03
Nothing's Over
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Three
--
The shock on your face seemed to make Junho even more amused.
“I’ve never met someone else with this power before,” you said, nearly dropping the papers in your hand.
“That’s understandable,” Junho said, helping you straighten out your papers. “This is a rather uncommon power. I think there was only one more person besides me and the professor with this power at the Institution.”
“You studied with the Institution?” Junho heaved a sigh before looking off to the side.
“You could say that. I found their methods to be a little... inhumane. So I transferred over to the Academy in the middle of my University years.” That would explain why you’d never seen or heard of him before.
“I take it by your surprise that they didn’t tell you I was coming?” You shook your head, leading him over to your spot under the tree. He tutted at the scattered papers all over the courtyard. You put away a stack of papers before setting out to gather the rest. Junho stopped you.
“Well, hold on a second. Show me first, how you do it.” He brought up the forgotten snow globe in his hand and let it fall back into a piece of paper. You stared at it. He didn’t need to crumple it or anything.
You took the paper, giving him an apprehensive look. He looked at you expectantly. You frowned before crumpling the piece of paper between your hands and opening them back up to reveal the snow globe.
“Ah, I see. Okay. I guess I know where we’ll start then. Do you have a pen?” You rummaged through your bag for a pen and handed it to him. He grabbed a flying piece of paper and wrote ‘pen’ on it.
“Here,” Junho said, handing you the paper.
“I want you to take the pen from the page without crumpling it.”
“What?” You looked at him confused before he smiled at you.
“The reason your power works after you crumple the paper is because you’re physically channeling energy from your body to the paper. I want you to try to do it mentally, with this.” He knocked on your head twice, making you wince.
“But how am I...”
“Okay. Take a deep breath. Close your eyes.” You did as you were told.
“Now. Concentrate on the tingly feeling in your body.”
“Tingly feeling?” you asked, opening up an eye to look at Junho.
“Just do it!” You closed your eye again and took a deep breath. You started to notice the tingly feeling in your body, even though it was faint.
“Now. Send it to your hands and into the paper.” You concentrated with all your might. You could feel it moving towards yours hands. The paper quivered before sitting still again.
“Not bad for a first try. I didn’t expect you to be able to do it right away, but there’s something...” You opened your eyes in disappointment.
“May I?” Junho held up his hands and made the motion to place them on your neck. You gave him a weird look before nodding.
“Sorry, my hands are a little cold.” You flinched slightly when his hands made contact with your skin. He pressed on the sides of your neck and closed his eyes, moving them up and down before frowning.
“That’s weird...” He moved his hands to your temples before opening his eyes with a deeper frown.
“What?”
“Well... Something is blocking your energy channels. It’s a miracle you can even use your power at all from whatever is trickling out. I’ll have a talk with my professor about it, but in the mean time, we’ll have to build it up the old fashioned way: lots of physical training. I hope you like kick boxing.” You sighed.
“I love kick boxing,” you said sarcastically. Junho laughed at you before ruffling your hair again.
“Let’s get these papers cleaned up.” He held his hands side by side, and the papers started to flying into his hands, assembling in a nice, neat stack.
“Will I be able to do that too?” You had to admit, it would definitely come in handy.
“It depends. Lexiconicy usually comes with a subpower. Mine happens to be that I can call paper to me. If I try hard enough, I can even pull up trees. My friend can pull the ink off the page and blind people with it.” You nodded slowly.
“I think I have something like that. I can make the stuff I pull from the page move. Like teddy bears and stuff.” Junho raised an eyebrow at you.
“Really? That sounds interesting.”
“It’s nice when I need company. But it makes me really tired.”
“Energy channels again. Nothing that can’t be fixed with some training,” he said, handing you your stack of papers.
“Now, I’m sure you have questions. Ask away.” The two of you sat down as he smiled at you. His eye smiled reminded you of a certain Class A boy that was probably blowing something up on accident.
“What are the levels to this power? Like if I get stronger?”
“Well first, you can pull things out without having to crumple paper. Then you can do it rapidly, almost instantaneously. Then after that, it’s bringing multiple items from the same page, then multiple items at the same time from the same page.” Junho reached into his pocket and pulled out a worn piece of paper. Words were written all over it in miniscule hand writing.
“Everything I could possibly need on one sheet of paper.” You stared at it in awe before he tucked it back into his pocket.
“Of course, your stamina should increase from each level, allowing you to maintain whatever you bring from the paper. Have you tried to bring living things out?” You scoffed before blowing at your hair.
“Ah. That’s not your real hair color either, huh?” You looked at Junho in surprise.
“That’s not your natural hair color?”
“Nope. My hair is platinum blond. I think brown is easier on the eyes,” he said, running his hand through his hair.
“My hair is half brown, half blonde. The brown fades into the blonde. Why does our hair color change? All I know is that it’s the Academy’s fault.” Junho stared off into the distance to formulate an answer before turning his gaze back to you.
“When you pull living things from paper, they have to get life force somewhere, and that somewhere is from you. Depending on how complex the living thing is, it could take seconds, minutes, or even years of your life away to sustain it.”
“So... what happens if you run out of energy, or it turns back to paper?”
“It’s pretty much the same as killing something. It was alive, then when it goes to paper again, you get your life force back, but you took it back from something living.” Your eyes went sad. You could hardly remember what the Commander forced you to do as a child, but the thought of you pulling living things that you couldn’t sustain made you feel guilty.
“Well. Practice trying to pull the pen with your mind. I’ll have a talk with my professor, and we’ll go from there tomorrow. Also, bring some sweats.”
--
You spent the rest of the day playing around with the piece of paper with ‘pen’ written on it in Junho’s neat handwriting. A few times you’d managed to make the paper take the shape of a pen, but after a while, you started to get tired.
School was over, and you didn’t bother to wait for anyone as you made your way home.
“Hey, honey. How was school?” you mom asked as as you dropped your book bag on the floor and fell onto the couch.
“Tiring. The Academy has another person with my power training me.”
“Oh? You met someone else with your power?” Your mom didn’t have any powers. She insisted that she liked doing things the old fashioned way.
“Yeah. His name is Junho. I didn’t think training would be so tiring. And we didn’t even do anything today.” Your mom laughed from the kitchen before your front door opened again.
“Oh my god, I am so tired.” Junhyung made a beeline for the couch and fell on top of you, burying his face into your back.
“Junhyung, you’re heavy. Get off,” you whined, making no motion to shove him off of you. You were too tired to to struggle and attack him.
“No. Too lazy.” You two stayed like that until your mom announced that she had snacks in the kitchen. Junhyung rolled off of you in a flash.
“So, when are you two going to finally start dating?” Your mom asked as Junhyung took a cupcake.
“Never,” you yelled from the couch. Junhyung gave you a look of mock hurt.
“That hurts, you know.” His hurt turned into a smirk as he took another bite of his cupcake. You laughed from the couch before sitting up.
“Such is life. How was Power Training today?”
“Brutal,” Junhyung said with a frown. “It’s like boot camp. What did you do all Power Training?”
“I’m getting trained by an SS.” Junhyung almost dropped his cupcake in surprise.
“What?”
“Yeah. His name is Junho, and he has the same power as me too.” Junhyung blinked at you a few times.
“I see. Why...” You shrugged your shoulders. You didn’t know why you were getting trained, but you weren’t going to question it if you got to learn to control your powers better.
“Oh, hey. Do you have any sweats I could borrow?”
--
Junho was waiting for you by the time you showed up in the courtyard, all changed.
“Those look a little bit big on you,” he said, eyeing the sweat pants. You’d tightened them as much as you could, and they fit comfortably. You never realized how much bigger than you Junhyung was before.
“They aren’t mine. They belong to my friend, Junhyung.”
“Oh, right. That metal bender? I saw his name on the list. He’s being trained by one of my friends, Doojoon.” Your thoughts lingered back to what Junhyung said last night about training being brutal and snickered.
“Well, let’s get started. We’ll start with a few laps around the courtyard. Try and keep up.”
--
You were completely exhausted by the time you finished your ‘warmup.’ Junho wasn’t even breaking a sweat.
“Huh.” He nudged you with his foot while you laid on the floor, breathing hard.
“Oh my god. That’s only a warm up?”
“Yep. We’ll be moving on to kick boxing now. I’ll teach you some basics and...” You groaned as you sat up. There goes your relaxing senior year.
--
You were so sore by the end of school. All you wanted to do right now was take a nice hot bath and crawl into bed.
There was a hand on your shoulder when you reached the school gates, making you wince.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Are you okay?” Sunggyu popped out in front of you with a concerned expression on his face.
“I’m fine. Just a little bit sore from training.” You looked at Sunggyu’s face and frowned slightly. He looked a lot more tired than usual, and his eyes didn’t seem as bright.
“Tell me about it,” he said as he started to walk you home. “I’m about to die. The SS training me is so...” Sunggyu thought back to the morning he spent blowing up clay projectiles. The SS told him that he lacked control, which wasn’t news to him, and said that they would be concentrating on making his powers precise.
“So it’s like target practice?” you asked as you opened the gate. Sunggyu, unconsciously followed you inside.
“Yeah. Like trying to learn how to fire a gun. I’ve already blown up a few trees by accident, and once I started freezing the targets in the air instead of blowing them up. When I didn’t miss.” You laughed at him, opening the door and peeling your shoes off.
“Come in. I’m sure my mom would like to meet other friends of mine that aren’t Junhyung.” Sunggyu shifted awkwardly before stepping inside and taking his shoes off.
“Mom, are you here?” you called, dropping your book bag by the couch.
“In here. Just finishing up these cookies. Oh, who’s this?” she asked as she stuck her head outside of the kitchen.
“This is Sunggyu. He’s a Class A at the Academy. He blows things up, so be nice to him,” you said, laughing as he gave your mom a nervous bow.
“Oh, he’s adorable. Come in, dear, have some cookies.” Sunggyu took a few steps before placing his book bag down and smiling.
“Thank you.”
“How’s Junhyung doing in training?” You sat down beside Sunggyu at the counter and reached for a cookie.
“I don’t know. I’m usually outside. I can hear him arguing with his SS sometimes though, it’s kinda funny.”
“It’s only been two days.” You shook your head and took a bite of your cookie. “It’s only been two days,” you repeated, letting your head fall onto the counter top.
“Wait. I thought you said you didn’t have training?” Sunggyu said, poking at your head.
“I usually don’t, but they brought an SS to train me so... I figured, why not? But I’m so sore...”
“Yeah. Stamina training really gets you, especially if you’re out of shape.” You groaned from the counter top.
“Tell me about it.” Sunggyu grinned before turning towards you.
“You wanna come jogging with me in the morning? I get up kinda early, but it really helps get your energy flowing for the rest for the day.” You lifted your head from the counter and rubbed the middle of your forehead.
“How early is early?”
“Six in the morning.”
“Six in the morning? It exists?” you asked with a dazed expression on your face. Sunggyu laughed at you, making your heart flutter slightly.
“School starts at eight. What time do you get up to get ready for school then?” Your mom laughed, turning around from her spot in the living room.
“You mistake her for a high maintenence. She likes girly things but acts like a boy.” You shrugged your shoulders as Sunggyu gave you a questioning look.
“I can’t help it.” He laughed at you before finishing off his cookie.
“So, do you want to come for a jog with me in the morning? I’ll stop by here and get you.” You nodded, dusting off your hands.
“Sure. I’ll warn you though, I’m not much of a morning person.”
--
“Honey, Sunggyu is here.” Your mom shook you awake as your groaned. Your body was still sore from the training yesterday, and your muscles ached as you moved.
“I don’t care. Tell him to go away.”
“Nope, can’t. Already here. Come on.” He flipped on the light switch in your room and walked in, pulling your blankets off.
“Look out,” your mom warned him. He reached for your arm, and you groaned and tried to punch him.
He grabbed your other arm and pulled you up, dragging you off of your bed. You yelled as you hit the floor, glaring at Sunggyu through your hair.
“Nice bed head. Hurry up and get dressed.” He nudged you with his foot before leaving you.
“God, he’s like Junhyung.”
--
You were dressed in sweats and a hoodie after a few minutes. You tied your hair up and put on a pair of glasses before heading outside to see Sunggyu stretching in the yard.
“Ready?” You nodded, trying to suppress a yawn.
“Follow me then.”
--
Sunggyu started off slow, slow enough so that you could jog side by side with him with your aching muscles. The cold air was piercing your lungs, but you didn’t want to look like a wimp next to him.
Somewhere along the way, Sunggyu increased the pace without you noticing. You were jogging behind him now, breathing deep. After half an hour, you were already ready to die.
“Sunggyu, slow down,” you said, slowing down to a jog to catch your breath. The stitches in your side were killing you.
Sunggyu glanced over his shoulder before slowing his pace. “You did pretty good, keeping up with me for this long. You don’t exercise regularly right?”
You scowled at him before punching him in the arm. He held his arm and made a fake crying noise. “That hurts.”
“Does it now?” you asked with a smile on your face. Junho complimented you on your punching skill the day before when he was teaching kick boxing. You couldn’t wait to use it against Junhyung the next time he tried to pick a fight with you.
“We should probably head back now. Do you wanna walk back, or would you be okay with jogging back? Usually I sprint back but...” You took in a few deep breaths started to jog in place.
“Lead the way.”
--
You were showered and ready for school half an hour before you had to be there. You sat at the counter in the kitchen, finishing up some breakfast. You were too lazy to put in your contacts today.
You were so sore in the morning, but after your jog with Sunggyu, your body was pleasantly numb.
Junhyung opened up the front door and stepped inside before completely freezing at the sight of you sitting at the counter eating.
“Uh. You’re awake.”
“No, I’m sleep walking,” you said, picking up your plate and moving to put it into the sink.
“You’re never up early. Is this real? Who are you, and what have you done with my best friend?” He stared at you through wide eyes until you rolled your eyes and punched him in the arm.
“I woke up early to take a jog with Sunggyu.” Junhyung brought his hand up and waved it. When nothing happened, he frowned.
“What the heck?”
“What’s wrong?” you asked with a slightly mocking tone in your voice. You pushed your glasses up your nose and looked at him innocently.
“Your glasses.”
“Are plastic.” You smirked at him before heading to your room to get your book bag.
“You are getting devious. I don’t like this. Stop hanging out with Sunggyu!”
“You can’t tell me what to do,” you said as soon as you got to the edge of the stairs.
“Rebellious,” Junhyung said, grabbing your book bag as soon as you reached the bottom of your stairs. “That’s hot.”
“Oh god. Not this early in the morning. Please.”
“Oh, so it’ll be okay later?” You punched him hard.
--
Sunggyu was waiting for you as soon as you wallked through the gates of the school. You wandered over to him and his group of friends as he waved you over. Junhyung gave them a wary look before following you.
“So how was your jog this morning?” Woohyun asked as soon as you were within earshot.
“I can tell you Sunggyu enjoyed it. He liked seeing you first thing in the morning. Thought your bed hair was cu- OW.” Sunggyu elbowed Woohyun in the side hard, making him stop and rub his ribs.
“Just telling her the truth.” Junhyung loomed up behind you, staring down Sunggyu.
“You better not be thinking anything dirty. Or I swear.” He made a stabbing motion before handing you your book bag back. “I’m headed off. If I hear anything funny...” He glared at you before smiling, then kissed his fingers to press to your forehead again.
Woohyun glanced at Sunggyu, whose expression turned slightly dark.
“Ah. Jealous, are we?”
“No,” he huffed as you turned around.
“What happened now?”
“Nothing,” Sunggyu said quickly, shoving Woohyun away from him as soon as he opened his mouth.
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