Editing City Series:Volume7 Layer 12 (section)

===Record 18: Then There’s Me===

'''06/03/1997

'''15:43

We only had about a month and a half left in the first half of our Mountain training.

I was sitting under a waterfall for some extra training. Okay, I’ll admit it. It was just blazing hot out and I wanted to cool off.

“Mountain water is so damn cold.”

A 5m-wide stream of water fell from a height of about 20m and it felt more like it was tearing into me than simply cold.

I had been standing at first, but I had since given in and sat down.

I could only hear the water pressure while I lost myself in my thoughts.

Like what was for dinner. Or how I had figured out who the killer was in the mystery novel I was reading before bed, but I still hadn’t figured out who the detective was. Or how I had left a moderate amount of porn magazines on the floor back home, so I was worried anyone who saw that might mistakenly think I was only moderately horny.

I also thought about my future. We would need to choose our future paths soon. When we joined the Chancellor’s Officers, would we do fieldwork or intelligence work? Or would we give up on joining altogether?

The rest came down to our personality.

Not to mention our Mobilized Writing.

That was a necessary power for the Tokyo Chancellor’s Officers. It was like our individual quirks or personal issues manifested physically in some way.

None of us had that power yet.

Everyone was saying you would get into the Chancellor’s Officers if you gained yours faster or yours was the strongest, but I didn’t know what to believe.

Did I need to awaken my individuality as soon as possible, or should I try to make it as strong as I could?

It was a difficult question.

Of course, I didn’t even know what my individuality was here. Had I ever used a great power in the past? I had run track until recently, but I hadn’t set any decent records. My instructor had tested several track-related powers, but nothing like a Mobilized Writing had manifested.

I doubted that was it. Track was fun and it had made for some good times, but it was only a sport to me. That wasn’t where I would find my own personal Mobilized Writing.

Was there anything else?

I felt like there was.

“–––––”

I tried to recall the memory, but focusing my mind brought me out of my reverie instead. Focusing my mind to bring back the past instead pushed the past away. I was stuck with a paradox.

But then I remembered out of nowhere.

It was my hands. My fists weren’t all that useful for someone running track, but I had used them an awful lot.

Sometimes I used them to punch someone and sometimes I used them to stop something.

But there was a problem. I used my fists a lot, but I had never thought of that as being my own personal thing.

“What do I do?”

Could I bet everything on this idea that suddenly came to me? Some people could probably manage that and those who couldn’t would just tell themselves they were mistaken.

And if you did it but were wrong, the result would be tragic.

But I had another thought too.

“If this looks like it could be my Mobilized Writing, I’ll trust in it.”

A good individuality wasn’t something you gained quickly or something powerful. It was something you could trust in and rely on.

I decided to test this.

I looked up and saw the waterfall had stopped.

I could hear the other sounds again.

'''Author Comment:

I think everyone thinks about what their power is.

Personally, I think something you can only draw on consciously doesn’t count. Maybe you can consciously strengthen it, but I think your power is an aspect of yourself that you always have whether you’re conscious of it or not. You could say it’s something you have even when you try to make yourself as nondescript as possible or you lose sight of who you even are.

I still don’t know how you gain something like that, though.