X/X/94
"Of course hand signs don't work, duh."
Over the years I've managed to figure something out: Japan is depressing.
If you're not out doing something and there's nothing at home for you, all you're left with is what's left. And for people like me, that's four walls and the calming storm of whatever they happen to be thinking about at the time. If left alone, I will go mad.
So, in the intervening years since the worst of the child abuse and our grandparents finding us a decent place to stay, I've come to be sort of a latch-key kid. Even more than what's usual here. Sora's out of the house most of the time and I don't have it in me to spend a new life cloistered in the house every evening. I need escape time.
Money for little things wasn't as easy to come by, Sora was lucky enough to have a job. All I could do most days was walk around, maybe find spots that would let me try things for free. It wasn't the most stimulating thing that I could do, but it was better than sitting around gathering dust. I found the best days were when Sora left me grocery money, he wasn't picky about what I picked up seeing as he didn't have much time to eat at home anyway.
Times were tough for him, but he insulated me from it well enough. I grew up in the Recession, so I'm not hard to please. I'd have put up with a lot worse without complaint.
Most of the time a walk didn't take me farther than a half a mile this way or that way. It took me awhile to build up the courage to really press the boundaries, honestly. I'm originally from the United States, after all.
And the future US, at that.
Even if all my upbringing has been native, when it's just me and my thoughts, I still have to fight my first instinct on a lot of things.
Namely, all my anti-kidnapping instincts not being all that relevant here. I'm still not used to it actually being "safe" to go wherever I wanted, that was the weirdest thing. Most folks paid me no mind, so long as I didn't look lost or confused. And even though Sora was plenty protective of me, he was more worried about his parents coming for us than anything else.
I didn't think that was very likely.
I had free rein to go where and how I pleased. So long as I went to school the way I was supposed to and got home before Sora could worry or notice, which is frighteningly late I should add, I was good. Given how obsessive the boy was in the original story, I thought I'd have a shorter leash than this.
Honestly, some supervision would be appreciated.
With such little structure, I had a lot of room for getting snatched up by some perv but also for
shenanigans. But being the cautious creature I am, it took me awhile to work up to them. It had been seven years since I was born and... still no powers.
Not a hint of them.
And for awhile, I was okay with that. Having powers just makes me a target and the time would come, eventually, right?
Those kinds of thoughts started to eat at me around my last birthday and they've been gnawing ever since. I started to experiment, at first just to make sure nothing was there. I'd look in a place where I thought a ghost might be, cemeteries being my usual attempt spot, just to see if I saw anything. Anything at all.
Nothing ever came of it and I moved on with my life. I did the normal things: attend school, buy groceries, keep a journal to log my thoughts.
Written in English of course because who cares about getting found out? Certainly not me!
It's been very dreary and most of the excitement in life that I enjoyed in a previous lifetime was more than a decade off, if that. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't bored.
But the clencher in all the monotony was that it existed beside an incredibly vibrant parallel world full of demons and psychics and shinigami and I couldn't access any of it because I was blind, spiritually deaf and numb. In all this time I've been alive, I could have been *this* close to a hollow or a ghost or anything, and never known it.
That was a scary thought, and didn't sit well with me at all, but it also excited me.
I could have powers, early too, if I figured them out. I could expand my narrow little section of the world just by being able to
see them, nevermind anything else
. So for a time, I focused on trying a bit of everything, just to see if I got any results.
Doing things at home ultimately didn't work out, but it was an interesting experience all the same. I really threw ideas at a wall and went with whatever
might work, even a little.
Sometimes I'd do calming things like make tea, do what someone who's never done yoga thinks is yoga, light candles, sing sad little songs and pretend that any of that would get me spiritually attuned. Other than the candles and the singing, there was no reason to even think they'd help. At least lighting candles and singing might attract a ghost or two. I probably looked creepy as hell doing most of that, but I didn't care. Little kids do creepy shit all the time, and most of the time no one saw me do it anyway.
After a while, my daily spirituality check turned into a kind of ritual. If I couldn't think of anything worth trying, sometimes I'd just sit criss-crossed in my pajamas trying to convene with the spirits, after school.
I even stared at the moon once. It was on a rare day when Sora came home early. I was blanking on what do with him around and seeing me. Maybe the original Orihime's personality is bleeding into mine or maybe I just wanted an excuse to do something dumb for once, but it was the best I could come up with.
"Hime-chan, what are you staring at the moon for?"
"Checking to see if I'm werewolf." I said matter-of-fact. "You can never be too careful."
I was probably just avoiding having a normal conversation, they tend to devolve into the therapy sessions. I'd rather do something dumb to make Sora laugh than just keep going over old wounds again and again. The staring just made him worried, but when I howled at it, I got a chuckle. I didn't go back to the moon staring approach again, but it was funny to think about from time to time.
Once I got tired of the pseudo spiritual stuff, I did the tried-yet-sadly-not-true method of just doing what I saw on TV. In my first life I wasn't the most avid otaku, but I'd still seen more than my fair share of shows. Sadly, very few were relevant to my present issues. Thinking back to explanations about chi and chakras and spiritual energy from any show or manga I'd seen, I went down a mental list of series whose approaches
could (emphasis on could) help me. For a minimum, I spent about a week or two, depending on how well it seemed to be going.
I kept the results in my journal, the gist of each attempt went like this:
一
The Soul Eater Approach
Funny thing about Soul Eater, everyone starts the manga as a badass, they just get more badass as the story goes on. The fundamentals are more for world building, and as far I remembered, they didn't show them actually learning the basics of the basics.
So, I figured I'd just focus on being healthy,
"a sound soul dwells within a sound mind and a sound body" and all that.
On a positive note, I got rid of the bags under my eyes and resumed my growth spurt. Negative note, no powers.
二
The Avatar Approach
This would have been easier if I knew martial arts. The best I could was the vaguely over the top exercises I used to do when I was a teenager: wall assisted hand-stands, long planks, lots of stretching, probably excessive amounts of push ups and sit ups. I would have drank plenty of juice too, but I wanted to stay pure to the approach.
And when I a came down from all the exercise, I meditated on my life.
I tried to remember as much about Guru Pahtik as possible, about the different psychic blocks that can affect one's spirit, about things that might be mentally blocking me.
I didn't remember all the chakras, but I didn't have onion and banana juice either, so my ultra-filtered western Buddhist approach had to cut it for the time being. For what it's worth, I think I may have sorted out some repressed emotions, maybe got some gains, but still no powers.
三
The Bleach? Approach
The actual
Bleach approach was a no go. Souls get stronger through near death experience and mortal danger.
Despite what anime has taught me, those aren't all that easy to come across naturally. And I didn't want to die again so soon anyway.
There are other things, sure, but those are for people who already have basic spiritual awareness. I skipped this one in the planning stage when I caught myself daydreaming of ways almost* die. The
Yu Yu Hakusho plans broke down in the same way, but only after I tried pointing my finger at somebody and going "
Bang!".
It was a shot in the dark, I don't regret it a bit. Even though an old Lady across the street spotted me out her window, doing it.
I didn't feel like going to therapy for planning on getting hit by a bus anymore than I wanted our neighbors to think I was some kind of problem child.
Sora has a hard enough time, so I reeled things back in for the next major attempt.
He gives me a lot of room to be weird in the comfort of our meager little abode, and while I may not be as wacky as Orihime Mk.1, I still need that room to do all my experimenting. I appreciate that on his part, so I won't make him second guess all that freedom.
Not just yet anyway.
四
The Dragon Ball Approach
So, instead of testing my provenly tenuous grasp on life, I skipped ahead to the
Dragon Ball approach. It had a lot of potential positives, with few downsides. Worst case scenario, our neighbors would think I was a helpful little kid and get some of that "obviously too young to be a parent" energy off of Sora's back in the neighborhood.
I offered to help older neighbors with odd-jobs, weeding gardens, washing dishes, picking up groceries, walking dogs. It was very wholesome, and it probably built some character.
At home, I started working out a bit more, I focused on weights, endurance,
lots of cardio. In all honesty, I didn't do all that much but curl Sora's old textbooks and run up and down the street with a full back pack, but it was a start.
I made some friends, built up some more muscle, tried a Kamehameha. It was cute.
Still no powers.
五
The One Punch Man Approach
Honestly, I think all the exercise was just turning me into a little gym rat, without a gym. After people started making comments about me sweating too much for a girl when I tried to buy water during a long run, I started to limit how much anime influenced my exercise routine.
I don't think getting swole was going to make me any more likely to see spirits, but it definitely would get people talking about me around our section of town.
I was too young to be part of the local gossip, so I put that approach on hold. It would stay that way until I wanted to join a track team or get into sports.
Not likely, but I might need the excuse to exercise in the future.
Even so, after all that, I can safely say I did try. That was a
very busy period of 2 months once alway was said and done and I'm surprised I was able to keep it up at all.
I suppose being a child frees me up to just apply myself.
But whatever the secret ingredient was to this spiritual awareness thing, I either hadn't tried it or haven't found it. I can't even be sure I have powers to unlock in the first place. That was the old Orihime. And I wasn't her, definitely not.
Who knows if we even share the same "soul", especially the parts that gave her abilities?
What if I'm actually completely normal this life?
In any case, since what I did obviously wasn't enough, I started looking for, well there's no polite way to say this but, "
weird people". If I can't trigger powers on my own, I had to broaden my horizons.
Open myself to possibilities...
-This chapter started out as a little interlude just to get the thread started back up, the actual Chapter 2 has been on the backburner for awhile, but I've never had the intention of letting this story die. I'm very glad to get the ball rolling again. 
![Beautiful Isle [Bleach]](/data/threadmark-index-icons/l/64/64697.jpg?1677276221){kind=icon}
