigated.
Oct 2: Cause found. Discussed with student. No further action.
Oct 3: Wall clock running 10 minutes fast.
Oct 4: Wall clock running 10 minutes fast.
Oct 5: Started setting my watch by it. It's more relaxing.