Chapter 5 - last part

I heard voices. People were talking. What happened? My head was hurting. I felt like I forgot something important. I opened my eyes. The light in the room made my headache feel worse than it was. I was in the infirmary, on one of the beds. Oh right, Hiro! We brought him here, we, Ryuu and me. Ryuu... Right, now I started to remember. He told me about the SA, why such a class existed. And about me having an ability. He wanted to proof to me that I could use it on him too. I was a tamer. Someone who could influence other people’s abilities. And he proofed it to me: I could control the tiger. So the voices I was hearing were of Hiro and Ryuu. Before they notice that I am awake I tried to listen to their conversation.

“... to protect her.” Ryuu said. Protect her? Me? What were they talking about?

“If they find out they will definitely misuse her. We can’t let them do that, you are right.” Hiro answered. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to start listening in the middle of the conversation. It wasn’t making sense at all. Right when I wanted to show that I was awake Hiro continued: “How is your head? Feeling better?” So I wasn’t the only one with a headache.

“Yeah. Luckily she fainted before me. If she withstood just one second more I would have fainted too. Controlling the tiger must have been a heavy burden for her body. She should wake up soon.”

I thought it was time to interrupt them. My curiosity didn’t leave me more space to pretend anyway. “I woke up.” I said simply. The next second Ryuu and Hiro were surrounding me. Both of them looked relieved.

“How are you feeling?” They asked at the same time.

“I am fine” I gave them a light smile to show them it’s true. “My head still hurts, though. Why did I even faint?”

Ryuu was the one to answer: “Without training the attempt to control someone else’s ability is really difficult. The stronger the ability is the more burdens it will bring to the tamer’s body. The tiger is one of the strongest abilities that exist. And you tried to control it while I did it. Because we did it at the same time we both almost fainted from exhaustion. If you had withstood the exhaustion just one second longer I would be the one to faint.” With this explanation he even answered my unasked questions to the conversation I heard before. But not all of my questions were answered yet. Seeing Hiro standing near me I got worried before I could ask the remaining questions. “Are you feeling better? Why don’t you lie down?”

“Thanks for worrying. I am totally fine“ he answered.

“Don’t play the Hero!” Ryuu grinned and tripped him so that he fell backwards to the second bed. I sat up on the bed. They were really good friends to even joke around in this kind of situation. But I couldn’t hold up the questions any longer: “What will happen with me now that you found out about my ability? What were you talking about just then? Misuse my ability? Who would?” all them just spurted out of me. Suddenly the expression on both of their faces changed. It got darker. “You were awake since then?” Hiro sighed. He didn’t seem happy. “Ryuu, we have to explain to her anyway, so how about we tell her everything?”

Ryuu also sighed. “It doesn’t seem like we have another chsoice.” What were they talking about? Was there a really big secret they were keeping? Did that have anything to do with me? I didn’t have to wait long to find out. Ryuu continued: “We won’t tell the school that you have an ability. You keep it a secret too!” At this sentence he pleadingly looked at me. “The SA everyone admires isn’t such a good place. The school is training the special ability students to become useful to them. In the future most of us will be used for the government to do underground work, or we will be sold to other countries. There are almost no chances for us to break free from this system. To train us for that they send us out to missions. Some of those missions are really just training, something set up by the school. But if you have a really useful ability, and if you are a splendid ability user, you will get real missions.” When he said that I instinctively looked at Hiro.

Hiro and Ryuu nodded at the same time. Hiro replied to my unspoken question. “Yeah, you even come back hurt from the mission. The school doesn’t care much about the students’ lifes. You just have to fulfil the operation and you will be granted with something. That’s the system behind SA.”

“We decided that as long as you have a chance, you shouldn’t be part of this. And you have a really strong ability, means they would send you out to missions immediately without training which would risk your life.” I understood what this was about. I never thought that the SA was such a place. The SA everyone admires, that’s how Ryuu referred to them when talking about it. I already wondered why it sounded so sarcastic. Now I knew. I nodded. I would keep this a secret.