A sudden ripple came from the back seat and warmed the cold air.
Leon jolted and turned with wide-open eyes. A man who had not been there a second ago sat in silence, his dark hoodie filling the seats.
When Mr. Lee saw the alarm on Leon's face, he giggled and gestured calmly. "This is my nephew, Feng."
"Feng, this is Leon."
Feng's white teeth brightened the car as he smiled continuously. "I know," he said in a cold voice and leaned forward, narrowing his eyes.
His presence felt dense in the small space of the car, like the air before a thunderclap.
Goosebumps filled Leon's skin as he saw a strange light flicker deep in Feng's eyes.
The eyes scanned Leon through the rearview mirror, not like a lion judging prey, but like a locksmith studying a complicated, broken lock.
Feng relaxed himself in the seat, then exhaled once. "The energy around you…" he said in a low voice. "It's not just unstable, but mourning. It's like a locked vault whose key had been thrown into the ocean."
The red glow in his eyes flicked once more before vanishing completely. "And your body, which is the vessel, is frail."
Leon received the words like how he'd been receiving the insults from his classmates. Frail.
After a five-minute drive, Leon blinked twice and turned.
"We're here," he whispered, gripping the straps of his bag when the vehicle moved past the crumbling outskirts of Dusthollow.
Mr. Lee scanned both sides of the road in two seconds, then turned to Leon.
"Here?" He and Feng said in shocked voices. Mr. Lee kept his gaze on Leon while Feng turned to take in the squalor.
Leon's face saddened as he scratched the back of his head. "I… I didn't want to say I live in Dusthollow," he admitted in a voice too real to be called a lie.
Mr. Lee's expression shifted into something heavier than pity as he moved his eyes to the dust whirling around on the other side.
He watched Leon exit, then closed his eyes for a second.
"This is where they throw away the broken." He said it more to himself than to anyone. Feng grunted as the words flew by his ears. "Let's hope the boy has some fight left in him."
Outside, the weight of Mr. Lee and Feng's stare dragged him more than the basket he politely took from an elderly woman walking nearby.
The woman's wrinkles merged as she smiled.
"To my door, son," she said and watched the back of the boy with her chips of flint eyes.
The smell of old herbs and damp cloth made Leon's nose twitch as he kept pushing himself forward.
'So would she have carried this heavy basket all alone?' Leon thought as he secretly weighed it with his eyes.
Stopping by the front of an old building's porch, Leon stopped.
"Thank you," the elderly woman said in an appreciative voice and calmly grabbed her basket.
While untying her knot, she said in a cold voice. "Don't be too generous, son. People aren't what they seem. Remember."
Leon bowed then stepped back from the elderly woman's porch. Even as he had moved a few meters away, his fingernails raked across his palms without his noticing as the words looped in his head.
He turned once and saw her still there, watching with a grin. Turned twice and noticed her grin had widened. But on the third turn, Leon's bones went cold.
The woman, the basket, and the entire old building were gone, completely. Only a damp patch on the cobblestones remained, along with the smell of ozone and wet earth.
As soon as he shifted his focus, a sound slipped through the humid air and slammed into his ears. He heard it thin at first, like a whisper that seemed to be escaping from the walls themselves.
But as he walked deeper into the narrow road, it settled on him like a wind sickle. A phantom resonance that hummed in tune with the strange energy Feng had talked of.
Remember.
A few meters away from his home, another sound which sounded more human tore through the air.
Without waiting for it to end, Leon knew who it was. His very own mother.
The cry shattered the little composure he had left and caused his legs to move on instinct. Dust got hurled and spiraled behind him as he ran, not minding where his boots would slam.
When he reached the building, Leon barely registered his little sister curled on the doorstep. Leon calmed her body, which kept on shaking with sobs, before entering through the door.
Inside, Li Mei's grief poured out in a raw, endless keen.
Seeing them alone broke the last and final wall holding Leon's own tears.
For two days, the house was a tomb of silence.
Leon moved through every hallway like a ghost. He brewed tea which his mother never touched. And held Lily until her tears and face cleared.
At nights, sleep wasn't on his schedule. He lay there, staring at the ceiling where his father's laughter had once lived.
During the days he didn't know the difference between morning and evening. All he knew to differentiate were the car horn sounds that blasted the blue sky.
When he returned to school, whispers clung to him like smoke.
"Is that the painter's son?"
"…did you hear what they said was in his bag?"
"Why would anyone bring a paintbrush to school?"
"…my place would be a great place for him. My pigpen needs to shine one last time."
The two boys laughed when Leon paused and looked at them once. They remained quiet, until Leon moved again.
"Yeah, maybe he'd be good at making it shine brighter than what his father did."
"…family talent. Hahaha."
Leon lowered his head and moved through the halls like a specter of grief. At every direction he trod, he saw Zoe. Zoe glanced at him like a silent anchor in a storm.
On the second evening, immediately after he had laid Lily to sleep, Mr. Lee visited them. He came without offering comfort.
He squeezed his face as he sat in the one good chair the Storms had in their home. He handed Leon a thick black envelope sealed with wax.
For a good ten minutes, Mr. Lee sat there, nodding at the careful arrangement the room was made in. He swallowed hard when he caught sight of a cockroach moving on the floor beside the chair he was in.
His reddened cheeks loosened after the insect vanished from sight.
"The results from your first exam are in…" he said in a quiet voice, staring at Leon's face. "…You didn't qualify for the standard track."
Leon's face paled in an instant as his heart plunged. Within the span of two seconds, all his hope seemed to have drained out.
"But," Mr. Lee continued, intensifying his voice. "…your written score was off the charts. It's flagged you for this."
He looked at the envelope and tapped on it.
"Here is a second exam to prove your worth." He lifted his gaze to Leon's saddened expression. "This is a different kind of test. It isn't about grade. It's about your awakening."
Warm light seeped into Leon's pale face as he lifted his head and stretched his hands forward. His fingers trembled as he clutched the envelope.
'A second exam? My awakening?' he said low in his head and closed his eyes.
Deep within the darkness of his eyes, a memory surfaced.
His father's paint-stained hands resting on his shoulder.
"Son, your strength will show itself when the time is right."
The words came once, then the memory vanished.
At first, it had sounded like a hopeful lie. But now it felt like a prophecy sealed in black wax.
When Mr. Lee left, a new form of energy filled Leon's heart. And that night, he was able to sleep for the first time after the news reached him.
The next day, the world felt edged and hostile. Tiger's gang shadowed Leon. They pelted him with jeers and stones before vanishing in storms of laughter. Their attack repeated itself even when he was making his way home from school.
Leon clenched his fist as his final resolve hardened into something cold. "I would take this exam. And I would change this."
Thunder cracked the sky as soon as his voice faded.
The route he took to escape Tiger's gang led him past an overflowing trash bin. There, a scuffle sounded from a side alley.
Instinctively, Leon shrank behind a collapsed wall, then listened to the screams. 'I need to see what's going on.' He thought and peaked his eyes through a pencil-dotted hole.
A few meters away from the collapsed wall, a man in a suit worth five times Leon's entire home stood over a crumpled figure Leon had seen in Dusthollow.
Each strike he saw was slow and deliberate, as if failing would cost them their life.
"Please… no more…" the poor man begged in a voice that was both wet and broken.
The elite laughed. "You don't need it," he sneered. "A waste of a decent telekinetic flicker on garbage like you."
Leon's mind went back to the lesson Mr. Lee had taught his class two days back. Ability stealing.
The horror which was said to be only warned about in theory was now happening ten feet away.
The elite slid a pulsing gemstone ring onto his finger. The gem glowed in a sickly green light as he pressed it to the poor man's forehead.
Screams tore out from the man as the elite pressed it hard, as if he wanted to let the glow touch the man's skull.
In a few seconds, a visible wisp of light, a trapped will-o'-the-wisp, was torn from the poor man's body. It floated in the air and got pulled into the ring like a magnetic force.
As soon as the light faded, the soul in the poor man's eyes also vanished. The elite straightened and brushed the dust from his trousers. "You should be grateful I let you live."
He spat on the motionless man, then began to exit the alley.
Leon's fear twisted into something incandescent. "So this is the world's truth?" he said low in voice while his father's words pounded through his skull.
Your strength will show itself at the right time.
Leon's fists curled into a blow with the help of his mind. The air around him thinned and pulled taut around his knuckles.
The taste in his mouth sharpened from ozone into the searing metallic tang of a lightning strike.
Beneath him, the ground he stepped on shuddered.
A single jagged crack shot through the concrete and raced away from the point beneath him toward the motionless man.
In the grimy reflection of a puddle at his side, he saw it in his eyes. Golden bolts of energy blazed in them and swallowed the iris whole. When it vanished, it left a cold, empty, and hungry void that needed to be filled again.
Leon stared at his hands, then at the broken man in the alley when everything went back to normal.
'What… was I?' the thought lanced once in his head.
Before he could think deep, panic surged through him. He turned and sprinted home with a heart that was no longer just slamming in his chest, but rather beating a new, harsh, and jarring rhythm, less like fear and more like a war drum.
He scrambled to his door and opened it with faintly buzzing fingers.
The terror was not only about being seen. It was the deeper realization beneath it:
The power had felt good, righteous, and now it wanted more.
Leon fumbled for the key, the black envelope heavy in his bag. A promise and a threat at once.