Meili's Journal

  Entry #23:

  Dear future self,

  As I write this, I'm nearly fifteen years old, and I've been in this world for five years.

  I'll be a Sophomore in a few months. A few months from now, Rei, Kuyo, and Sayila - all three of our royals - will be graduating. As a result, many Wellston students are already looking to Arlo as a flagbearer of a new era. To a lesser extent, they're looking to me as well.

  I say 'to a lesser extent' because of recent rumors regarding an incoming celebrity student. Seraphina Galanis, current ability level: 6.5. She completely outclasses every female Wellston student, befitting the deuteragonist of unOrdinary, so to have me as a face of the new era would rightfully be a bit odd. Still, I never expected to hear her name come up so soon.

  The Galanis clan is based primarily in the Southern Atlantic Sector. Their family manor is over a thousand miles south of Wellston City. In my idea of a reasonable world, I should have been the only one to know of her future attendance for at least another couple of months. There are, of course, elite private schools similar to Wellston in the Southern Atlantic Sector – even those who know of her should have assumed she would remain there.

  But I didn't realize her unusually high ability level would make her a legitimate public figure. As I recently figured out, a high enough level at a young enough age grants what amounts to automatic mid-level celebrity status. With this in mind, thinking of it as if a C-list pop star is coming to Wellston, I shouldn't be surprised that there are rumors of Seraphina a few months in advance.

  It's a bit annoying, still. Even after five years, I'm still stuck thinking in these sorts of past-life analogies to understand things. It doesn't help that I've been slacking on my journals these past few months, but God...

  I'm sure you know this (because you're me), but I've been stalling for a while, avoiding the main point of this entry. I'm stalling because the topic I'm supposed to be writing about intimidates me. I'm supposed to be revisiting the subject of a previous journal entry, analyzing where I went wrong, but I don't quite know where to start. And, considering my mental state after writing that entry...

  Well, let me start with a quote.

  "I think this world has been breeding peaceful people to extinction since the dawn of civilization."

  – Me, Journal Entry #21.

  I made some very worrying conclusions back then. You can flip a dozen pages backward in this notebook and look for yourself if you need a reminder of how unsettled you were. The theory that bad incentives have influenced this world's human gene pool for millennia, reducing human empathy and molding us to violence... It wasn't very good for my psyche.

  But the fact remains that those willing to hurt others are rewarded with ability growth. Those unwilling fall behind. Tenth-graders learn the concept in high school Biology class; if particular traits are correlated with higher reproductive success, then the people with those traits pass on their genes at a higher-than-average frequency each successive generation. Later, after many generations, tiny upswings in aggressiveness and downswings in empathy have snowballed into... Well, that was the picture.

  Actually... Here. I'll include an excerpt for easy reference.

  "Imagine a 7-year-old named Judas who just unlocked his ability. Let's say Judas has two mid-tier parents, a 2.4 and a 2.5 (because that's how marriage works in this world)."

  "Judas's parents want him to be successful in life (of course), so they do everything they can to ensure he achieves his full potential in terms of ability level. They've seen the benefits of a high ability level and want them for their child. As a result, Judas grows up encouraged by his parents to fight – not just to fight, but to resort to fighting at the first sign of a disagreement."

  "Why?"

  "Because fighting (not play-fighting or sparring, but actual fighting with real stakes and anger) has been known for thousands of years to result in the highest amount of ability growth. Judas's parents want to maximize his ability growth, so they want him to get into as many conflicts as possible from an early age."

  "Let's say Judas is slightly more genetically predisposed towards violence, anger, and conflict than average. He's perfectly fine with his parent's encouragements, and he ends up maxing out his inherent ability potential. By the time he's an adult, he's reached a final level of 2.7."

  "Now, Imagine Judas has a fraternal twin brother, Adam."

  "Adam has the same inherent ability potential of 2.7. The only significant difference between them is that Adam is genetically predisposed towards compromise, conflict avoidance, and peace. Adam's moral inclinations naturally swing toward the 'violence is evil/wrong' side of things, and he hates to resolve issues through fighting."

  "Adam still trains a lot, but his growth as a teenager is lackluster compared to Judas, and by the time he's a fully grown adult, his ability level is stuck at 2.2."

  "Who do you think is more likely to have children, Judas or Adam?"

  "Yeah, the brother with a higher ability level, who functions more confidently within the hierarchy, who is vastly favored by their parents, and is likely higher-paid/more successful. All else being equal, people more predisposed towards violence are more likely to reproduce."

  – Me, Journal Entry #21.

  Later on, after I became Darren's assistant, the evidence for my theory grew into an overwhelming preponderance. Every time I witnessed a broken finger, broken wrist, shattered jaw, or crippled limb, I became more and more convinced. How could I possibly be wrong? Regardless of the level of social pressure, no matter the extent of its normalization, how could so many enjoy inflicting harm on another?

  Because that's what enjoying violence means, at the end of the day. The sound of splintering bones, the sight of blood and tissue splattered on the ground: how could they so easily seek it out? And what about their universal human instinct? Did they feel a pang in their chest at the sight of someone crying, a vague sense of success once they'd made someone smile? When standing joyfully over a downed opponent, was there a voice in the depths of their minds telling them 'no'?

  In the depths of my subconscious mind, I think I stopped believing that. I accepted that, for most people, the voice is far different from mine. I kept trying to move forward despite it – accumulating power and opportunities with plans of changing the sector – but every idea I came up with faced the same fundamental limit. How much could I do if the average person's natural, inborn instincts contradicted my own?

  The best I could come up with was, well... You know what it was. No matter how far into the future you're reading this, you still remember the oh-so-enjoyable way you spent freshman year, don't you? I don't think I'll ever be able to forget.

  Still, I wouldn't be writing this journal if that was the end of it. I had a pretty big realization a few days ago, and it's given me a changed perspective.

  First of all, harming someone else for personal gain isn't some rare, extraordinary evil. It's normal. It was common in my old world, and it's common in this one.

  People spread gossip and lies about each other to make themselves more enjoyable conversationalists. People steal and plagiarize, taking credit for others' work to unfairly succeed in their careers or education. People say severe, cruel things - things they don't even mean - just to feel the satisfaction of beating someone else in an argument.

  Harming yourself for future gain is even more common. It's even expected, sometimes. People overwork themselves for their careers, developing mental disorders and health problems in their attempts to move upward. People systematically and painfully wreck their muscle fibers - lifting weights - hoping their muscles will grow marginally larger and more attractive. People go on crash diets, enduring hunger pangs and physical exhaustion, all in hopes that one day they'll look better and feel better about themselves.

  With these two points in mind, let's revisit Judas and Adam. They're supposed to diverge, according to my past self, so at what point in their stories does it happen? How does it start?

  On the surface, the answer seems obvious: it starts as early as the first grade, right as abilities begin to manifest. After all, it's likely about this time that Judas gets into his handful of brawls. His level inevitably increases soon after, and at his next checkup, the doctor offers praise and a big smile. His parents also smile and hug him, smothering Judas with affection at a level he's rarely felt before. The next day, Judas announces the good news to his friends, feeling joy, pride, and satisfaction at once.

  When it's Adam's turn, on the other hand, the doctor shakes her head with a heavy sigh and looks at him with a frown. "Are you using your ability enough?"

  Concernedly scanning Adam's ability growth report, the parents chime in: "Aren't you practicing every day, sweetie?"

  Their tone is strangely warning, though, and almost unfriendly. Adam nods frantically - because he has - and his premature mind frantically scrambles for the reason things went wrong.

  At school, Judas shows off a new trick with his ability, while Adam has nothing to show. At home, Adam notices small divergences in how his parents treat them. They've started to favor Judas' wants and choices more often than not. If Judas and Adam want different meals for dinner, Judas gets his way, and when Judas eats with bad manners, his scolding is always light. Judas is always the first to be introduced, never Adam, and Judas' presents are sometimes nicer than Adam's but never the other way around. Minor, unremarkable things like these slowly pile up.

  Eventually, it doesn't feel very minor. With each passing day, Adam feels his parents love Judas a little more (and himself a little less). Even with a seven-year-old's pattern recognition, he realizes what Judas is doing differently from him - and what he has to do if he wants to keep up.

  Here's the interesting part. In our story, Adam is genetically predisposed toward compromise, conflict avoidance, and peace. But what does that really mean? It means he feels good about himself when he manages to talk things out with an angry classmate. It means he feels discomfort, shame, or hurt when he breaks someone's nose. Fighting someone doesn't just mean harming another; it also means harming himself.

  So case closed, right? Even on closer inspection, my original intuition remains correct. Adam avoids fighting. As he grows up, he never starts breaking bones over disagreements, doesn't resort to blows after being insulted...

  But wait a second. Hurting someone else, hurting yourself... Aren't these both things people are willing to do, so long as it results in personal gain in the future? And, all his life, Adam will have the same message screamed at him, the same message he understands to be true at six years old. Violence is normal. Violence is inevitable. Violence leads to happiness. Your parents will love you. Your friends will like you. People will respect you.

  Love, respect, and approval. If there is any personal gain worth harming yourself and others for, it would surely be these.

  So, no. I don't think Adam fights significantly less than Judas. He participates in approximately the same amount of violent conflict. Adam ends up at a similar level and social status, at the same place in the hierarchy, and passes on his genes at about the same likelihood. He hurts others a lot - and himself a lot - for love, respect, and approval.

  In other words, when a dispositionally kind-hearted, peaceful person is raised in this world, their disposition won't usually make a difference. A person's genetic tendency toward violence has little correlation with ability level or reproductive chances - because no matter their natural leanings, nearly every human is made violent by the environment, regardless. This means that, oddly enough, our humanity was preserved by the harshness of the factors that initially put it at risk. Our gene pool has probably maintained the same tendencies toward empathy and violence throughout the generations.

  We didn't breed ourselves into a race of serial-assaulting sociopaths.

  This is good news, but it also means my old theory was way off. The way I viewed this world, the way I viewed its people - I've been wrong. I mean, just think about it! All this time, watching children brutalize each other as though it were the most natural thing in the world, I started thinking of them as fundamentally inhuman... People don't arrive in this world at fourteen years old. Definitionally, everyone in this world has been under its influence from birth! What do you think would happen if you took an average baby from my previous world and raised them in an average family in this world? What if you did the opposite?

  These past six months, I've been interpreting this world's violence as the result of people's inherent nature, so improvement seemed like a battle against fate. Not anymore. I don't think high-school bullies smash people into the ground because it stimulates some inborn, genetically coded enjoyment. A more likely cause is that they got addicted as children - once they learned to associate violent ability use with an increase in their parents' love.

  So whenever you witness something exceedingly awful or horrific, my dear future self, I want you to read this entry. I hope it helps you resist labeling everyone as inherently barbaric and being done with it, and I hope it prevents you from becoming as desperate as I've been. The people of this world are results of circumstance, just as they were in your own. Violence is not the only language spoken here.

  ***Beautiful***

  A bright, booming flash. The scent of ozone. Twinges on my skin.

  Even from a safe distance away, I was reminded of the staggering amount Rei held himself back. He tended to use his lightning sparingly, covering his body in a layer of static while sending out the occasional paralyzing probe, but that was far from the whole extent of his capabilities. Rei's full-voltage lightning strike was a force of nature, powerful enough that few could take it without going into an eternal coma. Even if it somehow didn't hit anyone, the attack would still distort and shake the air, set fire to the ground, and temporarily ruin all electronics within a comical radius.

  Out of mercy for his fellow humans (unfortunate, low-tier maintenance staff in particular), he didn't go all-out save for 'special occasions.'

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  I realized all this as a tower of crackling blue exploded concrete ground into combusting powder, the pure energy of the strike shattering my preconceived notions of a 5.5's upper limits. My recording camera went black, the stench of chlorine bleach hit my nose, and moments later a forceful wind made me shut my eyes tightly.

  When I opened them, a murky gray cloud had insulated the battlefield's center from view. It was slow to settle down, gravity barely eeking out a win over leftover electrostatic levitation.

  The air eventually cleared. Arlo's distinctive golden barrier shone in the aftermath, though splintered into chunks with an obvious hole through its top. Arlo himself had been forced to one knee, the shuddering of his body confirming that he'd failed to block it. He didn't seem to care that he couldn't stand, though, instead staring Rei down with a satisfied smile.

  "See. I told you I could take it."

  This time, the 'special occasion' was a challenge from Arlo. He'd claimed that Rei couldn't remove his barrier in a single, fully-powered strike. Given that Arlo had challenged Rei more times than I could count on four limbs, losing badly every time, it had seemed a bit arrogant. On the other hand, his level was growing faster than Rei's, and 'leaving his barrier up' and 'not being defeated' were two different things.

  "Good job!" I cheered. "Next time, it'll only make a tiny dent!"

  He gave me a thumbs-up in response, a look of 'I told you so' clear on his face, and left his barrier on for unnecessary extra seconds all the while.

  Then he let it drop. It was a display of the exact sort of distasteful bluster I found off-puttingly familiar in this world, but I cheered regardless. Given his record against Rei, it was almost inspiring - and it would've been...

  Arlo started coughing up blood like a punch dispenser.

  Rei immediately ran over, lowering himself to the ground. He offered a shoulder. At level 4.7, Arlo's barrier was already tougher than any material on Earth, but any sort of cracking gave him intense organ damage. A hole in his barrier might as well have been a hole in his kidney.

  "I don't know," Rei said. "The dust made it really hard to see. I think we'll need to check the footage to see if your barrier stayed up or not."

  He turned in my direction with a grin, shouting, "Meili! Can we take a look at the recording?"

  "The camera broke down!" I shouted back, starting to walk over now that it was safe. "Also, you don't have to yell when I have my sense enhancements active, remember? I could hear you if you whispered!"

  "Ah, yeah. I forgot how good your hearing has gotten recently. " Rei poked at Arlo. "You're not like this one-trick pony coughing up blood."

  Arlo made a noise of outrage, but Rei shut him up with a hand. "We're not counting this as you keeping your barrier up, by the way," he said. "We don't have any footage, and nobody knows what sort of cheating you got up to in that dust cloud."

  I deactivated my ability and reached them, slouching slightly to support Arlo from his other side. The three of us linked up, Arlo in the center supported by Rei and myself for each shoulder, and we began to make our way to the infirmary together. Arlo coughed a few steps in, giving me a look, and I quickly offered him the internal damage tonic I'd promised him. He tipped it back with an appreciative sigh.

  The relieved look on his face promptly twisted, though, once Rei whispered something that sounded suspiciously like 'wimp.'

  Only after they rammed into each other a few times did I realize why Rei had given me an aura-recording camera instead of his electricity-resistant cellphone. Every modern phone had primitive aura imaging built into it, more than enough for our purposes.

  Arlo was a strict rule follower and traditionalist, nowhere near the type to cheat. He would've kept his barrier down if it had truly gone down, so Rei shouldn't have felt the need to record things in the first place. On the other hand, introducing footage as a stipulation meant there could be a 'lack of footage' from an 'unfortunate' equipment malfunction...

  What a waste of a camera, I thought, rolling my eyes.

  Arlo figured out the ploy as well, and he eventually managed to get Rei to concede defeat. Though his points about a 'royal's tradition of honor' and 'living up to one's standing' were bouncing right off.

  "-And don't think that comment of yours will go unnoticed, either! Honing one aspect of yourself to perfection is not a bad thing! Ten years from now, when you're reporting to me as your superior, you'll understand."

  Rei glanced away from him to me, probably recalling the time I'd said something similar to Darren, and started laughing. Which Arlo seemed to think was directed at him. He glared, unsuccessfully swiping angrily at Rei's face with a sluggish hand.

  I started laughing, too.

  "Joke all you want now, but just wait," Arlo huffed. "My father says we control half of Wellston City and a third of New Toronto. It won't be a joke if you stay in the Great Lakes sector for work."

  "Aww... But aren't we best friends?" Rei cooed. He pulled himself closer, wrapping Arlo into a pseudo-hug. "You wouldn't be a cruel boss to me, would you?"

  From up close, the twitch of annoyance in Arlo's eyebrow was clear as day. Unfortunately for him, his facial muscles also seemed to be the only undamaged muscles in his body.

  I took pity, shoving Rei off in his place. "You guys don't have to fight every single day, you know that?"

  Rei grinned. "My baby sister will be coming here next year. If I don't make sure Arlo stays humble, how do I know he'll take care of her?"

  I rolled my eyes. "By asking, if I had to guess."

  With the sensibilities of my previous life, it was easy for me to interpret Rei and Arlo's (currently one-sided) rivalry as antagonistic. They spent too much of their time together in combative arguments (or actual combat) for it to look like anything else.

  But - and this was where my past life got in my way - if I could get Arlo to answer honestly, he'd probably admit that he considered Rei a close friend. Part of it was that only thirty students in the school met his 'standards' for friendship, but that wasn't all. If any Wellston student not named Rei or Meili had offered him their shoulder, he would have likely preferred to limp back half-paralyzed.

  Their relationship was an instance of a cultural oddity I'd recently taken an interest in: a disproportionate number of close friendships in this world had aggression as a kind of 'normal state.' They could spend half an hour arguing, then attack each other brutally, but ultimately take it so un-personally that it was all water under the bridge an hour later. It wasn't just Rei and Arlo, either. There was Ventus and Karrin, Rei and Kuyo, and a good portion of the groupies in my clique.

  I stopped zoning out and started looking around. The private, elite-only battleground Arlo had reserved for the fight was expansive, among the largest of Wellston's private facilities. It took us another minute of walking and idle talk to reach the razor-wire fences that hemmed it in.

  They were around as tall as a five-story building and interlaced with wire all the way through, likely a consequence of the average student being able to leap over a normal-sized fence. I fished the key Arlo had given me out of my pocket.

  "What did you even put on the line, anyway?" I asked, unlocking the gate. "You weren't just doing this for the sake of it, right?"

  Arlo shook his head, looking proud once more. "I wouldn't have asked you to watch if it were a normal match. My win secured us both a spot in Sunday's Turf Wars match against Agwin."

  I nearly stumbled, recovering in time to avoid snagging my uniform on a line of wire as we passed through the gate.

  "Isn't it slightly early? We're still a couple of months from the school year ending. There's summer vacation after that, too."

  Rei interjected, "You know how Seniors graduate a few weeks before school lets out?"

  "Yeah?"

  "The Royal Candidates for next year sort of take over around then. You know, because the royals are usually Seniors. It's important that the transfer is nice and smooth, so the tradition is to give candidates a roster spot once or twice in the lead-up."

  Arlo froze for a step.

  "That's not exactly how you phrased it earlier." He sounded accusing. "Was it not a privilege to be won, traditionally once the successor proved themself capable in a match?"

  Rei made a rather good approximation of a shrug with his single available shoulder. "What can I say? I wanted to blow off a little steam. Kuyo and I were already planning to offer you a chance to compete."

  He looked at Arlo with an unashamed smile. "But if I don't show you how easy you are to fool, how else will I make sure you stay vigilant as king?"

  I sighed. Arlo glared. He'd recovered quite a lot, thanks to the tonic. "You ought to go hang yourself, you dishonorable piece of-"

  They stepped on each other's feet, insulting, shoving, trying trip each other. I quickly stopped holding Arlo up on his side and moved away. Rei's eyes kept flickering obviously from Arlo to me, though, from which I got that he was forcing 'relaxed.'

  Offer a chance, not give a chance, I thought. He's probably worried that I'm sick and tired of fighting. Concerned about my mental state, maybe, after Monday.

  "I'm happy to go. I've been curious about Agwin for a while now," I said. "Just make sure to put Arlo in once I beat their Jack. I've seen some videos - I think Arlo matches up nicely with their king and queen, but I wouldn't do too well."

  In other words: You still get to compete and win, so calm down.

  Arlo nodded and stopped trying to bury Rei's shoes in a mud puddle. "I suppose I can see past the deception," he said, "as long as we both have our spots and can participate."

  "No lie there," Rei confirmed. "Kuyo and I will both be coming along, but we're not doing any fighting. Sayila also said she would let you two go first; not much of a point if you don't get experience."

  Arlo nodded, seeming satisfied. I mentally adjusted my plans for Sunday.

  Matches between Wellston and Agwin High were always recorded and shown by regional TV networks, which gave me an opportunity to try an experiment on a local scale. There was also an Agwin student I planned to meet sooner or later.

  "Did you say that your little sister is coming next year?" Arlo asked Rei, surprising me slightly.

  "Yeah. Remind me to introduce Remi to you guys sometime - I think you would really like her." The green-haired boy smiled, giving me the sense that he'd been waiting to talk about her. "I have to warn you that she can be a bit of a brat sometimes, though. Just in the few days I went back home over break, she…"

  .

  .

  .

  "This is what you used my tonic for? Really?"

  I felt more than a little sorry for Darren.

  He looked characteristically exhausted, with his dark eye circles and his lab coat a rumpled mess. He'd been slumped over his desk when we arrived, doing his typical maneuver of typing out a patient recovery record with his right hand and measuring out ingredients with his left.

  At the sound of the door opening, he took two bleary blinks at us (the bloodstains on Arlo's face, the empty vial I was holding) and gave me a painfully exasperated stare. The 'you know better than this' look.

  Unsurprisingly, only I had the decency to feel much regret. Rei tried to look it, facing down at the floor with an apologetic look, but I could tell it was exaggerated. Arlo didn't even bother.

  "Sorry," I said. "If it helps, at least we saved time and resources by giving Arlo a tonic right away." I poked him in the stomach, putting in just an inch more force than I usually would. "He was coughing up a lot of blood - the internal damage would have compounded and been harder to treat if it'd been longer."

  Darren squinted at me, rubbed at the unshaven stubble on his chin, and swiveled back to his computer. "Vaughn gave me a 30% pay raise, not a 30% cut to my working hours. Try not to let them go around mangling each other for giggles."

  His fingers clicked against the keyboard some more, concluding with a particularly loud press on what must have been the enter button, and he spun up from his seat.

  "Alright. Arlo, let's go to the examination room so I can take a look at you. After twenty-something times, I don't think you've ever been in good shape after a fight with Rei."

  He turned to me, too. "And Meili, I know I promised to get you started on learning the tonic-making process. Now that we both have more time, we can start on that. So you won't have to use mine."

  I'd been wondering when the topic would come up. "Sounds good... sorry again for the trouble."

  Darren nodded, motioning toward the nearby exit with his hand. Arlo followed him out the door. He waved goodbye, silently mouthing something like 'you're lucky you're graduating' to Rei as he left, but Darren's slight needling didn't seem to affect him any more than that.

  …Which left the two of us on our own.

  We'd thankfully hashed some things out, after Monday.

  For one, my 'disciplinary responsibilities' for the remainder of the school year would be trimmed down to just the Freshmen and Sophomores. The current Juniors and Seniors (who wouldn't be high schoolers much longer, anyway) were to be handled by a pair of Elite-tiers who owed Rei some favors. Rei himself had texted me a pretty long message that night, apologizing for his failures and mistakes as a partner. I wasn't sure it was warranted. I could have stopped or asked him for help any time I wanted - it was my responsibility, in the end, to provide for my own happiness.

  It left us at… Not an awkward spot, exactly, but a tender one. Rei felt like he'd wronged me, I felt like I'd shown him an ugly side of myself, but we were moving on.

  Rei waited until slightly after Darren and Arlo left to say anything, glancing around the room. The group I'd ripped into a few days ago were all mostly recovered, some of them sleeping, some of them already gone.

  "You could have said no. Arlo wouldn't have taken it badly."

  I tilted my head, lips pursed, words not coming out because I wasn't sure what he was trying to say.

  "I mean, you don't really like this kind of stuff, right?" He rubbed the back of his neck. "Fighting for fun."

  Ah. "Yeah. I don't." I shrugged. "Watching you and Arlo was pretty irritating. Fighting and fun contradict each other. I'd never use one to describe the other."

  If you and your friend get along, why hurt each other? There are uncountably many better things to do. I paused, considering how to put the thought. "I don't agree with the concept of 'fighting for fun' in general - or even understand it, really."

  His brow furrowed. "Then why-"

  "But I'm trying," I added. "Trying to understand, I mean. That's why I came along today."

  He was still confused. I wasn't being clear whatsoever. I let out a breath, trying to figure out how to explain myself without spilling my entire secret.

  "I mean, you've had the realization, too, right?" I asked. "That the paradigm everyone else operates under just won't work for you? Sometime in high school, once level differences become apparent, once the discrimination ramps up… Didn't you have that moment?"

  Rei seemed a bit surprised.

  "I- Yeah," he said. "It was Freshman year, back when I had my first real fight with Kuyo. It was about how he treated his group of mid-tier followers. He pointed out how his behavior was normal for our place in the hierarchy. I realized I was the odd one out."

  "I was younger," I said. "I was less than ten years old when I realized I felt differently. And maybe it was because of my age, but I sort of labeled myself as an outsider, I guess. I was someone who would observe and copy and pretend, try to figure out the right patterns and beat them into my brain, but I would never really get it. That was my self-perception, at least. That I would never really understand. Especially when it came to violence."

  "…I'm not going to keep viewing myself that way," I continued after a pause. "I'm not some different species, and it's not like my brain works differently on a fundamental level, either. I was brought up differently, with parents who hold different values, and I became the kind of person I am early enough that the gap felt too large to close. If I happened to be born in Zeke's household instead, there's a good chance I'd end up a lot more like him. If I was born into yours, I would probably feel close to how you do. Just because I don't get it right now doesn't mean I never will. Just because I disagree with the things people do doesn't mean I should give up understanding why they do them."

  It was embarrassing, going on and on while in a calmer emotional state. "That's why I came to watch you guys. Because these aren't the types of things I can get just by thinking hard, or talking to someone, or even studying some book. I have to experience them. I have to feel what they're like."

  Rei nodded slowly.

  "I think I get what you're saying. It's sort of your answer for what we were talking about on Monday, right? Along with that 'changing yourself' talk I overheard from you and Darren back before we met…"

  I let out a laugh. "You're right, but I don't know how to feel when you reference your eavesdropping so easily. It's kind of creepy." Not as creepy as the way I just told the truth and lied at once.

  I formed a parody of a spear hand and jabbed Rei lightly on his side. "I won't just be watching like today, obviously. Even beyond the turf wars match, I was planning to challenge you sometime this month. It'll be a fight for fun, whatever that means."

  Rei seemed imbalanced by my half-serious comment, but he nodded, taking the challenge seriously. "Sure. As long as that's what you really want, I'll do it. Just make sure you don't spend all day doing everything you hate, alright? Even if you're trying to change, relax enough that you don't go crazy."

  "I'd like to think that I've learned my lesson," I replied. "I won't be wishing for my own defeat any time soon."

  I wasn't lying. I felt good enough to smile back, a toothy smile full of fear and aspiration.

  There were so many things I hadn't done.