SPLUTTER.
Kai looked down. A massive, bloody horn was sticking out of his stomach.
He turned his head weakly. Riku the Bull was standing behind him, his dark fur bristling. The beast had charged right through a brick wall—through one of the glossy posters Okami had printed—and skewered Kai like a kebab.
"Found you, Zero."
Kai tried to scream, but only blood choked him.
"AAAAAHHHHHHHGGG!!!!!"
CRASH!
"Where are they?!"
Kai's father burst into the bedroom, swinging a baseball bat like a berserker, smashing a stack of comics off the desk in his panic.
Kai sat up in bed, clutching his chest. No horn. No blood. Just sweat soaking through his pyjamas.
"A… nightmare?"
His father lowered the bat, his face turning from fear to purple rage.
"You're screaming like that at 7:00 AM? Get up, Arashi! You're grounded, you're late for school, and if I hear one more peep out of you, I'm selling your bed!"
——————————————
Kai made it to the school gates, lungs burning. He paused to catch his breath, feeling a momentary relief. He had made it. He was safe.
"Is that... Arashi?"
A crowd had gathered around a telephone pole. There it was: a high-gloss, oversized print of Riku the Bull eating dirt, with Kai's fist frozen in the foreground. The caption, in Okami's messy handwriting, read: ZERO TO HERO: THE BULL-SLAYER COMES.
"No way. It's photoshopped."
"But look at his face. That's the same pathetic look he has in Math!"
Kai kept his head down, trying to slip through the main gates before anyone spotted him. He was spotted immediately.
"Correct me if I'm wrong, Zero Kai, but aren't turd collectors supposed to clean up the city? What is this shit?"
The captain of the football team and his crew formed a solid wall, blocking the entrance. Kai could feel the panic from his nightmare rising again. His heart thundered against his ribs.
"Just let me inside," Kai pleaded. "You can beat me up in there."
"Why so humble, Zero Kai? Have you finally given up on life? If so, I'm afraid that's not the sort of attitude we want to let into our school. We're all winners here. Losers like you stay in the gutter—"
SCREECH.
The sound of high-performance tires cut through the jeering. A sleek, black sedan with the golden crest of the Seishin Council pulled up to the curb.
The bullies froze.
The door opened, and a pair of polished white boots stepped onto the gravel. Ayame Arashi emerged, wearing the high-collared white tunic of a Council Officer.
"Step back. All of you."
Her words were sharp. The air suddenly became heavy, a physical weight that sent the bullies scrambling backward, tripping over their own feet.
"Ayame?" Kai hadn't seen his sister in over a year. "What are you doing here?"
She walked forward, footsteps echoing like hammer blows. She reached out and ripped the poster off the pole. "The Council has been alerted to these. They aren't amused by jokes, Kai."
Behind Kai, the students whispered in shock. "She's a Council Officer?" "He's in so much trouble..."
"Captain Riku is especially unamused. You're lucky he sent me to deal with you. You're ordered to take down all of these posters by end of day. Do you understand?"
Kai opened his mouth, and to everyone's surprise the word that came out was…
"No. I won't do it. When I woke up this morning I was terrified. I had nightmares about Riku killing me. I ran all the way to school because I thought it might be the only safe place. But then I got here and all I found was the same group of bullies waiting to make my life miserable. I don't expect you to understand, Ayame. You were popular. The best student this school ever had. And now you're part of the Seishin Council. But what do I have? Nothing. No friends. Nobody who believes in me. And yet, somehow, I won a wild card to the Seishin Trials. It's my one single chance to do something great. And I'm going to win."
That was the longest speech Kai had ever given. And though his face remained dark, he felt something rising inside him.
Ayame was not impressed. "The Trials aren't a game, you idiot. They're dangerous. Do you have any idea the kinds of horrors they put you through? People die every year."
"I don't care—"
"Don't be a fool!" Ayame snapped and Kai suddenly felt a phantom hand across his chest, squeezing the air out of his lungs.
"You think a lucky punch makes you a warrior?" Ayame whispered. "If you really want to enter that world, then show me. Convince me."
Her eyes flashed blue and Kai felt as if a tidal wave crashed over him.
You're weak. You're a failure. You're nothing.
The voice was loud in his head, its words so heavy that they rattled his bones and made him fall to his knees, wheezing.
"Ayame… please… stop it…"
She looked down on him with no trace of compassion, and then the pressure vanished as she turned toward her car.
"Do not mistake me, little brother. I say this because I love you. Stay away from the Seishin Trials. They're no place for a zero."
____________________________
At lunchtime Kai locked himself in the bathroom and ran his head under the cold water. Staring into the mirror above the sink he tried to shake the heaviness in his limbs which still lingered from Ayame's brutal words.
"She's never been that cruel to me before. And in front of everyone in the school too. What happened to you Ayame? And what did you do to me anyway? That power… It felt exactly like when Okami and Riku were trash-talking in the arena. I couldn't breathe. Is there really nobody on my side?"
It is during existential moments such as these that the Universe is prone to sending us a message.
BZZZZ
The mosquito flew lazily onto Kai's shoulder.
"Err… excuse me. Do you mind? I'm trying to have an existential moment here."
Apparently ignoring Kai, the mosquito rubbed its hands together before casually crawling around Kai's person as if considering whether it was worth having a bite.
"Am I so much of a zero that even bugs aren't interested? Unless…"
Kai thought back to the other night when Okami had turned them invisible from his father.
"Sometimes the will to be unseen, is greater than the will to be seen."
"So maybe if I concentrate hard enough I can fade away too. After all, it should be pretty easy for a zero to become nothing."
Kai closed his eyes.
Invisible. Zero. Nothing.
STING
"OW!"
Kai slapped his forehead but the mosquito did a victory lap around his head.
BUZZZZZ
"Stop making fun of me—!"
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK
The bathroom door rattled against the lock.
"Hey, open up! I need to take a dump."
Kai froze. "Sorry, one second."
"Huh? Is that you in there, Zero Kai? Because if you're trying to find your life, I think it got flushed a while back."
Kai turned back to his reflection. He had a small bite in the centre of his forehead. He rubbed it ferociously, threw water on it, and… made it 10x bigger.
"Oh no! I can't go out there like this. If they see me with this thing, I'll never hear the end of it. Zero Kai got beaten by bug! Zero Kai looks like a unicorn!"
He ran to the cubicle, stepped onto the toilet and squeezed through the open window. He didn't look back. He just ran.
To the only place left to go.
The Mine.
__________________________
Kai pulled his hood tight around his head as he hurried through the streets.
"Master Okami, you have to help me."
"Shouldn't you be in school? I'm busy."
"Are you kidding?! Your stupid posters have made my life hell. Everywhere I go I think Riku's about to jump out and kill me. He's even chasing me in my dreams! And don't say I'm imagining it because the Seishin Council just warned me to get rid of the posters—or else."
"Or else what?"
"Or else Riku—Captain Riku—will tear me apart! My sister showed up at school and made a big scene. I'm a laughing stock."
"So your sister works for the council… How interesting. And she gave you that bruise on your forehead too?"
"Um… yeah."
Kai looked down at the ground.
"I've never seen Ayame act like that. She was mean. She told me I was nothing. A zero. When she spoke the whole world went cold and all I could feel was how much of a loser I am. So now all I want to do is disappear. Like you did in the art studio. If I can be invisible, the Council can't find me, Riku can't kill me, and the whole world can just forget about me.You have to teach me. Please."
Okami stepped up close, narrowing his eyes at the lump on Kai's head. "Hmmmm. So that's your story, is it?"
Kai nodded.
"Well, your sister must have very small hands then! HAHAHAHA!"
Kai gritted his teeth and turned to storm off—but the ground suddenly shook beneath him.
RUMBLE
"Oh, lighten up, kid. Your sister just got in your head. But what else do you expect from a Projector-type?"
"Projector-type?"
Okami's face went uncharacteristically serious.
"There are four Pillars of Will, kid: Projecting, Shielding, Enhancing, and Manipulating. Depending on which category you fall into, determines how your Will is expressed. Enhancer-types like me can make our punches more powerful or turn a tiny vibration turn into an earthquake. Projector-types like your sister can push their ideas onto the world until the world agrees with them. They can really mess with you, if you're not ready for it."
"So what about me? Which type am I?"
"Normally you just take the test… but judging by the way you knocked out Riku, it's a safe bet that you're a good old Enhancer."
Okami picked up a small, jagged stone, and scratched a circle into the mountain rock.
"And when Enhancers meet a challenge, we don't hide. We smash straight through."
SMASH
With a simple swing, Okami punched a four-foot crater into the side of the mountain.
Kai's jaw went slack. "That's… impossible."
Okami dusted his hands and scratched another circle.
"The Seishin Trials begin on Friday. You've got three days to make it possible."
___________________________
CLANG
The pickaxe bounced off the black rock, sending a shockwave of pain up Kai's arms.
"Damn it!"
Okami didn't look up from his newspaper. "You're not going to get there by trying to hit harder. This isn't matter of stronger muscles or better technique. It's a matter of Will."
Kai waved the pickaxe. "You can keep telling me that but I still don't know what it means."
"You ever read those stories of grandmas lifting cars off babies? You think they were coming back from the gym when it happened? Think they spent years bench-pressing Toyotas?"
"No."
"So how'd they do it?"
"I dunno. They had no choice."
"Wrong. They had two choices: Lift the car; or don't lift the car. But free choice isn't the same as free will. And in that moment they made it a matter of will."
Okami casually picked up a pebble and crushed it into dust in his hand.
"Just like you don't give your fist a choice when you close it... you must not give the rock a choice when you hit it. Understand? Don't ask it to break, kid. Tell it."
————————
By the next morning Kai's hands had been ripped to shreds. He sat slumped against the shaft wall, bleeding and exhausted.
SNORE
Okami was sprawled at the mine entrance, the newspaper across his face wafting up down.
"How the hell can he sleep? Oh, right. The will to sleep is greater than the will to stay awake… what a joke. I can't break a rock just by telling it to—"
"Of course you can't. You can't do anything."
The voice echoed loudly from the shadows. Kai grabbed the pickaxe, scrambling to his feet.
"Who's there?"
"Put that down before you hurt yourself. You know how clumsy you are. That's why dad gave you rubber chopsticks until you were twelve."
"Ayame?"
His sister stepped out of the darkness. Dressed in her Council uniform, she loomed over him, eyes glowing blue.
"I told you to stay away from the Seishin Trials, Kai. So what do you think you're doing here? Trying to get stronger? Please. You're just fooling yourself. Haven't you learned by now that the distance from zero to one is infinite."
SPLUTTER.
The pickaxe fell from Kai's hand. He looked down. A massive, bloody horn was sticking out of his stomach.
Just like in his nightmare, Riku the Bull was standing behind Kai, dark fur bristling. The beast snarled and pulled out his horn, leaving Kai to wretch his guts.
"Excellent work, Corporal. You truly show no mercy. Your will is indeed strong."
Ayame smiled coldly.
"You honour me too much, Captain. After all, he was never my brother."
They stood over him, laughing.
Kai felt a tear roll down his cheek.
"You're always so mean to me, Ayame. Isn't it enough that I spent my whole life living in your shadow? You had all the talent, all the friends, all dad's love. But even now, you won't acknowledge that I'm your brother…"
Riku raised his massive hoof to stomp Kai into paste.
"Well… I'm done with that. I'm not going to be a zero anymore. I WILL BEAT YOU."
In that moment Kai's fear vanished, replaced by a white hot rage.
Kai's fist tightened.
"KEE-YAH!"
BANG
The world went blac
"…kid? Hey, kid!"
Kai opened his eyes. The air was thick with grey dust.
Okami stood over him, brushing dirt off his coat.
"What's the matter with you, kid? Can't you see I was sleep—huh?"
Okami stared at the wall behind Kai.
As the dust cleared, the moonlight shone through the mine. Where the obsidian wall had been, there was nothing. A hole twice the size of a door had been blasted clean through the mountain, exposing the night sky on the other side.
"See, kid. We'll make an Enhancer out of you yet. HAHA!"
Kai stared at his shaking fist. His knuckles were raw but they felt stronger than steel.
"I did that?"
Okami patted him on the back. "And with two whole days until the trials begin."
Kai's eyes bulged. "I only have two days!"
END EPISODE 3