My vision settles on the mouldy ceiling of my new room. Latest to bed, earliest to rise.
The bed I was sleeping on isn't the cleanest thing in the world, but it beats lying down on the ground. The frame also creaks every time I switch positions. The paint on the walls has been chipped away, leaving large grey areas of concrete peeking out from the flaky thin white coating. The room smelled of nothing the first time I stepped into it, but it's now filled with the fresh scent of citrus thanks to my favourite air freshener.
After a yawn and a stretch, I exit my room and walk along the dusty hall. On one side, there are the rooms for myself, Harmony and Casey (both still fast asleep). On the other side are the rooms for Ramya, Xiao and Al-Makira. Since the condition of the Highland Towers doesn't exactly warrant luxury, there are no doors separating the inside from the outside. Xiao and Ramya also haven't woken up, so I walk a bit further to check on Al-Makira.
She's not there. The room's empty. She must be downstairs.
Her mattress is fashioned with a dark purple bedsheet and two pillows piled on top of it. On the relatively dust-free floor lies stacks and stacks of thick books. They almost look like dictionaries. I look behind to make sure Al-Makira doesn't have her eye on me, and I enter.
I crouch down and pick a random book from the floor, taking care as to not step on one. Most of the spines have been torn and damaged. The book that I picked up doesn't have a title, author or anything at all on its cover. I flip it to the side and see something written on by a marker pen.
'POCONG, KUNTILANAK, ORANG BUNIAN etc. PART 1'
I check the book next to it.
'RASUKAN, HYSTERIA, etc. PART 4'
I turn a few pages in. I didn't expect to be greeted by lines of handwriting instead of a uniform font. If my assumptions are correct, these must be Al-Makira's notes on paranormal creatures and cases.
I hear a footstep. A raspy cough and a raspy voice greets me.
"Selamat pagi, Kiah. Best duduk dalam bilik ambo?" / "Good morning, Kiah. You enjoying staying in my room?"
"Oh, um–" I set Makira's notes down with a thud too loud and cross my arms–"was just... wondering where you were. Where were you anyway?"
She leans against the doorframe and smiles. There's that distinct smile of Makira I pegged from the second she showed it.
Arrogant, yet humble. Sad, yet joyful. Preoccupied, yet more than happy to make time.
She picks up the book I was holding before I dropped it like an idiot trying to not blow my cover.
"You're a very curious girl. It's obvious to me that you want to know even more about the paranormal. Am I correct?"
I nod.
"These are all my works. I've went through many libraries, haunted places, hermits and even more pens to write all this down." She opens the book and smells the old paper. "I'll lend you a few of these books later if you want. You can read it in your own time so you don't have to snoop around next to my bed."
"Really? That would be great, thanks so much."
"Don't mention it, dear. Why don't you come along with me?" She wiggles a finger in my direction. "Ramya, Xiao and I consider Sundays to be rest days. In the meantime, I want to learn more about your abilities."
"Huh, my abilities? Surely you must have something about telepathy in all of these books," I joke.
"Well, nothing beats first hand experience."
>>
Kosongkan hati, kosongkan minda. Tanpa penggangguan, mustahil untuk diganggu. Dengan ketenangan, datanglah keamanan.
Maka, tercapailah kuasa penuh.
II
Empty the heart, empty the mind. Without disruptions, it is impossible to be disrupted. With tranquility, comes peace.
And so, full power is achieved.
I open my eyes to see the broken ceiling light shine again as if it were brand new. The bulb becomes whole after being shards scattered on the ground. Makira stops her watch and scribbles away in one of her dictionary-thick books.
"27 seconds seems to be..." she traces a finger over the page, "slightly slower than the average of 24. State-altering telekinesis is one of the hardest techniques for a telepath though. You're still young, at twenty...?"
"...one. Twenty-one," I remind.
"Okay la tu, you'll have time to develop your skills and your channeling speed."
Makira's professional tone and demeanour makes me feel like I'm at a medical check-up. I showcased to her my standard telekinetic prowess by flinging rocks, bricks and other heavier objects. I also demonstrated my mind-reading by telling her what quote she was thinking of. For your information, it was:
'Heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy. Dapat tu, Kiah?'
The eccentric Makira flips through the pages of her book, searching for something else to test me on. "Ah, are telekinetic force fields in your repertoire?"
"Excuse me?"
"It's like standard telekinesis, except it creates a barrier around your body that stops incoming projectiles. I think a telepath of your level should be able to handle it."
"Never heard of it, but it sounds cool. What do your notes say?"
She hands the book over to me. On the opened page is a wall of words and a drawing of the hand positioning needed to activate this technique.
"What you're reading is a recollection of what I heard when I met one Kritsanapong Khukaeo in 2019, three years ago. I translated it from Thai. He's a telepath like you."
"Huh, nama bunyi Siam je." / "Huh, the name sounds Thai."
"That's because he was. He was born and raised in Pattani but found work in Malaysia as a rice farmer. He was a nice old man, living all by himself with few close friends up north in Perlis."
I read her writing out loud for the both of us to hear, though I'm sure she's memorised it all already.
'This technique, I'd like to say I invented it, but the world is huge, ah? You put your hand like this. One palm over the other, both facing each other, one on top and the other right underneath. When I do this, my energy is concentrated in my hands. See? All I have to do is manifest it around my body, instead of in my hands like normal telekinesis.'
"I threw a cup of water on his shirt but it got suspended in mid air before it made contact, then it fell down onto the ground."
Interesting... I hand the book over to her.
"I'll give it a go."
>>
"Okay, pretty boy. I'll lay down the ground rules first," Ramya says as we step barefoot over the mats.
I shrug. She's acting way too cocky and I wanna bring her down a notch or two. She suggested we spar.
"Ye la ye la, just get it over with and stop stalling."
She lists the rules on her fingers covered with bandages all the way to her wrists. So are mine, but my wraps are red instead of white.
"No clawing, no headbutting, no punches to the back of the head, no downwards elbow strikes, no soccer kicks, no hair-pulling, none of that lay-and-pray shit if you're into that."
She forgot two crucial parts. "No one ever teach you about pulling your punches and respecting the tap?"
"If you're scared, you can just tell me. Anythin' else before I make a dog's breakfast out of ya face?" she taunts with a smirk. Like hell I'm losing to this loud mouth.
"Sticks and stones, Ramya."
I swipe some hair out of my eyes and pull my shorts up. I get ready in my Muay Thai stance; elbows tucked in for straight punches and body protection, feet shoulder width apart and palms facing outwards. I control my breathing and steady my pulse. Kiah taught me how to.
Ramya's stance is different from mine. Her hands are down by her waist. Her feet are wide apart. She's hopping up and down, keeping her body light. With the stance she has, I assume she'd like to keep this fight standing and strike. She can cover distance quick and launch kicks with no problem. With her hands down low, it also gets hard to predict where her strikes will come from.
So long as as I don't fumble anything, this should be mine. The first round of three starts.
She starts to circle around me in what I've just now realised is a karate stance. She feints a jab to my head but goes for a hard leg kick to the inside of my knee.
Fuck, she's strong.
I walk it off and put on my poker face.
"Aw, did that hurt pretty boy?"
I reply with a 1-2 that hits her chin but grazes her cheek on the second as she slips past. I combo the sequence with a head kick aimed to the left side of her head. At the last moment, she raises her hand and blocks it with her forearm.
She takes a step back from the impact and smirks.
"Nice hit. Reminds me of my grandma."
>>
Haiyaa, this Xiao is such a boring guy. Kiah and Makira are busy learning from each other about telepathy and spirits. Ramya, the only person available that I could've vibed with, is sparring with Casey. Now I'm stuck here with him near the spot we were first teleported into.
This whole morning I've been trying to strike up a conversation but all he does is make adjustments to his blood marker (which by the way, is nasty) and look at his phone. I admit, I did take a peek of what he was reading and I think it had something to do with what type of pineapple he is. He turned it away from me real quick though, so I don't know.
His mask that covers his nose, mouth and even neck never goes down, even for the few times he does talk in his soft, ASMR-like voice. I watch him slit his wrist and pour some of his blood into a small bucket for him to dip his brush in. He's done that a few times already, but it still grosses me out.
He draws a few lines, writes a few words, adds in a couple circles and hums to himself like he didn't just stab himself prior without even flinching. His wound is still leaking onto the ground. However, it seals up quick and leaves a barely visible line where he made the cut.
Kiah, Casey and I have always theorised about how most ahli-ahli sihir first stumble upon their abilities. Our theory is that we discover them when we've went through some sort of distinct event in our lives that correlate to our abilities.
For example, the burn marks on my left sleeve were from this one day when I was home alone. My parents were working, so I decided to fry some frozen nuggets for breakfast. I forgot to defrost them, so the oil popped and hissed when I put the first piece in. A huge pop caused some piping hot sunflower seed oil to cover my entire left arm. As I was panicking, I hovered my right arm over my left for reasons I still don't know to this day.
People do stupid shit all the time, but in my case, at least it worked out once.
Anyway, that's when I found out I could manipulate heat. With yellow fluorescent smoke out my mouth, the oil on my arm turned cold almost instantly. That saved me from deep third-degree burns. It was still pretty bad since I have the scars, but it's not as bad as it could've been.
Kiah figured out her telepathy when she could sense what move her opponent in congkak would do before they even did it. After some trial and error, she figured out her telekinesis too using marbles. We cheated in our SPM examinations this way.
In the exam hall, we were seated right next to each other. Every 15 minutes or so, she would do her mind-reading technique and see what questions I was having problems with. Then, she'd telekinesis my right hand so that she could write the answers on my paper from the comfort of her own table. After that, I'd erase what she'd written and copy down the answers in my own writing.
Pretty genius, right? And I didn't have to do a single thing other than be a lazy shit and to let Kiah do all the work. She's a lot whole lot smarter than I am.
Casey, on the other hand, used to be a delinquent. You know, those kids that would skip school, fail their subjects and drink alcohol. He did turn his school life around eventually, but he got caught smoking cigarettes behind the school canteen once. He manipulated the cigarette smoke into a rod and thrusted it straight into the discipline teacher's eye before making a run for it with his friends.
So that begs the question: how the hell did Xiao get to know about his blood magic?
__
"Ye la ye la" : Malay phrase which roughly means "yeah yeah" with the right intonation
"Dapat tu, Kiah?" : "Did you get that, Kiah?"
"Okay la tu" : "That's okay"
Thanks for reading this part! I wanted to show the KHC (Kiah, Harmony, Casey) trio get closer to the MRX (Makira, Ramya, Xiao) trio and these three pairs seem to make the most sense. Tune in to the next chapter for the tragic backstory of Xiao and how he realised he had blood magic.
Be seeing you and jumpa lagi! Make sure to leave a vote and a nice comment!