I finally made it home, a typical two-story white Japanese house in a residential area crossed by a small stream in Nishikyō-ku, with a narrow garage, an outdoor storage shed, and a spot by the entrance to leave bikes.
It’s fairly central and really well connected, so I can’t complain.
“I’m home!” I shouted, getting no response as I closed the door with my shoulder.
My parents still hadn’t gotten back from work, so I left my shoes abandoned by the entrance and proceeded to spend the afternoon doing absolutely fuck all.
The Pro Controller of my Switch, a console that had only come out recently, creaked between my fingers as I played a round of Mario Kart.
I don’t have many friends, so I spend a good chunk of my free time playing video games or doing sports.
A new Mario game is coming out in a few weeks.
I guess I’ll buy it.
Aside from those games, I also play a lot of shooters.
I really like those kinds of games because they help me with my powers.
By experimenting with my energy, I discovered that I can channel it into two different superpowers.
It was pretty strange.
The moment I awakened them, it was as if the knowledge of what those powers were and how to use them had been implanted directly into my brain, like some kind of innate knowledge I’d had since birth.
For starters, I can use my eyes like a kind of long-range scope.
Like an eagle’s vision, I can see across huge distances effortlessly, and everything I look at appears with incredible precision.
On top of that, when I use my eyes, my brain can process stimuli at a much higher level, increasing my reflexes and reaction speed.
Their signature ability allows me to know how any living being is going to move slightly before it actually happens.
It works like this: my eyes tap into the neural signals in the brain of anyone within my sight, allowing me to tell which parts of their body they’re about to move.
For example, if someone is about to raise their right hand, I already know they’re going to do it before they actually move, simply by reading the electrical signals traveling from their brain toward that part of their body.
In a fight, for example, that means I can anticipate their actions.
They’re basically super-eyes with several different abilities, which I’ve named Jōi Shinkeigan—Superior Nervous Eye—or simply Shinkeigan, inspired by Naruto.
Whenever I use them, my normally black eyes become enveloped in an intense purple color, including both the iris and pupil.
Apparently, nobody else notices any change in my eyes, which makes them the power I feel least anxious about using.
My other power, and the more interesting one, consists of semi-transparent purple spheres surrounded by a ring marked with the Roman numerals I through XII, like the face of a clock.
I create one by making a specific gesture with my hand, pressing my thumb and middle finger together.
A small sphere appears in the air just in front of my middle fingernail, and when I flick that finger forward, it shoots away like one of those collectible pogs.
If it makes contact with an object or living being, the sphere expands until it’s large enough to completely envelop it.
And it literally freezes it in time.
Whoever gets caught inside isn’t even aware that it happened.
If I’m five meters to their left when I trap them, walk directly in front of them, and then release the paralysis, from their perspective, it would look like I had simply teleported.
Unless something interferes with the sphere, the effect remains active.
I call this power Chronostasis, in reference to time and the clock-like markings on the spheres.
I wanted the shooting motion and the precision required to become completely natural to me, which eventually led to me playing a lot of shooting games.
In fact, firing one of the spheres creates recoil surprisingly similar to the MR6 from Call of Duty: Black Ops III, another one of my favorite games.
Maintaining the paralysis drains my energy, and the effect breaks the moment something makes contact with whatever is trapped inside.
Even the slightest touch on the target inside the sphere causes time to start flowing normally for them again.
Unfortunately, I can only keep one of these spheres active at a time.
I can’t trap more than one person or object simultaneously.
I don’t usually use it.
It would be pretty damn noticeable if someone suddenly froze in the middle of walking.
“That’s enough for now,” I muttered, dropping the controller onto my bed.
My room is upstairs.
It’s fairly spacious, with a large bed.
And a complete disaster, with clothes piled up everywhere.
My parents don’t really insist on me cleaning it either.
They mostly leave me alone when it comes to my stuff.
My room is packed with nerdy shit: consoles, video games, movies, arcade stuff, and things I’ve won at tournaments.
I regularly go to events and competitions where money or some other prize is at stake, and I win them by taking advantage of my powers.
For example, this summer I entered a billiards tournament where I won quite a bit of money and an expensive handcrafted cue, along with some other high-end equipment.
Turns out the Shinkeigan’s visual precision helps quite a lot when playing pool.
I also went to a fairground shooting competition this summer, where I made thousands of yen by hitting every single target and won an air rifle.
Same thing with a ping-pong tournament, and if we go further back, there are plenty more examples.
Basically, I’m loaded, and my room looks like a warehouse full of random prizes.
If people knew what I was doing, everyone would probably think I was a cheater using superpowers to make money.
They’d be completely right.
I do the exact same thing on the football team.
Although these tournaments pay pretty well, it’s nothing compared to what I’ll make once I become a professional footballer, something I’ve been preparing for since I was a kid.
The living room is filled with more top-scorer trophies, MVP awards, and medals from different competitions than I can count.
I’ve already received messages from several major teams saying they’ll offer me contracts once I’m old enough.
From there, I’ll make the starting lineup, then move to Europe, and after that, I’ll make it big.
As soon as I became aware of my powers, I realized the best way to use them to my advantage was to become rich as an elite athlete.
It’s as simple as enhancing my body enough to dominate every match without overdoing it.
Imagine Spider-Man playing football or basketball, except he’s deliberately holding back so nobody realizes he’s a superhero.
You get the idea?
My parents have always supported my future career as a footballer, but they have no idea how far I’m actually going to take it.
Even if I decide I don’t feel like being a footballer anymore someday, it doesn’t matter.
Any sport will do.
I can be the best at anything.
Yeah, I feel a little dirty about it, but as the famous saying goes, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
I plan on using my powers to give myself an easy life.
After all, what’s the difference between LeBron James taking advantage of his height and me taking advantage of my powers?
No matter how you look at it, my future doesn’t look bad at all.
I yawned as I counted my savings.
Four million yen.
“Nagi Seishiro, professional cheater,” I said to myself with a slight grin, letting the money fall onto my chest.
As for my parents, they’re fine with pretty much everything I do, and why wouldn’t they be?
I make my own money by occasionally going to events and, as far as they know, earning it legitimately; I have a future in football, and I pass all my classes.
Sure, they’ve scolded me a few times over incidents at school, but whatever.
Nobody’s perfect.
I’ve got something planned for tonight…
I don’t really want to explain how I found out about it, but apparently there are going to be some underground poker games at a nearby bar that’s being used as a front.
Where a bunch of adults won’t suspect that I’m about to fleece them like chickens while cheating my ass off.
“This is so fucking boring,” I muttered.
I didn’t even bother moving to turn off the console.
Aside from tonight, I wasn’t planning on doing much over the weekend.
I’d do just enough homework to pass without going crazy over it.
Honestly, I’d been pretty bored lately.
“I’m home!” a voice called from the hallway.
I left my room and headed downstairs to greet my mother, Yukari Shirokawa, forty-three years old, with the same ash-white hair as mine.
Just a normal mother coming home from her nine-to-five office job as an accountant.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Hi, sweetie.
I got a notice from the school this morning saying you overslept.”
“Yeah, Mom…
You know how it is.
I was training late last night, getting ready, and I overslept.
I’ll try not to let it happen again.
They said it wasn’t really a big deal anyway.
I’m doing fine on my exams.”
“All right.
I’ll start making dinner.
Wait until your father gets home.”
I nodded and went back upstairs to my room to continue doing absolutely nothing.
Chronostasis and help more people find it!