My training was minimal compared to my brother when I started. Initially, it was just running and working out. In addition to that, Dad would teach me boxing and self-defence in the underground training centre beneath the hatch.
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By the time I was seven, my training began to become increasingly demanding. Every day, it was running in the morning, school afterwards, and then training after dinner. Each night was a different skill to learn. It could be taekwondo today, observation training the next day, eskrima—the Filipino art of stick fighting—the day after, the list went on and on. Every night, I came home with fresh bruises, while the old ones hadn’t even begun to fade.
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I ached all over, and no ointment could heal my bruises fast enough for the next day. But I never needed to worry about showing up in school covered with bruises. That’s where Mom came in.
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Every night, as I slept, Mom and Dad would come into my room. Mom would sit beside me and stroke my hair. Then, she would mutter something I couldn’t make out, and suddenly, a bright light would shine from her palm. Instantly, I could feel the pain and soreness that had been bugging me disappear. After the light died down, I felt as light as a feather, and I felt energised.
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One night after she had healed my bruises, she whispered to Dad, “You shouldn’t be too hard on her, she’s only seven.”
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“That’s when they’re most vulnerable. I’m not taking any chances, not after getting news about the Alcotts,” My father whispered back to her before pecking my cheek gently. “I am not losing anyone in this family. I need to know that they will be safe when the time comes.”
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*
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According to Dad, he identified as a psionic—someone who can control objects with the mind. Like telekinesis, but more. My brother, on the other hand, was an elementalist—a person who channels the power of the elements, such as fire, earth, air and water, whether it was for the use of defence or offence. Mom was something like a healer, but she seemed to incline towards sorcery. She channels her abilities from reciting spells, which explained her mumblings when she was healing me.
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Me? I didn’t have any powers back then. I felt disappointed.
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“They will come, Talia.” Dad ruffled my hair when I asked about my lack of powers. “You just have to be patient, they don’t come with a snap of a finger. It takes time. Damian’s powers didn’t come till he was seven.”
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But I couldn’t wait. Out of all the training I had, manifesting my powers was the part I was eager to discover. One day, it finally did, but it wasn’t the exciting movement I had been waiting for.
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My powers manifested when I turned eight. At first, there was a warm feeling that flowed through me, and I could feel a tingle at the tip of my fingers. As the days went by, it felt like so much electricity was gathered in my fingers that I had an urge to release it.
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During one of the training sessions with Damian, I was taking hit after hit—my arms and thighs stinging after each blow—it got me annoyingly frustrated. Finally, I was at my wits’ end. Out of anger, I thrust out my right hand towards Damian and cried out in exasperation. All the electricity that had piled up in my fingertips erupted, sending my brother five feet across the room. Thankfully, Damian’s reflexes to use his elemental abilities kicked in. He managed to control the air from the nearby AC, redirecting his momentum just in time to avoid slamming into the wall.
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I was terrified of what I did; my hands were shaking uncontrollably. My heart nearly stopped when I saw Damian thrown across the room. I almost killed him…
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Dad rushed over to Damian, anxiously checking him for any injuries that he might have sustained. To much relief, there wasn’t a scratch on him. When Dad walked towards me, I was trembling with fear. I thought I was about to face the wrath of Dad. Instead, he smiled and said, “ ’Bout time you got them.”
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Later, Dad began giving me a series of tests from time to time. It started with pushing a pencil off the table without touching it, then it got slightly harder. I began lifting rocks and later on, boulders. Sometimes, I had to catch a ball in midair using only my mind, and more. After two weeks of tests, Dad told me I was a psionic, just like him. From that day on, I joined Damian in his training, which included daily meditation and sparring matches with either Dad, Damian, or sometimes both at once.
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As soon as my powers manifested, training with Dad was brutal. The intensity of the training increased, and my injuries began to go from bruises to broken bones, much to Mom’s dismay. To top it off, every time I exerted myself when I used my powers, I’d get a nosebleed.
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Mentally, I was drained; physically, a goner.
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By the time I reached my teens, I was practically immune to any form of training Dad would throw at me. The routines grew harsher, and the sparring sessions became more lethal. Still, I faced him head–on. Maybe I was so eager to face him because I wanted to push against the life he’d chosen for me.
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I never hated him. It was more of a love-hate relationship. He was never cruel to me or Damian. I mean, he can be a real asshole and nearly merciless during training. But outside of the hatch, he was gentle and funny. Like everything that had happened before in the hatch didn’t matter. Despite that, his personality outside of the hatch couldn’t erase the bruises or the way my childhood was drowned in a blur of sweat and pain.
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I probably soldiered on partly out of fear for the enemy I had yet to meet…and partly because I wanted to kick the ass of whoever it was that became the reason I had to live like this throughout my childhood.
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Yet, after all those years of gruesome training, not once had I been attacked. Thirteen years of eerie calm, calmness that brought out the uneasiness within us. In the past, I had asked them countless times about Damian’s encounter with ‘the enemy’, but Mom and Dad just refused to answer my questions. There wasn’t a hint for me on who my enemies were or why I needed to prepare for them. That said, I trained relentlessly, no matter how exhausted I was.
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“Just because nothing’s happening now, doesn’t mean it won’t later,” Dad was always saying things like that.
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Always be prepared, watch your back, and do not trust everyone you meet.
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Those sentences were always on heavy rotation; it annoyed me.
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Nevertheless, there was always an unsettling feeling that something was going to happen. Damian’s warning constantly echoed in the back of my mind: “There are far scarier things in this world than the dark.”
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I wasn’t going to take any chances. If both Dad and Damian were cautious of the world outside, it would be safer to bring the box.
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My fingers hovered over the latch.
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“Once I open this, I cannot go back,” I whispered with a quiet resolve, trying to mask the uneasiness I felt deep down.
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Click.
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I peered inside the box. Within it were two daggers, each with a hilt that was wrapped in black leather for a firm, quiet grip, and at the end of the hilt was a black obsidian gemstone that ornamented the daggers subtly. Dad had given me the daggers as a gift for my fifteenth birthday, and how he got them, I didn’t bother to ask, given how things already were. While I admired their craftsmanship, keeping them felt like taking on a burdensome task.
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So, I never used them, not even to try them out.
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But, if my hunch is right, it seems that I might have a use for them during my stay in Korea.
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