Chapter 26: Perception.
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What is the idea of perception limited to?
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Following the absurdity of the situation, Lumian spoke again, in a tone visibly satisfied with the absurdity of the situation.
"Alright, now we're going to get more into the details of what I'm going to teach you rather than how I'm going to teach you. Are we agreed that you know how to use energy, the basic process, energy perception and all that?"
Finally, something resembling training was about to begin, still according to what Liu believed...
And while Milo nodded to Lum... to the professor's question, Liu on the other hand...
'Perception... why perception?...'
... already had things to say, she raised her hand to speak, the atmosphere lending itself rather well to that in the end.
"Yes, something to add?"
Nodding her head, she let out what she had to say:
"Uh so, my grandparents just taught me the basic process, and... energy perception, once two years ago, but nothing else besides a few little things from time to time. So I don't know if there's more I should know or not... and mostly I don't understand, why do you say energy perception? I've always called it energy vision myself..."
"Ah yeah that's rough."
Lumian reacted in a very uneducational manner, immediately disrupting the atmosphere he himself had set up.
'... rough?'
"Well it's rather logical, if your grandparents had really taught you to use energy, you would've surely gotten found out pretty quickly, especially since you're already using it rather well unconsciously, there must have been moments when people looked at you weird a bit, no?"
This question immediately reminded Liu of certain moments when she could have been found out.
'... it's true I already went overboard in sports, but...'
But in the end she had always been reasonable enough without even paying too much attention to it.
'... maybe I recovered too fast from what happened last week... I hope Pasha and Yumi don't suspect anything...'
Except maybe after the incident, but at the same time, she hadn't had her mind on being careful.
"Anyway nobody knows about energy over there so even if they had found me out, I don't see what they could've done."
"That's exactly what makes it the most dangerous, especially without your grandparents, even if you're stronger than an adult man without energy, together they would've overpowered you, and you can't imagine what humans are capable of doing when faced with a situation they don't understand and that scares them. I'm sure you too, in a way, are afraid of the unknown."
Lumian's way of answering was rather irritating for Liu, but...
'... why does he always have something to say back? and why is it always logical?!... he'll see, one day I'll be the one talking to him like that!'
... instead of blaming Lumian, she turned it into a goal to achieve.
A form of respect toward Lumian's way of arguing formed in Liu, and so she nodded to what he had said.
"And I imagine your grandparents just taught you to 'see energy' and not to 'activate your energy perception,' and that's why you call it energy vision. It's not a big deal, but you still need to understand the difference."
He stopped talking and immediately snapped his fingers...
Snap!
'Wha..!'
... performing an action that completely disrupted Liu.
"I took away your sight, one of the senses you possess and that your physical body allows you to use. Now, activate your so-called energy vision."
'... he could warn me before doing stuff like that...'
Though a little resentful, she went along with it anyway and activated her energy vision, only to end up seeing nothing except what she might consider a color, maybe black.
"You don't see energy and that's normal. Most people stop at this stage because it's the simplest and most direct, and especially because they aren't taught what comes after in what energy perception is. I imagine you already know this, but energy is always present even if you don't see it. So now tell me, what is perception?"
The situation wasn't too pleasant, having one less sense available, Liu felt strange but not that disoriented.
'... what is perception?'
And despite everything, the fact that the training finally seemed to have started outweighed any discomfort she felt.
So she answered directly in a thoughtful voice.
"Re-feeling... things?..."
'... we feel emotions too, no?..'
Even though she had answered, her uncertainty made her ask herself even more questions.
"Yeah, you could say that's the best and shortest possible summary of what perception can be."
And Lumian's sudden resumption of speech made her jump. Aside from Lumian's words everything was silent, Milo was surely listening attentively to the explanations.
"But well it's so imprecise that it's not very useful in your current situation. Basically, yes, perception is feeling things, but then you need to define those things and differentiate them, the most logical way is going to be to divide those things into physical and mental, a division that's always useful in a lot of situations."
"And now, tell me, what are the things you feel physically, and what are the things you feel mentally?"
'... physically and mentally...'
Lumian's explanations and questions had completely put Liu in an educational mindset, fully encouraging her reflection on the subject.
"Uh... mentally, we feel our... emotions, I'd say. And physically we feel our environment through our five senses."
Prepared for Lumian to speak up, this time Liu didn't jump.
"Yes, that's rather accurate. Though if I want to nitpick on the words, we could say things need to be nuanced. Mentally we don't always feel our emotions, most of the time, we perceive them, the difference between the two is that you feel your emotions but only in the present, and that you perceive your emotions but only in the past, then there's the future but in that case we'd just be talking about imagination."
'... our emotions aren't the same depending on the moment?...'
"So you understand better, tell yourselves that feeling emotions you've already felt is impossible, but perceiving them and imagining them is something rather achievable. Do you understand?"
This time he addressed both of them at once, clearly showing that his explanations concerned Milo just as much as Liu.
And in response Liu shook her head.
"I think I understand a little bit, but I don't think I'd manage to re-explain all that..."
The silence next to Liu showed that Milo was surely in the same situation. But in the end not seeing anything still made her uneasy, especially not seeing Milo's reaction.
'Is this what he felt when Lumian deprived him of hearing and speech?...'
"Yeah, it's normal that you don't understand most of the things I tell you, and that's fine. But in any case you're going to retain something from it, and the usefulness of that something will only depend on you and what you do with it."
Liu nodded at what Lumian was saying, but she was getting more and more restless, unconsciously looking for a way to compensate for the lack her missing sight made her feel.
"Well, I imagine being deprived of one of your five senses and staying in place must be unpleasant. But it's useful for you to understand how the concept of perception works, as well as energy perception."
Snap!
Lumian snapped his fingers once again.
"What the!"
Visibly (or not) depriving Milo of his sight in turn.
'... how long is this going to last? My head already hurts...'
Liu's discomfort didn't stop her from concentrating on Lumian's explanations, precisely because she wanted it to end as fast as possible.
"Well as you know, you have five basic senses, and as Liu said, these five senses are part of your perception, and so they can be part of your energy perception, the same way sight is already part of it."
Tap! Tap!
'... is that the tree?...'
Lumian stopped talking and a dull tapping sound resonated from his direction.
"For most people, the simplest thing to perceive energetically after sight is sound, so perception through hearing. Sound is mainly waves and vibrations."
'... hearing...'
"I imagine you already have an idea of how it's represented and how you can imagine it, but I'll still help you."
Hearing all this, Liu focused even more on the sound of Lumian's voice as well as on the sounds around her.
"You're going to focus as much as possible on the sounds around you and imagine what I'm going to tell you to imagine, once I've finished my sentence you'll activate your energy perception. Okay."
Liu nodded, and Milo also nodded with a small sound that reached Liu's ears, confirming to her that Milo was still next to her.
"So, you're going to imagine that sound is a transparent sphere, a transparent sphere that expands in every direction, this sphere has an origin, this origin is the source of the sound, the origin of the sphere's expansion. This sphere already has vibrations, vibrations that also come from the source of the sound, vibrations that you feel, but vibrations that you don't hear yet. This sphere expands until it reaches you, and as soon as this sphere reaches you, the vibrations reach you too, as soon as this sphere and the vibrations reach you, that's the moment when you perceive the sound... now activate your energy perception."
And they activated their energy perception.
'.....'
At first, Liu felt... nothing, nor perceived anything.
Except silence...
'... isn't it working?...'
...until suddenly, she felt... a wave, a wave coming from behind her, on her left.
'Here? What's th..'
She felt the wave, she perceived it, she knew which direction it came from, but... she didn't really know where it was, at what exact distance...
There was no sound, it was very strange.
She knew the sound existed, she perceived its origin and its waves, but... she didn't hear it, not yet.
A brief and small instant after she perceived the wave, she felt it expand... expand at a speed far surpassing her perception and instantly reaching her...
Paa. Kree. Pffuu...
... and as soon as the wave reached her, she directly heard the sound through her hearing...
Paa. Kree.
'... I didn't even have time to feel the vibrations... by the way what was that noi..'
"Patrick, leave the chest alone, there's nothing in there for you."
This time, she didn't even have time to really perceive the wave, Lumian was way too close, and the sound of his voice reached Liu directly, throwing off her concentration a little.
'H..here!'
Another wave had appeared! with the same origin as before, Patrick!
Ppfffuuuu...!
And this time too, the sound reached Liu before she could perceive any vibrations, but... the sound didn't stop, a large number of constant waves were arriving toward Liu, along with rather strong gusts of wind lifting her hair.
Ffffuuuu.....
And at that moment, Liu finally managed to perceive vibrations coming from the waves arriving toward her, and... she directly heard their sounds...
Ffffuuuu.....
This sound added to and mixed with the one she was already hearing, or rather, these sounds added to and mixed with the ones she was already hearing.
Making an echo of the whistling wind ring in her head.
"Stop blowing or I'll tie you back up."
'....!'
And all of a sudden, Lumian's voice added itself, a sound of which, strangely, she managed to perceive both waves and a few vibrations just as well.
One more sound, one more echo, with vibrations deeper than the whistling of the wind, giving Liu the experience of a contrast of sounds and echoes she had never been able to perceive with her hearing alone before.
"Argh!!"
Of course, this influx of auditory information far greater than what she was used to greatly worsened the headache she was already starting to have, making her directly deactivate her energy perception.
'Damn it... this is horrible!...'
Snap!
And all of a sudden, her sight came back too, nearly making her feel faint. She covered her eyes with her hand and pressed on her forehead, relieving the pain as best she could.
'... seriouuusly...'
"Yeah well sorry, that might have been a bit too much for you, it's true there's a lot less noise pollution in the citizen zone than outside, you must not be too used to it."
Lumian apologized, but Liu had glanced at Milo next to her.
He was looking at her as if nothing had happened, surely wondering what was wrong with her.
'... he has nothing... not even a little headache?'
She ignored Lumian's apology, and asked Milo directly.
"Didn't you manage to perceive the vibrations?"
"I did, why?"
He visibly didn't understand the reason for Liu's question, so she had to continue in a somewhat outraged voice.
"Didn't it hurt your head to hear so much sound at the same time?"
"Yeah a little, but I'm used to it. When you live in the city with the noise of people, cars and everything else, and on top of that you've got your headphones on with music. It's not that different, it just hurts a bit less."
Now it wasn't just Liu's voice that was outraged. She stared at him, only to see, as always, a face that said he'd told the whole truth.
'... so I'm just really not used to it? It's not because I'm less skilled than him?...'
And of course the reason behind these questions and this attitude was her competitive spirit, which strangely only showed up when she compared herself to a boy.
"Ok, feeling better now? Are you ready to hear the rest of the explanation? Anyway there's just a few clarifications left, it won't be much, and even if you don't understand them it won't change anything since you'll be forced to understand them later anyway, so you've got time."
'.....'
Of course the so-called professor still had a few things to say. And once again it was something without a doubt strange and incomprehensible.
'... I think I prefer it when he only half answers the question...'
Milo nodded, and Liu resigned herself to doing the same a few seconds later.
"As you've understood, energy perception uses the word perception for a good reason."
This idiot nodded as if to affirm his own statement.
'... he's seriously weird in teacher mode...'
"You also need to understand that perception isn't limited at all to what's energy-related or to your basic perception, but that'll be for much later. For now, what's going to interest us is the senses."
"Forget about the five basic human senses, they're of course going to be useful to you, they're even going to be the ones that are most useful to you, but limiting yourself to just the five basic senses is completely idiotic."
'... limit myself to just the five senses?'
Don't humans only have five senses?
This question was surely visible on Milo and Liu's faces.
"Fundamentally humans only have five senses, five physical senses. But then, what's fundamental, what you think is real and what you believe to be true... isn't always the solution. Why not invent yourself a sixth sense? if it allows me to perceive energy in another form and thus increases my possibilities, what's the harm in doing something like that?"
'... is that even possible?'
Despite the logic behind Lumian's arguments, Liu couldn't really bring herself to believe it.
"For example, we separated perceptions into physical and mental. And Liu talked about emotions for mental perception. So of course you can invent an emotional sense, or even an emotional perception. Anyway, you'll need to do it to become stronger and to succeed at the daily missions I'll give you."
'... so I really had said something logical and possible?...'
Lumian's explanations were starting to go a bit too far for Liu, she had already thought a lot and adding everything that had happened, she wasn't really sure anymore whether she understood what was being explained to her or not.
But Lumian continued:
"Whether it's senses or perceptions, you can invent as many as you want, as long as you have the imagination and the ability to."
"Then you obviously need to watch out for too great an influx of information. Using two perceptions at the same time isn't really a good idea, even if it can be useful, it's also super dangerous. And although using several senses at once to complexify a perception is more feasible, it can also quickly become dangerous."
And finally, Lumian finally stopped...
"Hum..."
'No!'
"...one last thing."
... or not.
'Does he ever stop?'
"Basically what you need to remember from all this is that imagination is one of the most important things to work on to become stronger. And it's one of the things we're going to focus on during your training."
He finally left his tree and straightened up. Making Liu and Milo raise their eyes a bit more.
"Alright that's all for this morning, now you can take a break, and after that we'll need to make food since I haven't done anything."
He finished (like a terminator) while heading toward the carriage, opening the door and disappearing inside.
'.....'
Silence set in, both in Liu's thoughts, and on Milo's face...
"....."
Until...
Mrunch... munchh...
'Huh...?'
... a chewing sound made itself known right next to Liu's ears.
She turned around abruptly, only to catch a glimpse of...
'... my hair!!'
... Patrick, trying to eat her hair...
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Why should an idea like perception be limited?
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