- # # # 1 # # # -

It had been thirty-three days since the first curiosity session, and thirty-five days since the year began. The air had grown warmer and moister. It was the first day of summer!

It was also the first day of Rocko’s second most detested part of the year — after Winter — where Stargazing became much more difficult thanks to Miora, the giant green planet, getting in the way of the night sky. Of course, this early on, it only got in the way during Sunset and Twilight.

- # # # 2 # # # -

By the fortieth day since the year began, Rocko’s control of his specialty was such that it had been nearly a week since he last teleported. That’s right. He hadn’t teleported a single time that entire week. Not even in stressful situations. Not even in situations where his curiosity piqued, nor in situations where he felt particularly hungry, scared, happy, or excited. No matter how strong his emotions were, he hadn’t teleported.

“Rocko—”

“—Dad...” Rocko accidentally interrupted Ryuto. “O-oh! I’m sorry! Uh, you go first.”

“Don’t worry about it. What’s up?”

“Um... I’m just wondering if there’s a point in me coming up here anymore.”

“Oh? Why’s that?”

“Well, even though I keep finding new and interesting things, it’s almost like the urge to teleport is just... gone. I feel like the point of being here is gone. Plus, everything has gotten a lot less exciting.”

“Gone, you say? Well, funny you should bring it up. That’s exactly what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Really?”

“I also think this is pointless if you don’t teleport at all.”

“Well, wasn’t the whole point to get me to control my specialty?”

“There’s so much more to controlling it than merely preventing it from breaking out of control. Basically, today, what I want you to do is to trigger it yourself. Intentionally. Deliberately.”

“Huh... and how can I do that?”

“How am I supposed to know?” Ryuto laughed. “That’s the point of training.”

Rocko chuckled. “Yeah, that’s true.”

“You mentioned before a ‘sensation’ that overcame your body moments before you teleported.”

“Yeah?”

“I wonder... if you tried to recreate that sensation, if you would teleport?”

“How would I recreate it?”

“The best idea I can think of is to simply imagine it as strongly as you can. It’s an idea with little to back it up, honestly. But that’s all I can think of right now.”

“Huh... why are you telling me that, then?”

“I’m trying my best here, you know. It’s not like I have a whole lot to work with.”

“Th-that’s not what I meant! I meant— uh— well, you basically said you didn’t know, but now you’re trying to give me advice despite that. I just want to know why.”

“Oh. Well, you wanted advice from me, right? Even if I don’t know what you can do for sure, the least I could do is speculate with you.”

“I see.” Rocko smiled. “I think it makes sense, to be honest. I had to do basically the opposite to stop myself from teleporting, so I think that can work.”

Ryuto made sure to distance himself before giving the go-ahead, and they spent their time in the forest trying the advice out. Only...

“Nothing’s happening,” Rocko said.

“Don’t worry about it not working. This is at least worth trying out for a few days. Remember, specialties work based on repetition, just like how your body improves when you exercise. We won’t know this won’t work unless it never does.”

“‘Never’ is a long time, though.”

“That’s why maybe... after ten days? Yeah, if we keep this up for ten days and it doesn’t work, then it’s wrong.”

“Compared to ‘never,’ ten days sounds way too short.”

“Well, if we keep trying this for your whole adolescence and never get results, then we’re just wasting time. If it works, it’ll show after repeated attempts. With this sort of thing, that would mean the first signs that it’s working would appear after probably a few days. However, there’s still every chance it can work immediately.”

“So that’s why you’re standing over there?”

“Yes.”

Rocko sighed. “This is annoying, honestly.”

“Well, you just gotta suck it up.”

“Yes, Dad...”

Rocko continued that way for the rest of the session. Eventually, the Morning Harvest ended, so despite the lack of results they had no choice but to return to the village, or else they’d risk disrupting the daily schedule that the Chieftain — Ryuto — was the center of.

So, each day, they continued trying that method.

- # # # 3 # # # -

But it was the same the next day.

And the day after that.

And the next couple days after that.

And the next several days after that.

By the fiftieth day — in other words, the tenth day of trying that method — after sitting there a while and still not noticing anything changing, Rocko became impatient.

“Yeah,” Rocko said. “I don’t think this is working.”

Ryuto thought for a moment. “I know we’re on the tenth day and it’s not working so far, but technically we’ve still finished only nine. Why give up at the moment of truth?”

“I thought that was just an arbitrary thing. Is there actually a thing about ten days to try something?”

“No. But that’s still what I said. Maybe it was Ruter saying ‘this is it,’ or something like that. You know?”

“That’s a first.”

“What is?”

“Talking about Ruter like that. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say that sort of thing before.”

“Well, whether it’s Ruter or fate or whatever. You get what I’m saying. It was a number I completely pulled out of thin air, but sometimes things work out that way. I say we at least see what happens.”

“Even if we’re going to do that, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t at least try to see if there’s something we might be doing wrong. I think the idea might be right, but I feel like it’s missing something.”

“Like what?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I’m not sure how much sense it makes to make myself teleport if I don’t have a destination in mind. If all I’m thinking about is the sensation, what exactly is going to trigger it and where will I end up?”

“You still don’t know what determines where you end up?”

“Most of the time I teleport, I’ve only been in the Void for like a second, and then I’m at wherever it was I was going. Nowhere near enough time to figure out how that place works.”

“I swear you’ve talked about being there for hours before.”

“I have. I think I’m there longer when I’m despairing and shorter when it’s something like my curiosity or excitement.”

“Negative emotions keep you there longer and positive emotions let you leave faster?”

“Something like that. Though, hearing you say it makes me think something’s off about that idea, too.”

“Does it? How so?”

“Well, are we sure that it’s my emotions influencing it? I don’t know. Something just doesn’t seem right about that whole idea. The whole ‘emotions’ and ‘feelings’ thing seems like it could be on the right path, but it feels off. Like, there’s a missing piece to all of this that we’re not seeing. It’s probably something close to that, but not exactly that, you know?”

“I understand what you’re saying. Yeah.”

“Maybe it’s not the emotions, but the context? Like, when I first teleported — like the first time I ever teleported — I was sleeping. I had no idea it happened. That was probably when I first developed my specialty, right? So consider where I was when it happened. I fell asleep outside, while I was stargazing. You know how cold it gets at night. When I woke up, I was in bed. That doesn’t sound like something that could have been influenced by my emotions, that sounds like a survival instinct to me.”

“What are you getting at?”

“I’m not really sure what I’m getting at. I don’t know if I’m getting at anything, yet. I’m just thinking about it all. There’s got to be some kind of logic to this, so I’m trying to figure that out.”

“Logic? In specialties? I mean, I suppose that’s possible.”

“I’ve seen a lot of consistencies in other people’s specialties before.”

“Have you?”

Rocko nodded. “Not really with how they work, because I have no way of understanding that, but I’ve noticed that everyone’s specialties really fit them in some way.”

“I don’t know... growing vines is pretty strange, any way you look at it.”

“But vines are one of the most important things we use to keep our village from literally falling apart. What if Alita just wants to become an architect? If she does, I think that checks out.”

Ryuto’s eyes widened.

“It would also explain why she’s always training those things as desperately as she does. Her skill level is honestly insane. I doubt I could ever match that, and I swear it’s taking me like ten times longer to get even a semblance of control over my own specialty than she did with hers.”

“What’s your point?”

“There’s gotta be consistency with how this works. There’s gotta be more reasoning behind it than me just feeling a certain way. The first time seemed like survival instinct. The second time... was probably when I saw my Stargazer in pieces. I really can’t call that anything other than an emotional response, though. I was in the Void for hours then, too.”

“Though all that happened from my point of view was you suddenly switched places from the Watchtower to the Residential Level. No time had passed at all as far as I could tell.”

“Yeah, that’s really interesting, too. In fact, until we began this whole thing, I’m pretty sure every single time was an emotional response.”

“No, even during this training, it’s all been emotional responses. That was the whole point, remember?”

“Oh, right. Well, given everything we’ve done to help me prevent it, I’m honestly getting a little scared that we might have somehow taken my own specialty away from me. But that’s not possible. Is it?”

“No. Definitely not. At least, I’ve never heard of anything like that before.”

“Yeah, so... the first time was a survival thing, but everything after that has been emotions. Well, actually, there was that time I almost fell to my death, and that other time I almost got eaten by a Treetrap. But I was feeling really emotional both of those times, too. I guess we could say those were a combination of survival instinct and emotions?”

Ryuto shrugged.

“Either way, the first time — the only time I wasn’t awake when it happened — was definitely not an emotional response. So we know it’s not only emotions that causes it. There’s gotta be some logic.... Think, Rocko! Think!”

“You know,” Ryuto began, “I’ve been meaning to ask this for a long time, now, but what actually happens when you’re in the Void?”

“I already told you I go through it way too fast to know.”

“Sure, most of the time. What about the first several times, before we started all of this? You were there for hours, you said, but you eventually left it. What was it that brought you back?”

“What was it that brought me back? Well, wait, this has more to do with leaving the Void, right? What’s the point of that if I can’t even get in it to begin with?”

“Well, it’s as you said. Every single time you’ve teleported, it’s been either an emotional thing or a survival thing. Now that you have it under control, it won’t work like that. If you’ve been in the Void for literal hours, there’s no way you’ve kept the same emotions through that, right? Something changes before you come back, and whatever that is might now be key to getting in.”

“Hmm... it’s true I’ve only come back when I calmed down. Actually, no. Sometimes it’s the opposite. Like when my Stargazer was destroyed, I went in because I was devastated about that, but because it was my first time being there and I had no idea what was going on, I was terrified, and I wanted to go back. Next thing I knew, I was in the village.”

“What happened that night you appeared in my room?”

“That night? You mean when I teleported in the middle of the sky?”

“Yeah.”

“Hmm.... That one was really weird, honestly. It was really similar to all of these other times, but my stay in the Void was longer. Not like hours long, but like half a minute instead of a second or two.”

“What were you feeling, then?”

“Curiosity. No, excitement. I really don’t know why.”

“Aside from the time and your feelings, was there anything different about the Void itself?”

“Hmm... honestly it can be difficult to remember most Void visits even moments after they end. This was weeks ago. If I could remember it, I might have two specialties.”

Ryuto laughed. “Yeah, I highly doubt that.”

“Wait, is that possible?”

“Hmmm... I don’t know if it’s possible or not, honestly. I’ve never heard of it being impossible, though. But never mind that. After hearing all this, the best thing I can think of is to simply set your mind on a destination before trying to recreate that feeling.”

“Yeah, about that, is that how you use your specialty? Recreating a certain feeling?”

“No. There’s no particular method or anything. It’s just like moving my fingers or my arm.”

“Well, that’s not helpful at all.”

“But there’s a big difference between our specialties, and I don’t mean what they actually are, but in how they work. I have to actively keep mine on for it to work — think of it like raising your arm and trying to hold it there for a while, that’s kind of how it is. Others have specialties that work passively, and others have specialties that they can sort of switch on and off. Yours doesn’t seem to be any of these things, but it’s nothing like known specialties which fall outside those types either.”

“Switch on and off?”

“Yeah. Switch is like active specialties but with none of the effort. Once you’ve raised your arm, it stays there as if it were only natural until you decide to put it back down — none of the strain or anything. Like, in my case, the longer I keep the specialty active, the harder it is to concentrate and the more likely I’ll lose control and it’ll stop. With switch specialties, that doesn’t happen. They can just activate it and it will keep going, even if they forget about it, until they deactivate it. But I don’t think that applies here.”

“No, no. I think it does. I really think it does, actually. What if we’ve had the wrong idea about my specialty this whole time?”

“You mean...?”

“This whole time we’ve seen the Void as a way to teleport between different places, but what if teleporting is actually just a way to get into and leave the Void?”

“So you’re saying your specialty is a switch specialty that lets you go to the Void?”

“Something like that, I guess?”

“Then, doesn’t that just mean we have to keep going the way we’ve been?”

“Oh. Yeah. I guess it does. Does that mean we just wasted our time?”

“No. It’s really important to understand your specialty, so if you’re right, then this will only help you.”

“Ooh, that’s true!”

“Based on everything you’ve said, I think if you just want to go to the Void, you’ll probably go there, and if you want to go somewhere else when you’re in the Void, then you’ll go there.”

“If only it was really that simple.”

“With more experience, it just might become that simple.”

“I’m having a hard time picturing that since I’ve been wanting to go to the Void this whole time and it’s never happened.”

“You have a better understanding of it now, though. Right? It might become easier just because you know more about your specialty now.”

“Only one way to find out.”

So they continued trying in hopes that on that day, they’d leave the forest victoriously.

- # # # CHAPTER TO BE CONTINUED # # # -