If I had Powers, I would Hide It (Work In Progress)

Chapter 1: Abstract

We arrived at the izakaya, and any tension vanished as the party began to heat up.

Everyone: "Otagawa-sensei, happy birthday!"

Confetti exploded into the air, getting into everyone's hair. This is Satou Otagawa. He's now 30 years old. I don't talk to him much, but I know he's a good guy who just wants to help people with his knowledge and expertise. Although... it does feel like he's been looking at me more lately.

Satou: "Thank you so much, everyone. I'm so happy you could attend this little gathering."

Everyone cheered.

Satou: "I'm especially thrilled because today we're joined by the one and only Hoshigami-sensei, who took time from her busy schedule to party with us!"

Everyone looked at me and cheered again.

Me: "Come on, everyone. I'm really not that important, believe me."

Sakura, somehow already drunk: "Come on now, Noa-chan (Noa-chan?), lighten up! Everyone's here to have fun. Besides, it's not every day you get to hang out with the most famous doctor in Japan."

Everyone chimed in with unanimous agreement.

I looked around, confused, and sighed.

Satou: "Uh, well, I guess that's that. Everyone, cheers!"

Everyone cheered again, and the party continued like there's no tomorrow.

About halfway into the event, as I was unconsciously spacing out-by now, everyone was pretty drunk-a colleague came up to me and asked an interesting question.

Colleague: "Hoshigami-sensei, I have a pretty specific question for you."

Me: "Hmm? Alright, shoot."

People started paying attention to me. My intuition suggested I had missed something important-maybe some kind of truth-or-dare session?

Colleague: "If there's one thing you really want to see for yourself, what would it be?"

Hmm. Maybe not truth or dare. Perhaps they were just going around asking everyone for interesting answers. Now that I think about it, it is a pretty interesting question. "Something I want to see for myself, huh?" Maybe some kind of invisible scientific proof?

...

Me: "Light."

Colleague: "Sorry, what was that?"

Me: "Light. I want to see light."

Everyone looked at me, confused.

Colleague: "Uh, like a light source? Like... a lamp?"

Me: "No, I mean light. The individual photons, flying through the air at light speed. I want to see light-not the way we usually see it, with photons bouncing off objects and returning to our eyes. I want to see a photon of light."

...

The room fell into awkward silence.

And then, suddenly, laughter erupted and filled the room again.

Colleague: "Hahahaha, come on now, we all know that's impossible! How would you even see it? Light can't bounce off other photons."

Colleague 2: "Hahaha, I didn't know Hoshigami-sensei had such an eccentric side."

The laughter continued as the attention shifted away from me and onto the others.

...Were they mocking me? The question was clearly "anything I wanted to see." It doesn't have to be physically possible. Maybe I'm reading too much into this. I don't think these people would intentionally mock me. Maybe they were just laughing at how ridiculous the answer was...