Interlude: Reverberation (Part 1)
I loved music.
My father had apparently vanished when I was little, leaving me and my mother behind.
Thanks to that, I got my own room in a tiny six-tatami apartment.
I never even asked what kind of man he was.
He was probably just another worthless guy.
And the woman who fell for him—my mother—was just as worthless.
Every night, she brought home a different man, surviving off the money they gave her.
In this world, bedding a woman doesn’t come cheap.
Men who couldn’t even manifest a Lux—an innate talent—worked themselves ragged, saving up just to melt away their earnings on a single night’s fantasy.
And the women who clung to such men to survive were even more pathetic.
At the very least, to me, my mother was a despicable creature.
If she had at least raised me with the money she earned selling herself, things might’ve been different.
But no such luck.
I had no memory of being properly cared for.
One meal a day—just the school lunch.
If not for the government’s free education policy to combat the declining birthrate, I wouldn’t even have made it to elementary school.
I’d have starved to death long ago.
Not that school was any comfort to me, though.
I never went to daycare or kindergarten, so elementary school was my first glimpse of the outside world.
It was practically my first time interacting with people, too.
My mother never paid me any attention, so I assumed that was just how relationships worked—I barely spoke.
I learned words from the radio, which I played to drown out the moans from the next room.
A girl like that had no hope of fitting into society.
Within a month of starting school, I was isolated.
I never questioned it.
I couldn’t.
To me, that was normal.
A few kind-hearted girls tried talking to me, but the glint in their eyes irritated me, so I ignored them.
School was far from a comfortable place.
But it was still better than home.
From that lonely little paradise, I trudged home with slow, reluctant steps.
The room right past the entrance was my mother’s—her bedroom and workplace.
I held my breath, dashed past it, and locked myself in my own room at the back.
Sometimes, my cramped room felt strangely vast.
On those days, I’d turn on the radio and curl up in a corner.
I wasn’t good at talking, but I liked the lively banter of the radio hosts.
The way they traded jokes with guests sounded fun.
But what I loved even more was the music.
I adored the crisp sound of FM broadcasts.
While listening, the fog swirling in my chest would fade away.
Hugging my knees, I’d sway to the rhythm.
Sometimes, I’d move my hands to the beat.
Raising my arms lightly made me feel lighter.
Spreading them wide made my heart feel open.
Lowering them smoothly made me feel cool.
—I loved music.
The problem was rainy days.
The apartment was cheap, so the sound of raindrops pounding the eaves echoed loudly.
Even the pristine FM audio would get muddled with noise.
I hated those rains, just a little.
♢♢♢♢♢
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Among all the worst things about my mother, two stood out as particularly loathsome.
First, her face.
Plenty of mothers and daughters don’t look alike, but unfortunately, I resembled her.
Every time someone complimented my looks, I felt sick.
Was it my mother’s face I hated, or the indirect praise of her?
Maybe both.
And second—
Even worse than her looks was her Lux, her innate talent.
Its effect was [Charm].
A wicked ability that drew people’s hearts against their will.
In practice, it was weak—just enough to catch someone’s eye.
—Because once their attention was caught, they’d fixate on her pretty face anyway.
Normally, mind-affecting Lux were heavily regulated by the government. But hers was too weak to matter—just enough to ensnare a few men. I often wished it had been stronger.
Then, at least, the [White Scales of Prim-Libra] would’ve labeled her a threat.
But the real problem was this:
Lux and their Umbra—their compensatory curses—were hereditary.
The details have not been clarified, and this is only a discourse based on the statistical results.
However, numbers speak more eloquently than orators.
Like it or not, parents and children often shared similar gifts and curses.
When I first learned this, I nearly cried.
I’d end up with the same power as that woman.
The thought terrified me. I lost countless nights to sleepless dread.
I found out on my seventh birthday, from a tattered maternal health record buried in a drawer.
It was a rainy day, typical of autumn.
Coincidentally a holiday, I was curled up in my room when it happened.
Revelation—
that’s what they called the moment a Lux awakened.
A chime echoed in my skull, said to be a blessing from the gods.
What a lazy name, I thought, scoffing even at the terminology.
At the moment when the hands of the clock struck twelve.
The sound of the bell rang out, and I knew my own natural-birthrightness lux.
No—knew wasn’t the right word. I realized it.
When you know something new, or when you challenge it.
You may suddenly think, “Ah, maybe this is for me.
A strange sense of certainty.
That was how I realized what my Lux could do.
[Telekinesis].
The power to control myself and inorganic matter at will.
Of course, it wasn’t limitless—but the strength didn’t matter.
—I wasn’t like her!
Just that thought made my body feel light as a feather.
Released from unbearable tension, I stood without thinking.
And then—God reminded me.
After the Lux came the Umbra.
Almost like mockery.
[Charm].
Permanent, involuntary—drawing the eyes of all who saw me.
The price for controlling myself and objects at will.
As if to say: You can’t control others the way you wish.
“Ah… ah…”
My knees shook violently.
I was terrified.
Desperate for escape, I threw open the sliding door and ran outside.
For some reason, that day, my mother was alone in her room, blank-faced.
Her vacant eyes locked onto me.
“—Ah.”
The intoxicated gleam in her gaze—I’ll never forget it.
♢♢♢♢♢
—What’s hell to you might not look like hell to others. That’s often how it goes.
On my seventh birthday, I filled out a national survey, truthfully listing my Lux and Umbra.
Or rather, I had to.
The warning—“False reporting is a crime”—scared me.
I later learned there were agencies dedicated to uncovering such lies.
The thought of what would’ve happened if I’d lied still chills me.
I like to think that’s why I still resent them.
Because days after submitting that form, I was called to the national agency.
I was summoned by a national institution and put through grueling “tests.”
[Telekinesis] was an incredibly useful Lux.
Normally, such abilities only worked on inorganic matter.
Being able to control myself was unheard of in similar talents.
Hard to master, yes—but even accounting for that, it was exceptional.
—But my Umbra drew far more attention.
What was a curse to me was a gift to others.
When someone called it “like having two Lux,” I screamed insults at them.
To seven-year-old me, that wasn’t praise.
Around this time, I started cursing more.
Before, I barely spoke—so it wasn’t much of a change.
But it helped shoo away the bugs drawn to my Umbra’s light.
Unbelievably, some people wouldn’t stop chasing me unless I outright rejected them.
The “slightly promising” types—top of the class, star athletes.
Being targeted by their lovestruck admirers was the worst.
The jealous glares burned into my mind.
“Must be nice to be so talented,” whispered just loud enough for me to hear—that was daily life.
None of them had the guts to do more than that, though.
Still, it was enough to sour my mood.
And knowing it was all because of my Umbra made me sick.
—So I set my sights on becoming an Excia, a Winged Guardian.
Being praised—or scorned—for my Umbra was unbearable.
But my Umbra Compensation Shadow was thick—something I couldn’t erase, no matter how much I wanted to.
In that case, I’d just have to overpower it with an even brighter Talent Lux.
Unlike some dreamy-eyed girl, angels were never a dream to me—just a means to an end.
Around the same time I started getting snappier with my words, I began bringing home loads of junk.
“……What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
I brushed off my mother’s question, arms full of discarded materials I’d taken from the art room.
Needless to say, it was all for Talent Lux training.
I weighed myself in the nurse’s office, then gathered as many objects lighter than me as I could.
Incidentally, after watching the first apple I tried to move smash against the wall and burst, I decided to hold off on attempting to levitate myself with telekinesis.
There was a time I even tried gaining weight, thinking that removing my limits would make me stronger—but having lived most of my life barely eating, I couldn’t stomach increasing my food intake.
I gave up on that idea pretty quickly, too.
“……Is there something you want to be?”
“Excia, the Winged Guardian.”
When I answered curtly, she looked utterly shocked.
Serves you right, I smirked to myself after sliding the door shut.
——Before I knew it, the radio I used to listen to so much had been buried under piles of junk.
◇◇◇◇◇
“Hey, the transfer student in Class 4… apparently she doesn’t have any Talent Lux.”
“No way, seriously?”
I overheard those words on a beautiful spring day, nearly two years after my seventh birthday.
I remember thinking how ill-suited the conversation was for such cheerful sunlight.
Trashy people can only survive in trashy worlds.
I guess that’s just their natural habitat.
“……What pitiful people.”
And for good measure, I directed the same words at the transfer student they were targeting.
How tragic for both of you, being hated over whether or not you have talent.
At the time, that was all there was to it—my interest faded almost instantly.
——Little did I expect that, within a few months, she would be the one to approach me.
“W-will you… be my friend…?”
Hearing that, I voiced the first thought that came to mind.
“——How pointless.”
The girl I’d once pitied had somehow ended up surrounded by friends.
Rumor had it that a sixth-grade boy kept visiting her,
and since he was apparently popular, she became the center of attention in no time.
I didn’t understand any of it—nor did I care in the slightest.
Not about the situation, nor about her, some dreamy girl gushing over having so many friends.
“What, are you collecting friends like some stamp rally?”
And now, I was supposed to be the last stamp on her card?
Ridiculous. I was busy—I didn’t have time to get dragged into this.
With that thought, I turned on my heel—only for her voice to stop me.
“A real friend…!”
“————”
“I was told… that making a real friend would help…”
A real friend—such a fitting phrase for someone as hopelessly dreamy as her.
But what caught my attention was the part where she “was told.”
“……What’s that supposed to mean? Someone told you to?”
Glancing back over my shoulder, I saw her bow her head in embarrassment.
Watching her, a thought crossed my mind.
——This girl… doesn’t care at all about my face, or my Compensation Umbra, does she?
The moment the realization hit, I spoke.
“Fine.”
Being friends wasn’t a big deal.
I could always cut her off later.
More than that, I wanted to see if her indifference toward me was genuine.
“Let’s do it, then—[friend].”
Still looking down on her in every way, I accepted her proposal.
…………What I never expected was that, in less than a year, I’d end up getting way too close to her.
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