Episode 47 Side Story — Otherworldly Survival Class 2
Last class had been a genuine nightmare. The way that girl had glared at me at the very end, especially... ugh.
Grumbling under my breath, I ate lunch, then hid in a tucked-away corner of the school building until fifth period and read the firsthand accounts of ability users' first forays into the Phase World that my sister had packed for me. The room was set to seventy-nine degrees, but sweat still trickled down me little by little.
Would class start already? I wanted to get back to a classroom with the air conditioning blasting.
The fifth and sixth periods still ahead this afternoon were Survival Studies as well — except this time, the class belonged to So Yoojin, the most beautiful teacher in our school!
Hooray!
"Hey, everyone! Isn't it just sweltering today~? I'm almost afraid to step outside."
So Yoojin wore her long, neatly kept hair in a single pretty braid draped forward over her chest. She had graduated from Euihan University's College of Education and been assigned to our school only last year.
Gentle, considerate looks, and a kind, lively personality — she was wildly popular with teachers and students alike. Of course I liked her too!
"As you all know, people who can use Phase Power are called Anomalous Ability Users, or the Awakened. Not long ago, the World Phase Ability User Association — you could call them a partner organization of the IWO — announced that the number of Anomalous Ability Users worldwide had been tallied at about three million. Have you heard?"
Voices burst out from here and there.
"No!"
"For real? That's not that many."
"The World Phase Ability User Association — everyone just shortens it to the Ability User Association — was, eighty years ago, a subordinate body of the IWO, known as the Ability User Security Cooperation Organization. You all know that after a certain incident, it stopped being a subordinate body and became a partner organization, right? The reason was that a high-ranking official from Japan, one of the partner nations, unilaterally stole internal classified materials recording the personal details of special ability users and sent them back to his home country. They'd worked so carefully that the truth didn't come out until five years after the theft. Can you believe it?"
Was the IWO just that brain-dead, or had the Japanese bastards simply done the job that well?
So Yoojin shook her head as if it were truly incredible, then worked the giant LED panel covering the entire wall behind the lectern and brought the materials up. They'd turned the incident from back then into a PDF, neatly organized and easy to follow.
I already knew all of it, so I could tell just how much work had gone into making that thing!
"For five years, Japan took the families of special ability users whose whereabouts had been identified and held them as hostages, threatening them until the ability users naturalized as Japanese citizens, one by one. The number was about 1,700. It doesn't look like much, but according to IWO statistics at the time, there weren't even 700,000 Anomalous Ability Users, and special ability users numbered only a little over 2,000 — so it was practically the majority. Set aside the special ability users tied to each nation's key elite, and most of the rest had effectively been moved to Japan."
She explained with real enthusiasm, pointing at the panel with a faculty pointer.
Idiots. Just because they hadn't been caught right away, they went and siphoned off most of the special ability users registered with the IWO. Of course it was going to come to light.
Obviously. They'd used criminal methods to steal another country's ability users, so how pissed would the nations on the receiving end of that stunt have been? I wouldn't have let it slide either.
"Of course, the moment evidence surfaced that he had leaked internal secrets, that high-ranking official was arrested by the Ability User Security Cooperation Organization, and he received — get this — a sentence of 3,562 years! Thirty-five hundred years... I can't even begin to imagine how long that is. That official, who had violated international law dead-on, was sent to Alcatraz Prison, where they lock up criminals of the most heinous kind and Anomalous Ability Users. That place was built to hold ability users. Sending an ordinary person there is basically the same as a death sentence, isn't it?"
Then she asked whether we knew about Alcatraz. Obviously there was no way some idiot didn't...
"Please explain it!"
...There was.
"Alcatraz was originally the name of a prison in San Francisco, in the United States, and even before the Phase World appeared it was known as a prison from which escape was absolutely impossible. But after the Phase World appeared, they kept the name and developed a tiny uninhabited island in the Pacific into an entirely new place. Because it was built for Anomalous Ability Users, it was constructed so that once you were locked in, you could never get out — a prison for Anomalous Ability Users who had committed violent crimes. Because of that, it's also famous as a place where an ordinary person, once locked up, is found murdered not long after. Usually, what happens inside a prison doesn't make the news unless it's truly exceptional, but Alcatraz is the exception. Every single day, they post the names and faces of the people who died the day before on their website."
The escape rate was zero percent, too. Anyway, the day after that man was locked up, he was found murdered in a gruesome state.
All of that was nothing but the introduction. The teacher began what amounted to the main point.
"Anyway~. Japan's atrocity — threatening and cajoling ability users into forced naturalization — became known across the whole world, and Japan turned countless countries against it. Every IWO member state, which is to say practically the entire world, became an enemy, right? They incurred the public wrath of many nations. And those countries gathered together and began taking retaliatory measures against Japan. The representative one, of course, was a trade blockade. Japanese products were registered as prohibited imports, entry into their own territories was banned for Japanese nationals, and there were even countries that expelled an entire family if a parent was Japanese, mixed blood or not."
The teacher shook her head.
"Good grief. The country did wrong, and the people ended up paying for it."
"You might say that was a bit harsh, but this was a time when research analyses were pouring out claiming the practical value of a single special ability user was higher than a nation's entire annual budget, you know? Before that, they'd been looked down on as a type with unimpressive abilities, a type that couldn't even fight aberrants, and if you think about how R-Class was the type suddenly thrust into the spotlight as a reaction against that, it was only natural!"
So. If a thief broke into your house and cleaned out every bit of money you needed to live on for the next year, how would you feel?
"And so Japan had not only its exports but even its imports blockaded, and with no country willing to trade with them, in just a few months countless companies went bankrupt! Then, with secondary industry collapsing one after another and even food imports on the verge of being cut off, the mood that the country itself was about to fall apart grew so thick that Japan's governing apparatus finally realized they were in serious trouble, and began broadcasting apologies to the entire world."
She worked the panel again, and up came Japan's prime minister from that time — Mizune. Read the name backwards and it became Nezumi, a rat, and the bastard's face looked like a rat's, too, as he bowed and scraped through his apology on the screen.
Once the Japanese public learned of the idiotic circus pulled in the Diet, even they came swarming to protest, so rage poured in from inside and out. No way they could have held out.
Even the famous far-right groups had been pouring criticism at the Diet.
"To somehow get through the crisis, the Emperor — you could call him Japan's king — along with the members of the Diet and the prime ministers of the cabinet, knelt and apologized live in front of foreign correspondents, and it was broadcast to the whole world. But the reactions from other countries were not good at all."
What Russia's President Kitin had said back then was, "And what do you want me to do about it?" A nation's crime, and you're supposed to forgive it because a handful of people came out and did one deep bow?
"They said the Japanese manner of kneeling and pressing one's forehead to the ground — they call it dogeza — was an expression of extremely deep apology, but that's a story that only holds among Japanese people, isn't it? Of course each government demanded a realistic plan of response, asking if they meant to smooth this whole affair over with nothing more than getting down on the ground, and right after the broadcast, condemnatory statements poured out of every country. In that situation, the prime minister, who could be called the representative of Japan's political apparatus, stepped forward sweating buckets and began to explain... and that's where another problem arose!"
And — that had to have been a hard photo to get, yet she'd actually found one. So Yoojin really was devoted to her teaching.
"Look! On the stack of paper in the prime minister's hand, the words 'official statement' were written!"
The teacher fumed.
"An official statement? An official statement?! You're supposed to be reading an apology!!"
She let out a cute little sigh, saying that even throwing dynamite onto a burning house would be less dangerous than this.
"And so the R-Class ability-user kidnapping incident, which spawned all sorts of noisy stories, left Japan with national debt it couldn't finish paying even after several decades, countless bankrupt companies and small factories, and an economic foundation that had half collapsed. The national competitiveness ranking announced every year by the World Economic Forum, the WEF, plunged from sixth place to outside the top fifty, on par with remote countries in the southern African backcountry."
So Yoojin seemed thirsty. She took a small sip of the bottled water set out for her, and her moist lips caught my eye. Before I knew it, I'd swallowed hard.
"Ahem! Of course, they sent the special ability users and their families, the ones they'd pulled into their embrace through threats and cajoling, back to their home countries. And on top of that, as a form of compensation, Japan's own Anomalous Ability Users were sent to the other countries harmed in the incident on a dispatch basis... You could write 'dispatch' and read it as 'immigration,' and that would be closer to the truth. Not one of those people ever made it back to Japan. Anyway, the number of Anomalous Ability Users inside Japan plummeted from 40,000 to 5,000, and with secondary and tertiary industry going bankrupt one after another, Japan — which had been something of a developed country — sank under a mountain of debt and fell to developing-country status. With that, the situation appeared to be resolved. How. Ev. Er! An even bigger matter was lying in wait for the IWO! The World Phase Ability User Association!"
She explained with a passionate expression, her face slightly flushed, and every time she moved, her chest swayed. A feast for the eyes...
Ahem! Why is she glaring at me again?
"After that, the Ability User Security Cooperation Organization, which had originally been a subordinate body of the IWO, used the incident Japan had committed as grounds to raise questions about the IWO's safety. It broke away from being a subordinate body, announced that it would exist as both a partner organization and an oversight body of the IWO, and founded the World Phase Ability User Association. The IWO commissioners were flustered. It seems they vowed not to let the Japan that had caused all this get away with it."
Japan's actions had struck the ability users' sense of crisis head-on, and ability users who felt their lives threatened ended up banding together. Obviously. Even ants come out and fight if an enemy approaches the anthill. No way people were going to just sit there.
Besides, international power dynamics aren't supposed to turn over this simply, and yet things moved as if the feedback were instantaneous. There's even talk that it was because someone of tremendous status had been among the kidnapped special ability users. Anyway.
The teacher's explanation continued.
"The World Phase Ability User Association was composed entirely of Anomalous Ability Users. On the surface, the aim was to block the IWO's unilateral actions and work for the security of Anomalous Ability Users, but anyone could see it was a move to place the safety, protection, and management of Anomalous Ability Users under the jurisdiction of fellow Anomalous Ability Users from then on, and to refuse the control of states. Because of what Japan had done, countless Anomalous Ability Users around the world grew wary, thinking their precious families might get caught up in some nation's kidnapping. That state of guarding their families went on for a long time, so the supply of Phase Stones shrank along with it, and the market ended up curled tight in on itself!"
She worked the panel and brought up the world economic indicators from that time. There had been the occasional dip, but a steady, repeating decline had happened only then.
"As the Phase Stone market contracted and the world financial market began to stagger along with it, the IWO hurriedly tried to block the formation of the World Phase Ability User Association while also seeking some other solution. But in the meantime, Anomalous Ability Users flocked to an organization that hadn't even been formed yet, and the members of the IWO assembly seem to have decided there was no other way. They also thought that if the means of controlling ability users within their own countries became an empty formality, their own positions would be threatened. Maybe an ability user might appear among their own families. And if they officially opposed it, a protest force made up of countless Anomalous Ability Users might appear. With those thoughts, the IWO had no choice but to recognize the formation of the World Phase Ability User Association."
A protest force made up of tens of thousands of Anomalous Ability Users. If they so much as collided with the public, the government, and the military, a country could fall in an instant.
Looking at a pretty teacher was nice, but listening to an explanation of things I already knew was making me drowsy. The girl beside me was glaring now like she meant to eat me alive, but so what.
"As time passed and the number of Anomalous Ability Users surpassed one million, the IWO began deliberating a plan to classify ability users by grade. Not that they meant to recklessly spit out grades through deliberation on a whim. The idea was to measure Phase Power values with a Phase Power meter, and to divide the grades accurately and meticulously according to numerous criteria, based on the development and evolution of abilities and techniques."
The first method they adopted was a grade system. Grades 1 through 10, with Grade 10 the lowest and Grade 1 the highest, and special ability users placed outside the grades. Or so the story went.
The World Phase Ability User Association — the Ability User Association, for short — had protested, she explained, demanding to know if dividing abilities into grades meant treating them like objects.
"I don't really understand why a grade system would mean being treated like a thing."
I don't get it either. Look up grade in the dictionary and the first definition is "quality (of goods)," so maybe that's why — but other countries divide things into grades all the time without anyone complaining. Mmm. No idea.
Ah, I'm sleepy...
"There's a rumor that the IWO commissioners who heard the Ability User Association's objection looked utterly dumbfounded. So then they said, all right, let's divide them into classes — Grade 1 as S-Class, and below that A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, and I, and special ability users as R-Class — and only then, the rumor goes, did the Ability User Association wear satisfied expressions. These events began a year after the Japan ability-user incident was wrapped up, when Britain announced a Phase Power discriminator and a measuring device developed at the Grokis Institute, which answered directly to the royal family."
"The discriminator was, just as the name suggests, a device for judging whether Phase Power was present, and the measuring device measured the amount of Phase Power in the body. Thanks to these machines, it became possible to divide people into classes. Before that, what they did was dispatch credible people who possessed the ability to sense Phase Power to specific regions, and establish Phase Stone exchanges there. Phase Stones were classified by color and size, and someone with a good sense could roughly gauge the amount of Phase Power as well. But reality began to flow in a direction different from what Britain had expected. Most ability users wanted to know how much Phase Power they had, but they didn't want anyone else to know..."
Listening to So Yoojin's pleasant voice go on and on, it was like a lullaby...
Ugh. If I fall asleep, the teacher will be disappointed... Mngh...
"Abilities and techniques were supposed to be registered for hunting in the Phase World, and ability users also considered that necessary, so everyone followed along obediently. But the amount of Phase Power is basically the limit of one's own ability, isn't it? Who would want to reveal their own limit and weakness of their own accord? Anyway, Britain ambitiously announced the Phase Power meter and the discriminator, thinking they would become essential products across society and bring in enormous revenue, but unexpectedly, Anomalous Ability Users refused detailed measurement! The discriminator, at least, drew purchase interest from countries around the world, and the Ability User Association also stepped forward saying it would buy a large number, so they say it achieved half a success. The Grokis Institute had no choice but to change the function so that it displayed a class according to the amount of Phase Power in the body. But ability users who had already grown suspicious said that even if it displayed a class on the surface, the exact figures were being recorded and transmitted behind the scenes — and asked if that wasn't going to be abused."
I struggled with everything I had to drag myself out of sleep, and the drowsiness began to flee.
But something — I felt like something important had been said. What was it? The PDF had already moved on, so I had no idea, and as for asking the girl beside me...
Yeah. Let's not.
"This is why market research matters. No matter how well you make something, if the consumer doesn't like it, of course it fails, right? They wouldn't use the changed meter either, saying it was unsettling, and the Ability User Association also showed reluctance, saying there was nothing they could do about that point. Britain's position must have become very awkward and very difficult."
They should have just had it display a class from the start. Or waited until much more time had passed and played on people's desire to show off...
"It seems the Queen herself stepped forward and made a request to the leadership of the Ability User Association. In the end, the Ability User Association stepped up and announced that classifying ability users by class was absolutely necessary, for the sake of preparing for any contingency. They would remove every device inside the meters that carried functions like communication equipment and recording equipment, and conduct the measurements in a room made of radio-wave-absorbing material, so please use them with an easy mind. On top of that, the IWO also stepped forward, saying that during measurement a clerk would accompany them and record the class, and they launched a large-scale campaign of persuasion, holding briefings on Anomalous Ability User community sites and in real life."
There was also a story that the chairman of the World Ability User Association at the time was of British royal blood. Believe it or not.
"And with the announcement that the meters would be managed by the Ability User Association, and that a certain portion of the revenue from their use and sale would be collected by the Association and used for ability users, the persuasion gained real force. In Britain, too, the Queen herself stepped forward and announced, staking Britain's pride and honor, that there were absolutely no functions other than measurement. Only then did ability users begin to lend an ear."
I don't know about Britain, but the Ability User Association had been working hard for ability users all along. They must have been won over by that, right?
Thanks to years of persuasion, ability users began submitting to measurement one by one, and now, the teacher explained with real energy, discriminators and meters were in use in countless places all over the world.
But her voice was so nice that I was getting sleepy again...
"Because of all this, it became mandatory to use a Phase Power meter once every three years. Of course, if you want, you can pay a set fee at any time and check your own class. And so, thanks to the efforts of the World Phase Ability User Association, the subdivision of Anomalous Ability Users into classes came to function as it should."
Same as this morning — this class, too, doesn't feel like a class about survival. It feels like learning the 216-year history of ability users...
I want to say that, but I don't want to step forward, and I don't want to stand out, so I'll just sit here. It is not because the girl next to me is scary!
"Ability users are divided into four broad categories, and beneath those, like tree roots spreading out, there are dozens of subcategories. The most common are Physical Reinforcement users. Sixty percent of currently registered ability users are the Physical Reinforcement type. Physical Reinforcement users are ability users in whom Phase Power surges wildly through the entire body, changing the body's structure and putting them in the state best suited to exerting physical force."
And they're the number-one catch for brides and grooms. They barely age until right before they die, they don't die easily, they're sturdy, and they make good money.
"Other ability users also have Phase Power circulating in their bodies, but for most of them it circulates in the internal organs, and only a tiny minority have it moving through the skin and the muscles and bones. Research has been published saying that in Physical Reinforcement users, by contrast, it spreads and flows on such a massive scale that you could call the body itself Phase Power. Because of that, the constitutional changes caused by Phase Power are said to be on a completely different level from other ability users. Both the outside and the inside are optimized for using Phase Power, the whole body is reconstructed, and because of that, the story goes, they're reborn as flower-pretty boys and flower-pretty girls."
Free full-body plastic surgery — we'll even rewrite your DNA! Call 1-800-STAT-STAT.
"Most Physical Reinforcement users become hunters who hunt aberrants, but there were also ability users who hated fighting aberrants. Those people enlisted in the military, or became bodyguards protecting VIPs, and fought against people and against Anomalous Ability Users. There are also people who, wanting to become what ordinary folks long for, threw themselves into show business and live flashily as entertainers. A representative example is Seon Ara of the raid team Eshiban. You all know her well, don't you?"
Who doesn't! Five-foot-five, a hundred and twenty-three pounds, and a 37-19-36 figure violent enough to be a crime! A baby face, and rich! Time River's boss isn't exactly a familiar face, but Eshiban's boss is a national idol, full stop!
"But... there are also cases of people falling into traps because of a beautiful appearance, and stepping onto a bad path."
Why soften it? They're high-class whores for the powerful and the conglomerate bosses. Decorative flowers that exist to lavishly adorn their owners — literally!
"So if any of you become Physical Reinforcement users, you have to remember the Ability User Association. They'll be able to protect you. Moving on, then. The foundation is Physical Reinforcement, and as a subordinate ability there's enhanced regeneration, and there are also some reinforcement users who drastically raise one specific stat. And there is body alteration, too... There are scholars fighting over whether shapeshifting should be included in Physical Reinforcement or not, but in my view, body alteration and shapeshifting aren't Physical Reinforcement abilities. They seem like special abilities. After all... it's not reinforcement, it's change, isn't it?"
Anyway, an ability user who also has regeneration is more welcome than one who's simply tough in the body, and strength on top of that would be the icing on the cake. I'd heard that not every Physical Reinforcement user gets stronger across the board. There are classifications like strength-specialized, agility-specialized, and stamina-specialized, too.
The teacher went on.
"Somewhat less rare are Elemental users, those who wield specific attributes. Thirty percent of the total fall here. Class is determined by how many kinds of attributes you use, and by the distance at which you can attack. The representative attributes are four — fire, wind, earth, and water — and as special attributes there are lightning, light, and darkness. Even being able to use these special attributes adds a bonus to your class points, and the more attributes you can use, the higher the points climb. Most people have one kind. If you have some aptitude and really stand out, two. Three, they say, is truly a tiny minority. People who can use two or more can mix two attributes and exert even greater power. To put it simply, combine fire and earth and lava is created — that sort of thing? You can cause a synergistic effect that way."
Watching the teacher grow tired, I checked the time. Class was nearly over. Talk six hours a day like that, and anyone would be worn out.
"Fire and water are polar opposites, so you'd think they couldn't be used together, but since Phase Power defies the laws of physics, nothing seems impossible. They say you can use fire and water at the same time to cause a steam explosion, and an ability user who's clever and has a great deal of Phase Power can even raise a hurricane or a tornado through shifts in air pressure. They also say you can spread a wide fog imbued with Phase Power and veil aberrants' vision and senses."
She caught her breath and spoke again.
"Next are the rare recovery ability users — Healing. They make up seven percent of all ability users, and being a special ability and such a tiny minority, they receive tremendous popularity from ability users and ordinary people alike. In the case of an ordinary person, they say that even if you've been cut in half at the waist, so long as you're still breathing, they can treat you in an instant. Even a low-class recovery ability user can manage that much. Because of that, people whose aptitude was low and who stalled at a low class sometimes work at medical facilities for high salaries. Of course, in that case you have to study medical law separately and earn a license. Hmm... The thing that decides a recovery ability user's value is, precisely, how far they can restore wounded ability users. Because that's what matters most."
The teacher took another mouthful of water, held it, swallowed, and went on with the explanation.
"And recovery ability users — healers — also have subcategories. There's the kind that can only heal through direct contact, and the kind that can heal even from a distance, and within those there's instant recovery, an ability that raises healing power for a set time, and an ability with a large recovery amount that heals slowly."
On the panel behind her she showed the subcategories branching like tree roots. It looked just like a game's skill tree... no, a talent tree.
"...so ability users who can heal not only wounds but disease and poison as well have higher class points. Diseases, especially — they say they can completely cure things like cancer, leukemia, and AIDS in a single shot. Isn't that amazing?"
Of course, the amount of recovery is still what matters most.
"Lastly, the extremely rare! R-Class special ability users. The remaining three percent belong here, and usually most of them are psychics. People who lift objects with telekinesis, or teleport, or see through matter, or analyze substances, or look into the future and foresee it... anyway, it means people armed with extremely wide-ranging abilities. And the ones the Phase World absolutely cannot do without, the—"
SCREEEEEEEEECH!
Ack! What the hell? A sound loud enough to split eardrums suddenly blasted from the speaker. I clapped my hands over my ears and grimaced, and the kids in class screamed and writhed right along with me.
"Aigoo! My eardrums are going to burst. Everyone, are you okay?"
"We're okay~!"
The sound came from here and there. I had no idea what had caused it, but the noise soon faded, and the teacher resumed her explanation.
"Most of them command a high price, and except for abilities that can be used to attack, like telekinesis, they end up entering the field where they can best display their ability. There are plenty of ways to make a lot of money without hunting."
In particular, she explained, those in the fields of precognition and prophecy were ability users under the World Phase Ability User Association's strongest protection. If word came that one had appeared, the World Ability User Association immediately rushed out an escort detail made up of several high-class members to provide close protection.
"And they approach the person carefully and, through persuasion, escort them to the headquarters of the World Phase Ability User Association. Obviously, any being that tries to harm a precognition or prophecy ability user is designated as the Ability User Association's number-one target for eradication. If they attack, then whatever else happens, you attack first! If possible you subdue them, but if it looks even a little unlikely to work, killing them is permitted too. Their existence lets us foresee aberrants appearing in reality and prophesy all kinds of disasters and calamities, saving the lives of countless people, so maybe it's a natural measure? But their freedom of movement is reduced to an extreme by that same token — though aside from that, I've heard they're waited on at enormous expense."
Well, I'd heard the living quarters at Association headquarters were insanely luxurious. A place like that, and it wouldn't matter if you couldn't step outside the building.
We apologize for the disruption to class caused by a malfunction in some of the equipment.
This sort of thing isn't common. Weird. Anyway — what was the rest of that?
"Ability users experiencing the Phase World for the first time all start at the lowest class, and their grade rises according to how well they use and evolve their abilities. Of course the total amount of Phase Power also matters, and there are usually three ways to raise it. The first is the ordinary method of absorbing, through your whole body, the Phase Power that exists in the world, and increasing it that way. The second is catching and killing aberrants. The Phase Power an aberrant holds in its body bursts out in all directions when it dies, and is absorbed into the bodies of people nearby. Lastly, there's absorbing, little by little into the body, the Phase Stones obtained from aberrants. So Physical Reinforcement users fighting aberrants on the front line can gather Phase Power the most easily. In exchange, they say their lives are that much more at risk."
...The teacher had suddenly skipped ahead and started explaining Phase Power.
I didn't know the rest of it either, so I tried to prick up my ears. But the other kids were just sitting there quietly, and it would have been embarrassing to be the one to speak up, so I stayed put.
"The more Phase Power you have, and the purer it is, the longer you tend to live — about two to three times longer than ordinary people. As for youth, ordinary people become adults at eighteen and tend to keep their youth until their forties, but Physical Reinforcement users keep the look of youth almost until they die, and other ability users tend to keep theirs until about eighty. When ability users marry each other, at a truly low probability, children are born already possessing Phase Power, and these children, they say, aren't dragged into the Phase World. That doesn't mean they can use Phase Power the way ability users can, either. According to what's been learned through research on the subject, the first condition for being sucked out of reality and into the Phase World is that you have to be a being without Phase Power."
So if a meter confirms that a newborn already has Phase Power, they're out on that count, right?
"As for the people who aren't sucked into the Phase World that way, scientists are saying they might be holding inside their bodies another kind of Phase Power that the discriminator can't identify. Talk has come out that they may possess a completely different form of Phase Power, and if someone succeeds in measuring and wielding that Phase Power, it would be welcome news for anyone who doesn't want to be sucked into the Phase World!"
Tsk. Class is almost over. About five minutes left.
"Becoming an ability user is nice, but if you go, there's a high chance you'll die, so who among people satisfied with their own lives would want to go? If a Phase Power like that really exists and the fact becomes known, a lot more people will start gambling with their own lives as collateral, so I'm a little scared."
Well, becoming an ability user is a story you only get to tell after you've survived the Phase World and come back.
If you can't even return — if an aberrant kills you, or you can't overcome the harsh natural environment — then even getting chosen for the trial leaves you with nothing.
Because of that, they say that in households below the middle class, talk goes around that being sucked into the Phase World is a last chance to turn your life around, or a trial for becoming a new kind of humanity.
Even back when I was in middle school, there were guys all over the place saying they'd challenge the Phase World even if it killed them.
And people with money or power, just in case, get survival tutoring from ability users and work to raise their odds of living through it. As expected, money and power are things you can never have too much of.
Ding-dong, ding-dong.
"Oh, class is already over. It's fine, it's fine~ We'll be starting again in a little while, so you don't have to say goodbye. See you in ten minutes, everyone!"