2. Being Zen

Being Zen

Hiro

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"Come on, Zen,” my neighbor grins as he flops dramatically onto my bed. His wild mop of chestnut hair sticks up in every direction like he’s just rolled out of a hay bale—which, knowing Haru, is either that or some forgotten field.

The ever-excitable wolf demon has always toed the line between magnetic and insufferable. Charismatic, well-meaning, and vibrant as the twin suns for his boundless energy as Haru is, the Kibar never fails to ride that razor’s edge between awe-inspiring and utterly obnoxious.

It mostly depends on the time of day, or situation, he decides to be unapologetically himself. Still, no one should outshine the suns before they’ve even risen.

Then again, mornings might as well be a Devil to me.

The urge to sink my kunai into those twin golden orbs as if they’re truly the eyes of the Ancients. Ones that rip me from the blissful blank canvas of sleep, never dims. To be fair, that only happens when I’m not up before them. When I don’t have time to brace against the sting of light blazing through my senses like acid.

I know it’s my own fault for sleeping in. That and Haru’s excitement for our upcoming trip to the Falls, for Lunamin. The festival held at the crux of Bloom is one of maybe three or four days I’m allowed to prolong the inevitable to-do list that comes with being a land-rich and pocket-poor genius.

A farm kid with obligations longer than the river’s spine.

I wince at the thought. At the bitterness behind it when my foot strikes its intended target and Haru lands on the floor with a resounding thud. Probably why Dad took to using buckets of ice water from across the room before we had alarms.

Better that than risking loss of limb before I’m fully conscious and capable of recognizing friend from foe.

Though it could be argued that anything pulling me from the only break my brain gets is an enemy.

At least in that moment I’m “revived” from sleep. The only place I don’t have to think. To process. To be assaulted by the relentless barrage of input my brain absorbs like a starved leech.

That’s the “genius” part. I don’t even register half the shit I take in. It just wedges itself somewhere in the attic of my skull, quietly collecting until something snaps.

Blame it on a cocktail of brain damage and a naturally inherited IQ over two hundred.

I never asked for my skull to be cracked like an egg during my Learning stages. Never volunteered to be the Oracle’s son, either. But here I am—some twisted amalgamation of brilliance and madness, shaped by accident and expectation alike.

In my father’s case, there was never any magic to his visions.

Only logic.

Everything was patterns. Repetition. Probability. Data strung together like constellations only he could see. Calculated not as prophecy, but as likelihoods.

The most likely. The least likely.

And by stacking every variable in place, he could prepare for the things no one else dared imagine.

A trait he passed to me, like every other. I’ve always been his “spitting” image according to the rest. Something a little too hard to swallow as an overly literal child who didn’t even reach the giant’s hip. He’s six-foot eleven, and somewhere along the way, I’ve closed the distance, but haven’t quite gotten to seven-foot status.

My brain, on the other hand. A brutal, unrelenting game of mental chess where no outcome is dismissed—only cataloged. Ranked. Filed. Shelved. Ready. Just like his. For him, it’s simple observation. Files and dockets of data stored and stowed.

For me…

It’s madness. Literal and absolute psychosis. Rather than dream in my sleep, I do it by the light of day. In real time with everyone watching. Since my head trauma in my Learning stages broke my “filter.” The one everyone is supposed to have, to store information they can’t immediately categorize: Good. Bad. Interesting. Stay Away.

I get to have the weirdest and most unfounded visions to make that shift in real time.

Sometimes it happens when I hear voices. Friends and strangers alike, playing two sides of my conscious. Sometimes it’s just a comment or statement that shames, scorns, or otherwise enlightens me to my idiocy or inability to make it all click without them.

It’s rare anymore that the noise is garbled or sounds like feral beasts in a fugue state. More rare to see flashing images or horror clips, that show me what I know I’ve never seen happen, and still explain questions I have or underlying sensations I get.

Visions were more common than the voices when I was small. Now it’s the opposite.

Doesn’t mean I’m not still hit with a phantom or two at random. Especially in large crowds. That’s the most difficult place for me not to let my mind run wild. I try to make myself feel like it gives me a leg up. Cues me into a world or knowledge that others don’t have.

Still, there’s no erasing the stigma of Crazy once it lands. Before I could rationalize, process, or otherwise knew the medical source of my psychosis, I really did feel like I was losing my mind. Until Aya and I invented the real, not real game.

She had nightmares too. Saw things. Felt things so horrible. So visceral that at times it was impossible for either of us to tell dreams from reality. So for her, it was a matter of asking if something happened. For me, it was a matter of pain on a one-to-ten scale.

I still have the scar from my accident, and every time my brain is working overtime to overcompensate or fill in the blanks, it hurts. Sending a shooting current of agony behind my eyes. Now that we’re grown, it seems silly sometimes.

It’s more than obvious what’s really happening versus not, but still. There are moments it applies. Or just times it makes us feel better and more connected to play. To those who haven’t reached their third or fourth Ages, seventy annuals of friendship is a long time.

A way for us to reminisce in a secret only the two of us share.

The person who gave me my name after thinking long and hard on it. Probably the only thing of my young life I didn’t want to share. Being the only kid in the village who didn’t have a sibling, I wanted that more than anything. Second on the list was to be myself rather than my father’s carbon copy.

Not because I didn’t love him. Dad is Dad. Probably the best person I’d ever hope to meet. Living up to that expectation though… it was loaded for me even then.

But just like my Dad has his constellation, I have mine. Aya, me, Haru, and Tien even if we’re not old enough to make that commitment yet. Not until we reach our Age of Title. There was never a future for me without the three of them.

Like we’d always been. Just like and our fathers before us. Now with Assessment looming it’s a mystery which of us will hold the others back……

“He’s still in bed?” The voice of Tien coming from the stairs, tells me my time is up and that it’s time to launch into motion. He is mine and Aya’s other neighbor, though you’d never guess that the wolf and bear aren’t born brothers, rather than chosen friends, just like me and Ayame.

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3: Hiro - Rise and Shine (Reluctantly)