The light in his body had quieted down but not disappeared. It sat there present like an extra muscle he'd never known he had. Daniel flexed his fingers experimentally. They looked the same. Felt the same. But something was different. He just wasn't sure how to put it into words.

  He turned to look at the wall.

  The damage was worse than he'd thought. Cracks radiated from a central point, spreading about eight inches in every direction.

  The lines were sharp and clean, like something had struck the plaster moving too fast to see.

  Daniel stood and walked closer. The edges were smooth. Not crumbled or jagged like you'd expect from impact damage.

  Destruction. The kind of destruction that would need explaining if anyone saw it.

  And then a thought hit him. Did anyone hear?

  It had to have been loud, right? A sound like that should have brought neighbors to their doors. Should have prompted a knock, a shout, a phone call to the landlord or the cops.

  How would he even explain it?

  "So yeah, Officer, I accidentally blew up part of my apartment with magical power. Nothing to see here. Just casually breaking the laws of physics."

  Daniel held his breath and listened.

  The building settled around him with its usual sounds. Water running through pipes somewhere below. Probably Mrs. Liu doing dishes, or one of the other tenants taking a late shower.

  The thump of footsteps in the apartment above, someone walking from room to room.

  A television playing through the floor, the sound too faint to make out words but the beat unmistakably a soap opera. A car alarm going off two blocks away, drifting through the closed window.

  Normal sounds. The everyday noise of people living their lives, oblivious to whatever had just happened in this room.

  Daniel waited. Counted to sixty. Then sixty again.

  No knock at the door. No shouting in the hallway. No sirens growing closer.

  Nothing.

  He walked to the door. Pressed his ear against it, listening. The hallway was quiet. Just the usual hum of the building.

  He let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

  Nobody had heard. Or if they had, they'd written it off as something ordinary. A door slamming, furniture being moved, the building settling. Any of the hundred small sounds that old buildings made constantly, unremarkable enough that nobody bothered to investigate.

  Okay. Good. He had time to deal with this.

  He looked around the room. The Legend of the Righteous Dragon poster was still rolled up in the corner where it had been for months, too big for his walls, too sentimental to throw away.

  He grabbed it now, unrolled it carefully and positioned it over the cracked section of wall. The paper had gone slightly brittle at the edges, curling inward where the humidity had gotten to it.

  He dug through the milk crate for tape. Found a roll near the bottom, half-used, the end stuck to itself. Picked at it with his fingernail until he got it free. A piece of tape on each corner. Then two more pieces, just to be safe. He smoothed his palm across the poster, pressing out the air bubbles.

  The damage disappeared beneath the hero's fighting pose. Lau Ching-yee mid-strike, robes flowing, expression fierce and certain. A man who knew exactly what he was capable of.

  From the doorway, you couldn't tell anything had happened. Just another poster in a cluttered apartment.

  Daniel stepped back. Looked at his handiwork. Good enough for now.

  The afternoon light was fading outside the window, turning the room that orange-gray color that meant evening was coming. Shadows pooled in the corners. The poster looked different in this light. More dramatic, the hero's face half in shadow.

  He sat down on the futon.

  Time to figure out what he was actually dealing with.

  Because he couldn't go around blowing things up without understanding why. Was he a walking hazard now? Some kind of human bomb, liable to discharge every time he breathed wrong?

  The image flickered through his mind: walking down Grant Avenue tomorrow morning, saying good morning to Mr. Zhao, accidentally vaporizing half the shop with a sneeze.

  That would be bad.

  He needed to figure this out before he hurt someone.

  Daniel reached under the futon, feeling around in the dust until his fingers found the spiral binding. His old science notebook. Two years old, from before he dropped out. The cover was bent and soda-stained, but most of the pages inside were still blank. He hadn't exactly been a dedicated student.

  He flipped to a clean page. The paper was slightly yellowed at the edges, that particular smell of old notebooks rising up. He found a pen in the milk crate, tested it on the corner of the page. Still worked. Wrote the date at the top: September 14, 1997.

  Mrs. Patterson's voice surfaced in his memory. His chemistry teacher, mid-fifties, practical flats, graying hair in a bun that never quite stayed put. She'd been teaching since the seventies, back when the periodic table had fewer elements and nobody had heard of the internet. According to school legend, she'd been one of three women in her entire grad program at Berkeley.

  Someone had asked her once. One of the kids in the back, always trying to derail the lecture. What the difference was between luck and science.

  Mrs. Patterson had stopped writing on the board. Set down her chalk. Turned around slowly, the way she did when someone had accidentally asked a real question.

  She'd looked at the class over the rims of her glasses, that particular look that meant she was about to say something worth remembering.

  "When something happens once, that's luck. Twice is coincidence. Three times is science." She'd picked up the chalk again, tapped it against her palm, leaving white dust on her fingers. "When you understand why something happens, that's a theory. When you can make it happen whenever you want, that's a law."

  Daniel had barely paid attention at the time. He'd been thinking about lunch, or the skateboard trick he wanted to try after school, or literally anything other than chemistry.

  Now those words made more sense than anything else in his life.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  He had made qi appear once. The question was whether he could do it again. Twice. Three times. As many times as he wanted.

  If he could. If it was reproducible. Then qi wasn't just magic. It was a science. A phenomenon that existed in the natural world, subject to rules he could learn and laws he could eventually understand.

  Treat it like an experiment. If something exists in the real world, it must be measurable, verifiable, reproducible. The Scientific Method. The same process that had given humanity electricity and antibiotics and rockets to the moon.

  Why not qi?

  Daniel wrote his hypothesis at the top of the page, pressing hard enough that the pen almost tore through: Qi is a natural phenomenon that can be controlled through specific techniques.

  He underlined it twice. Then sat back and looked at what he'd written. It looked strange, seeing it in black and white. A statement that would have seemed insane this morning now felt like the most obvious thing in the world.

  Then he settled into position on the folded futon. Crossed his legs. Straightened his spine. Closed his eyes.

  Started the breathing pattern.

  In. Hold. Out.

  The visualization came easier this time. Almost instinctual, like his body remembered what to do even when his mind wasn't sure. The light gathered faster than before, blooming from somewhere near his stomach. Warm and present, like a coal that had never quite gone out.

  He kept breathing. Let it build.

  It felt different from the first time. Less wild. The energy still moved unpredictably. Pooling in his left shoulder for no reason, skipping his right leg entirely, sometimes circling back on itself like water caught in an eddy. But the intensity was manageable now. Like the difference between a tornado and a gusty wind. Still messy, still hard to direct, but not terrifying.

  Three minutes in, the energy bunched up in his right shoulder blade and refused to move. An uncomfortable warm spot, almost like a cramp but not quite physical. He shifted his posture, rolled his shoulder. The warmth dissipated slowly, spread out, kept moving.

  Daniel opened his eyes. The room had gotten darker while he practiced. The orange-gray light had deepened to something closer to purple. He grabbed the notebook, wrote quickly before the details faded:

  Second attempt: activation faster (~30 seconds vs ~7 minutes). Energy less violent but still unpredictable. Pooling in shoulder at 3 min. Shifted posture to release. Need to understand why energy gets stuck.

  The pen scratched against the paper. His handwriting was messier than usual, rushed.

  He closed his eyes again. Third attempt.

  The light came in under a minute this time. He could feel it gathering like water finding its level, settling into the lowest point of his body before starting to rise.

  His hands tingled faintly. His feet felt warm against the futon. The sensation spread slowly, like heat from a radiator, filling spaces that were empty. He held the energy longer this time. Almost two minutes before his concentration slipped and it scattered, dissipating like smoke.

  He wrote: Third attempt: ~45 sec activation. Held 2 min. Tingling in hands, warmth in feet. Lost focus. Need to work on concentration.

  Fourth attempt. Faster still. The warmth built in thirty seconds, maybe less.

  And it felt more cohesive somehow, like the energy was starting to remember the direction it had traveled the first time. Less random wandering, more directed flow.

  His whole body hummed with it, a low vibration he felt more than heard. The sensation was strange but not unpleasant. Like being plugged into something vast and quiet.

  Still not control. Not really. But closer.

  Fourth attempt: 30 sec or less. Energy more cohesive. Whole body sensation. Progress.

  By the fourth try, Daniel sat back and looked at what he'd written. Four attempts. Each one showing measurable change. Faster activation. Longer duration. Slightly better control. Or at least, less bad control.

  This was progress. Real, documented, scientific progress.

  He could summon the energy almost at will now. He just had no idea where it would go once he did.

  And why had the first attempt been so violent?

  Daniel flipped through the printouts from the library, scanning for anything that might explain it. The pages were warm from sitting in his back pocket all afternoon. Out of all of them, the Microcosmic Orbit instructions mentioned something about "opening the channels." Warnings about "breakthroughs." Moments when blocked pathways had to be forced open before energy could flow freely.

  Maybe that was it. His qi channels. Meridians, the texts called them. Had been completely blocked. Stagnant. Sealed shut for eighteen years of his life. And when the energy finally moved for the first time, it had nowhere to go except out.

  Like a pipe that had been clogged for years. Turn on the water and the pressure would make it burst. But once the blockage cleared, the water could flow normally.

  That would explain why the second attempt was calmer. The pathways were already open. The energy could flow through instead of exploding against the blockage.

  He wrote in the notebook: First breakthrough violent because channels blocked? Subsequent attempts smoother because pathways already open. Theory: initial breakthrough clears the way for controlled practice. Need to verify with more attempts.

  Two more tries.

  Fifth attempt. His body was starting to feel heavy now, a bone-deep tiredness settling into his muscles. Not sleepy exactly. More like the exhaustion after a hard workout, when your body had burned through something it didn't know how to replace yet.

  The energy came slower this time, took almost a minute to gather. His concentration kept slipping, thoughts drifting to food, to sleep, to the crack hidden behind the poster. His legs ached from sitting cross-legged. His lower back complained.

  He pushed through anyway.

  Sixth attempt. Better. The light built in under fifteen seconds despite the tiredness, and he could hold it for almost twenty breaths without discomfort.

  He wrote his final notes: 5th attempt. Tired, slower activation. 6th attempt. Faster despite fatigue. Body adapting? Need food, sleep. Will continue tomorrow.

  Daniel set the notebook aside. His handwriting had gotten messier with each entry, the letters tilting as his hand grew tired. Six attempts documented. A hypothesis forming. More questions than answers, but that was how science worked. You didn't solve everything in one afternoon.

  He lay back on the futon. Let his eyes drift to the ceiling. The water stain was still there, same shape as always, same brown edges fading to yellow in the center. His old friend. The first thing he saw every morning.

  But everything else felt different.

  Outside, the light had faded to that deep blue that came just before full dark. Streetlights flickered on somewhere below, casting pale orange squares on the ceiling through the window. The sounds of the building had shifted too.

  His mind was still racing, jumping from thought to thought faster than he could track.

  Qi was real. He'd proven it to himself, at least. Documented it. Repeated it. Six times now, each one showing measurable improvement.

  So why didn't anyone else seem to know?

  That was the question that kept circling back. If this was possible. If anyone could do this with the right instructions and enough patience. Then why wasn't it common knowledge? Why weren't there martial arts training centers on every corner, right next to the gyms and the yoga studios?

  Was he exceptionally talented? That seemed unlikely, given his track record with everything else in life. High school dropout. Convenience store clerk. Not exactly the resume of a prodigy.

  Or was there something else going on? Some factor he didn't understand yet?

  Maybe the instructions mattered more than they seemed. RisingPhoenix72 had said his great-grandfather preserved methods from the Qing Dynasty. Maybe most of the stuff floating around the internet was garbage, and Daniel had gotten lucky finding someone who actually knew what they were talking about.

  Or maybe it was simpler than that. Maybe most people tried once, felt nothing, and gave up. Daniel almost had. If he hadn't sat back down for that second attempt, he'd still think the whole thing was bullshit.

  Henry would lose his mind if Daniel told him. Conspiracy theory number one: classified research programs, secret military facilities, anyone who learned too much quietly disappeared. The kind of thing they joked about late at night, but maybe not entirely a joke.

  RisingPhoenix72 seemed to know what he was talking about. SilentMountain had felt something too. Maybe there were others out there. People who had stumbled onto something real and had no idea what to do with it.

  Should he go back to the Usenet group? Post about what had happened, ask for guidance?

  But what would he even say? "Hey, I tried your breathing exercise and accidentally blew a hole in my wall. Is that normal?"

  That would sound insane. And posting about it online seemed like the fastest way to get noticed by exactly the wrong people.

  He needed time. Time to practice. Time to think. Time to figure out what he actually wanted to do with this before he did something stupid.

  Tomorrow. He'd figure it out tomorrow.

  Daniel's eyes were heavy now. Really heavy, like someone had hung weights from his eyelids. The racing thoughts were finally starting to slow, exhaustion winning out over excitement. His whole body felt wrung out, like he'd run a marathon instead of just sitting on a futon breathing.

  He turned his head to look at the poster covering the cracked wall. Lau Ching-yee frozen mid-strike, caught in a moment of perfect violence. Every muscle aligned. Every movement intentional. A hero who had trained for years, decades, to achieve that kind of control.

  The gap between them felt enormous. Insurmountable, almost. But then again, every master had started somewhere. Every hero had been a beginner once.

  He had a long way to go before he reached that kind of mastery.

  But he had time. And he had proof. Six documented attempts. Measurable progress. A hypothesis that was starting to look like a theory.

  Tomorrow he'd start figuring out what came next.

  Tonight, he just needed to sleep.

  His eyes closed. The water stain disappeared into darkness. The smell of someone's dinner drifted through the walls. And somewhere deep in his body, the light pulsed once, gently, like a heartbeat learning a new rhythm.