I realized I was different when everyone was too scared to play with me during recess. It never occurred to me that moving things with your mind wasn’t normal, it was just something I could always do. Like second nature. The doctors gave my mother sleeping pills, told her she was working too hard, to hire a nanny. When I was ten I scoured the library for every biology text, diving through the pages of physics materials, shoved my way through internet databases and Youtube videos for answers. It wasn’t long before I discovered it was merely a paranormal practice, not even a “true” science. Make-believe. Something for fun in the comic books littered on my bedroom floor.

So I was outcasted, even somewhat by my elder sister, who was having trouble making friends at school because of our common blood. It was only in public, so I suppose it didn’t really bother me. She was my closest friend at home, as if the two of us were twins. I could be invisible for her if it meant her life was easier. I somewhat enjoyed the solitude anyways. The research from early childhood grew a thirst for knowledge in my young mind, and so I’d become a bookworm into my teen years.

My chair was at the back of the class where the light grew dim. I didn’t have friends, but I knew a lot about everyone there. Knew that JR was an aspiring rapper, that he and Aron Kwak had been best friends since birth. Aron had two little sisters living abroad, studying at an international school. There was Nana, beautiful, well-loved. She didn’t think anyone saw, but I knew that she’d been attacked in the hallway by one of the kids who got held back a year ago. She doesn’t know it, but I was the reason the ceiling fell down on top of his head and busted his skull open. No one else sees the crack in her smile like I do. I wish I had the courage to tell her she’d always be protected.

Lizzy is one of Nana’s closest friends, spunky albeit a little spacey. She’s always really funny, especially when she and Nana get together on a tangent. Lizzy wants to go into Pediatrics, though her father wants her to go to law school. It really stresses her out. Then there’s Ren and his closest gal-friend, Raina. The two of them look like dolls, like porcelain dolls. Everyone might be afraid of me, ignore me altogether even, but there’s no other duo more intimidating than Ren and Raina. The two of them were caught making blood-oaths together by the old tree in second grade, and ever since then, people are too afraid to get close, terrified of any impending curses that might crawl from their lips.

Jeonghan has hair that falls in his face like a thick curtain, shoulders hunched over and demure eyes. He breathes in the pages of his sketchbook. I catch him drawing the others in class often. He’s even drawn me a few times. There was one girl he drew more than the others, though. Jooyeon. She dresses in big sweaters and frilly skirts or black leggings. She was shy and stumbled a lot, stubbed her toes on the desks and cried easily. She had strict parents, parents in the church that had planned every moment of her life from the moment she was born.

I enjoyed people-watching, enjoyed listening to their troubles and analyzing their lives. There was something to be said about the discovery of another individual, the realization that their world was as deep and complex as your own. Or maybe I’m being a little pretentious, my sister tells me I am quite often. My intelligence is all I really have, so I don’t see how she can really blame me.

Things changed when Baekho transferred to our school, though.

He stood tall and proud at the front of the class, big cheesy grin, muscular, with a demeanor kind of like a young dog. There wasn’t a shy bone in his body, and he was genuine. Unnervous. He filled up the room like a light in the dark, like the echo of a laugh through a deep tunnel. He had a scar under his eye. It was etched into his skin, white and jagged as if it’d been cut into him with a rock. His knees were scuffed and he wore hiking boots. Ready for adventure.

Taking big steps, he made his way to the desk next to mine in the back row, looking around the classroom comfortably at his new seat. He leaned back in his chair, leaving it on two feet, arms behind his back. You might’ve thought he’d been going here his whole life.

“Where you from?” Nana and Lizzy asked, leaned into the far side of his desk, away from my end, “What school did you go to?”

He sat forward, legs of his chair still tipped back. Nana’s eyes widened, lips pursed as she bent over to get a better look. “How are you doing that?”

“Huh? Oh, I do a lot of ab training.”

“Damn, teach me your ways. I have a whole winter to get ready for swimsuit season,” Lizzy added, flashing him a crooked smile.

Baekho dropped his head, smiling awkwardly. “I like to workout alone, actually.”

The entire class gravitated toward him, prodded him with questions. He had big answers, answers that didn’t explain anything. They didn’t feel like lies, deception. Just a different way of explaining things. Or maybe he just didn’t want to get that intimate with anyone.

When the bell rang, he trailed behind the class, same as me. Slowly gathering my things, I noticed his shoes had come untied. He looked down, and I expected he would reach down to tie them, but he hardly moved. The laces had knotted themselves before my eyes, and I ceased breathing.

He glanced up at me, my mouth agape. I was fixated on the laces, wondering if I had done it myself. Sometimes I lost control. Baekho looked panicked, his bottom lip quivering, hesitating to spit words out. “I didn’t realize you were still here… you’re so quiet.”

I raised a brow, slowly bringing my eyes to return his gaze. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

“No, you shouldn’t have seen that. I just transferred, please don’t say anything.”

“Wait…”

“What?”

I stood, returning my eyes to his laces, then raising my hand. Looking over the lines, the crevices in my palms. “Are you saying you did that?”

His expression matched mine. “You thought you did?”

My heart was pounding. I wasn’t even sure if I was breathing, if I was dreaming. I don’t think Baekho was breathing, either. The realization was pouring into our bodies like the rush of the tide falling over a cliff. Instantaneous, powerful, buckling.

“So you can, too?” I nearly whispered.

“I thought I was the only one,”he replied, the corners of his lips pinning into his cheeks, grin crooked and teeth almost blindingly white.

“I thought I was.”

I didn’t know what to do next.

“When did you find out?” He asked, swinging his backpack over his shoulder. I was grateful he took the lead. Grateful he was such an extrovert to make up for my introvertedness.

“I’ve always known, I guess. It was just there.”

“Me, too. I didn’t catch your name?” He held his hand out to me, grabbing mine the moment I began to extend to reach his grip. He shook my hand firmly, waving my forearm up and down with the force of it.

“Minhyun.”

I gathered up the last of my things, shoving them into my bag to follow him as he rushed out the door and into the hallway. “How much can you do with it?”

“You mean weight?”

“Sure.”

I thought about all the things I’d moved in the past. Nothing much heavier than 50 pounds at most, sometimes more if I had a good adrenaline rush going. I’d shoved a person before, but I’d never tried to actually lift them. Something about it felt very wrong. “I guess about 50 pounds?”

“Is that all? Ever try to lift yourself?”

I could barely keep up with his strides, nearly out of breath before the two of us even reached the doors at the end of the Math wing. Most of the other students had already made their way far into the distance as the sun had started to go down. “No, I’ve never tried that. I didn’t know that I could?”

“I don’t really know if you can, either. Can’t believe you haven’t tried, though.”

He kept looking over his shoulder, turning to walk backwards and see past my shoulders. I watched his eyes peer into the shadows of the treeline not too far off, watched him count the cars in the parking lot and take note of every streetlight as we made our way farther from the school grounds.

“Have you tried?” I asked, trying to analyze his every move.

“More than that.”

He took a step up, then another. As if there were an invisible staircase underneath his feet that I could only walk through. He was only two feet off the ground, but I thought he looked like he was flying.

“How are you doing that?”

“Telekinesis is a special kind of muscle. If you don’t practice with it, it won’t get stronger. You said your name was Minhyun, right? We could fly if we trained it hard enough, Min! We could be weightless, we could see the world from the eyes of God.” There was a glow in his eyes, like the light of a flame. He reminded me of volcanoes and lava. A representation of earthly strength. And I was more like the wind; invisible.

I wanted to ask him a million questions, but realized none of them were deep enough. None of them were relevant or complex enough. Baekho was the only other person in the world who knew anything about our Telekinetic condition, the one person I was dying to meet, hoping existed, and now I stood before him breathless and blank. I watched him jump around on invisible platforms before he grew tired and returned to the ground beside me, watched him pick flowers from the edges of the sidewalk without laying a finger on the stems, watched him toss rocks into the stream as we passed by, each of them floating like saucers over the water. He was a professional, his wisdom far greater than mine. I only ever moved pencils and reached for the towel at the other end of the bathroom when I forgot to lay it next to the shower.

“We should train together,” he finally said, pulling me from daydreams that lay in the white clouds overhead and breathed crisp air.

“How? When? … Okay.”

Baekho cartwheeled ahead of me, jumped up onto the benches as we passed and flipped from them, twirled on streetlights. His legs were full of springs with itches in his palms. “Don’t worry about how, I’ll teach you anything you need to know. Do you always hang behind after class?”

“Yeah, for the most part.”

“We can train everyday after class then.”

“I have homework, Baekho.”

He chuckled knowingly, like an older brother would, I imagine. “You can do both, don’t worry.”

The sky was a blazing fire, with a black smoke clouding up overhead, white embers poking through like pins. Nearly all the streetlights had blinked on by now, and I only just realized that I’d left my sister alone to walk home without me in favor of Baekho’s company. Worry-worms creeped through the folds of my brain, and I couldn’t maintain eye-contact with Baekho. “Well, I’m gonna head this way. See you tomorrow.”

When she peeked her head out the front dining window, relief and urgency swept over me. “He’s like me, Sujin!”

Author's Note: Part 1 in what I'm thinking will be a three part one-shot. Written for a contest winner! Hopefully they like it!