Megumi's Path めぐみの軌跡

Chapter Eleven A New Friend

Chapter Eleven

A New Friend

Quickly changing and leaving the locker room, I saw Shiho-san ahead of me, her head down, playing on her phone. Calling to her, she stopped. "What are you doing?" She shrugged. "Why did you have to say that in front of them? It's..." She raised her eyebrows, expecting me to say thank you or something, but my emotions did not reflect that situation at all. I was irritated. "It was silly of you. Please don't bring up that stuff again." Moving past her, she grabbed my wrist. "What now?"

"You actually aren't grateful, are you?" I yanked my wrist from her. Could she tell my emotions by touching me? "You are angry with me."

I rolled my eyes. "Of course I am! Damn, I've only been to this school a few freaking days, and already it's turning into some stupid soap opera. All I want to do is study, okay? I don't want to get involved in fights, arguments or clubs, and I don't want to be paraded in front of people to use my powers; even if I saved someone's life, another student could have gone to get a defibrillator. Just because I happen to be a nearby walking one doesn't mean to say that I should have done it. It was convenient. And she's lucky I was pulling back, or I could have killed her."

"What?"

"I'm totally juiced up," I explained, then cursed myself as I probably shouldn't have said that. "I have to limit my output, or I could seriously hurt someone. So, for reference, don't put me in a position where I could kill someone. It's not something I want to add to my already colourful school file. Thank you." Shiho-san opened her mouth to say something but then thought otherwise and nodded. "Good. You have empathetic power or something like that?"

She shook her head. "No. I'm just really intuitive about someone's feelings. But my gift is," She sighed without elaborating, "Anyway, I'm a Plume, and now we can't be friends."

"Some of my best friends were a Plume. It doesn't matter if you are a Plume or the most powerful Noryoku on the planet. If you are like-minded, I don't see that being a problem. But you want to be friends with me?" I asked as I started walking back into school, and she started to walk beside me. "I'm the dangerous one; why the hell do you want to be friends with me?"

She bit her lip. "I heard that Hiro went to you for protection; I just want to say that I wouldn't ask you to be friends for protection."

I stopped walking. "Okay, initially, I asked if Hiro wanted protection from Hikaru. He declined but then saw that it's better to have a friend who has got your back rather than a bully who will use you to spy on people and be a lap dog. We are friends. He's got my back, and I've got his."

What I said seemed to have stumped her. "How could you know that? You haven't been in this school long enough?"

I glanced at her hand, "Like you, I can sense when people are lying to me from the fluctuations in their heart."

The bell then went, signalling break. "Wait, how many powers do you have?" She asked, catching up to me. "Are you a poly-Noryoku? Because it sounds like you are."

I shook my head and turned left to head down the stairs while students began to flood out into the corridor. Shiho-san followed me. "No, I'm not. My power is absolute control over electricity. Anything with a charge I can control. If you think about everything in the world that has an electrical charge, batteries, power cables, TV, phone, hell, if I concentrated, I could pull it out of the air, ding, ding, ding, I can control it." She followed me down the stairs, and we headed to the foyer, where our outdoor shoes were kept. Going to my cubbyhole, I changed my shoes and she copied me. Ignoring her, I headed outside into the sunshine and like the note said, I waited for whoever it was.