Lightning and Butt
I let out a scream and tumbled backward into the bathtub, landing hard on my rear.
The impact was perfectly aimed at that exact spot, and the smoke rising from between my butt cheeks suddenly burst out even more violently.
The bathroom filled instantly with a sweet yet chilly mist that carried an exotic fragrance.
The smoke gradually thinned and began to take shape.
What emerged from the swirling, fluffy vapor was a girl who looked about the same age as me.
"What? A ghost...?"
She had flowing, dazzling golden hair and blue eyes that seemed to hold the entire ocean. Around her neck and wrists were exotic golden ornaments with intricate patterns that looked far too ancient to belong to the modern world. They glittered brilliantly.
She stood with her hands on her hips, looking down at me with clear disdain.
"Do you even know who I am?!"
The girl stared at me with a pouty expression and declared,
"This great one is the wish-granting Genie!"
"G-Genie? Like the fairy from the lamp?"
I completely forgot I was naked. I fumbled for the wet towel on the floor, hastily covering my front as I shouted.
Genie leaned back against the bathroom wall, crossed her legs in midair, and let out a yawn. With every movement, sparkling particles of mana scattered like glitter.
"Then... can you grant three wishes?"
A strange surge of excitement rose inside me.
Sure, my awakening spot was my butt, but if she could really grant three wishes...
Changing my awakening area should be a piece of cake.
"Of course it's possible."
I jumped to my feet, ready to make my wish.
"Then..."
"But not right now."
My wish hadn't even started before it got rejected at the gate.
I thought this was some kind of god-tier ability... why isn't it working?
"Your awakening area still can't draw out the mana you possess."
She spun once in the air and floated upward.
"So... your butt—*ahem*."
What was that cough?
Was even Genie embarrassed that my awakening spot was my butt?
"You need to raise the mana precision of that... that... awakening area of yours!"
It was obvious.
She was definitely feeling awkward right now.
What's wrong with my butt?
"So you're bound to my butt now?"
My single sentence brought the grim reality crashing down on both of us.
Me, an S-class butt awakener,
and the fairy Genie living inside my butt.
The sentences themselves felt strangely humiliating.
"You think I want to be here? I'm a victim too!"
She shrieked at me.
"Originally, I only existed inside human fairy tales for a very long time..."
Then she began recounting her journey, reminiscing about the past that led to her settling inside my butt.
The fairy Genie from the lamp in the fairy tale Aladdin.
The story of the mysterious magic lamp that grants three wishes is so famous that almost everyone knows it.
"When I first sensed my own existence, all I could see was pitch-black darkness."
The infinite black void where the powers from myths and fairy tales reside after manifesting. It's called the 'Boundary'.
"I wandered aimlessly through that cold darkness for who knows how long..."
Her blue eyes grew hazy for a moment.
"In a place where nothing was visible, I had to choose where to settle by following only the light of awakeners' mana."
Genie had the sorrowful eyes that only someone who's wandered through deep, lonely darkness could possess.
"The mana of other awakeners looked like faint lanterns, so I passed them all by..."
As I listened, the story gradually drifted away from the past and turned into Genie complaining about her own misfortune.
"If I let out even a little power, I could feel my existence shattering into fragments."
The grumbling Genie suddenly snapped back to attention, her face clearing.
"Do you know what I saw when I was feeling completely lost and didn't know what to do?"
She pointed straight at me.
Or more precisely, at my butt.
"It was that enormous, overwhelmingly powerful mass of mana from you! It was so intense it nearly blinded me!"
Genie floated gracefully through the air and suddenly came right up to my nose.
A refreshing minty scent brushed past, but her eyes were deadly serious.
"I charged straight in without looking back!"
What the—
So in the end, she skipped over all the weak awakeners with tiny mana pools and came straight for my S-class power.
It was a reason that completely contradicted her dramatic story—like a kid who only eats green peppers.
"It was a crossroads between becoming scattered fragments inside multiple ability users or diving into a massive sun-like mana!"
Her emotions seemed to rise as she spoke, and she looked at me with teary eyes.
"I ran so desperately... and when I came to my senses, the destination was here! Of all places, your butt!"
Something—steam or tears, I couldn't tell—trickled down from the corner of her eye.
"Damn it, what a spectacular choice of location!"
Genie glared at my butt and screamed in frustration.
While she was talking, I curled up as tightly as possible in the corner of the bathtub.
The fact that my butt had been the final sanctuary chosen by a legendary spirit to avoid annihilation made my mind go blank.
Why had such an enormous mana that Genie would covet gathered in my butt?
And why had this blonde beautiful spirit ended up nesting inside my body like it was part of me?
It was far too cruel to be called a prank by the gods.
"This is so embarrassing... I really want to die..."
I wailed in shame.
Whether she knew how I felt or not, Genie said,
"Why would you die?!"
Suddenly full of confidence, she puffed out her chest.
"Now that I've awakened, you're basically the strongest in the universe!"
Genie had started speaking boldly, but then she noticed something. Her face turned bright red and she quickly looked away.
"F-First, put some clothes on! What's the point of looking at your naked body? It'll ruin my eyes."
Genie clicked her tongue, then turned back into smoke and slipped right back into my butt.
At that moment, the area around my rear grew hot again, and I felt a lively throbbing like a heartbeat.
"Sigh..."
An unreal situation had swept through the bathroom.
I let out a long breath and, with trembling hands, put my clothes back on.
When I came out to the living room, the moon outside the window looked rounder and more annoyingly plump than yesterday.
The most brutal night of my life was over, but now an even more humiliating and spectacular daily life awaited—one where I'd have to live with a beautiful spirit inside my butt.
The next morning, I stood in front of the mirror with bloodshot eyes.
Genie had spent the entire night talking in her sleep inside my butt or poking at my sphincter, saying things like,
Having stayed up all night, even putting on my school uniform pants felt exhausting.
The suffering continued even on the bus ride to school.
It seemed Genie could share my vision. She wouldn't stop chattering as she looked out the window.
It was the bus.
It was milk.
"Please be quiet... People are staring."
I muttered without moving my lips, using ventriloquism I'd never learned before. But the auntie sitting next to me gave me a strange look.
It seemed the voice coming from my butt could only be heard by me.
The moment I answered Genie, I'd just become the weird guy on the street.
When we passed through the main gate of Gaon Special Abilities High School, Genie's excitement reached its peak.
It seemed the mana pouring out from all the A-class awakeners smelled like delicious food to her.
That was what she said when she saw a red-haired female student.
That was what she said after spotting the senior who had tried to recruit me into the student council from afar.
Maybe because it had been so long since she'd seen the world, Genie was quite the chatterbox.
When I entered the classroom, Deok-gu, who sat next to me, waved cheerfully.
"Gangjin! Why do you look so pale today?"
"Uh... well, I didn't sleep much."
The moment I sat down, the hard surface of the chair pressed against my butt.
Genie screamed from inside my butt.
I buried my face on the desk.
Throughout the entire class, Genie never got tired and kept running her mouth.
She was butting in during the class that was explaining the story of Aladdin.
That was her complaint during mana mathematics class. She seemed to hate complex calculations.
I desperately scribbled with my pen, trying to block out the noise of Genie ringing inside me.
But right before afternoon classes ended, Genie delivered the finishing blow.
"Hey, Gangjin! Put some strength into your butt muscles right now."
Both of my cheeks started shaking violently, as if she was preparing something from inside my rear.
"Let me try opening up your mana circuit. If things stay like this, I'm going to go crazy from frustration!"
This girl was calmly attempting to socially assassinate me.
"No! If you do that here, it'll be a disaster!"
When I whispered, my friends in the neighboring seats looked at me.
I gave them an awkward smile, then quickly turned my head the other way.
Ding-dong—
The moment the bell signaling the end of class rang, I grabbed my bag with an awkward laugh and bolted out of the classroom.
To stop Genie's rampage that felt like it could explode at any second, I practically fled home through the back gate.
Behind the school.
The old alleys of the former downtown area took on a strange atmosphere as the sun began to set.
I hurried home with quick steps, trying to soothe Genie.
"Genie, please let's do this at home. You can come out as smoke or yell all you want there."
Genie was trying to tease me by calling me a coward.
Genie's voice suddenly turned low and serious.
"Why?"
I instinctively stopped walking.
The old streetlamp flickered with a faint light, and all the surrounding noise vanished as if in a vacuum.
A sticky air flowed across my skin.
Slither... slither...
The shadows on the alley floor stretched abnormally long, then black liquid-like shapes rose up.
They twisted their bodies grotesquely and surrounded me.
These were the 'Residues' I'd only heard about in stories.
Monsters formed from the condensed dregs of awakeners' runaway mana or unawakened abilities.
They couldn't directly harm human lives, but because they sustained themselves by sucking mana, they were no different from pests.
In the case of particularly powerful Residues, they could drain all of a person's mana. Once devoured, the victim would be spat out having lost all their abilities, essentially becoming a powerless person.
"W-what is this? Why are there Residues here all of a sudden?!"
I panicked and swung my bag, but the Residues scattered like smoke, reformed, and drove me into a dead-end alley.
"Hik!"
Fear rose all the way to my throat.
If the Residues sucked out all my mana, I'd have to live in this harsh world as a powerless person from now on.
That was no different from losing all social status.
Although an incredibly powerful S-class mana resided in my butt, to me—who didn't know how to draw it out—it was nothing but a heavy burden.
"I don't know how! If I put strength in my butt, I'll just fart!"
While I was screaming, the largest Residue raised its sharp claws and charged toward my chest.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
BOOM—!
At that moment, a flash of light and thunder shook the entire alley.
Before I could even open my eyes, an intense blue light struck my retinas and covered my vision.
"The top freshman at Gaon High... I heard you were an S-class awakener."
Black hair and brown eyes.
It was a girl who looked about the same age as me.
"And you're getting chased by these scraps and crying?"
She slammed a Residue's head into the ground with her right leg wrapped in lightning and landed gracefully.
Her long black hair fluttered, and her eyes gleaming through it carried a cold electric current.
The powerful current that exploded from the tip of her foot instantly vaporized the Residues.
The smell of burnt air filled the alley.
The fierce blue lightning that had been blazing died down once the situation was over.
She lightly wiped away her sweat and glanced over at me, who was still sitting on the ground.
"I'm Lee Chaeyeon. I'm in the class next to yours."
She introduced herself and held out her hand as if to help me up.
"Seeing you struggling against Residues, it looks like your ability hasn't manifested yet?"
"Ah... uh... yeah..."
I had no idea how to explain it, so I ended up telling a lie without thinking.
Genie protested violently from inside my butt, but of course Chaeyeon couldn't hear her.
"Even if your ability hasn't awakened, the amount of mana you possess is more than enough to attract Residues."
Then she handed me a business card.
Jungshim Taekwondo Dojo
"Once you figure out your ability, come find me in the next class after school tomorrow."
She left those short words, wrapped lightning around her right leg again.
"I've seen enough of an S-class awakener's pathetic side for one day."
Flash—
Then she shot out of the alley at incredible speed and disappeared from my sight.
I remained sitting on the ground, staring blankly in the direction she had vanished.
My heart was pounding like it would burst,
and Genie inside my butt was huffing in frustration.
"But... I really don't know how to use you or my butt..."
A brief silence fell.
My ability and Genie.
I needed to seriously think about how we could create synergy together.
After using the silence to calm her excitement, Genie spoke again.
Shame, fear,
and an unknown sense of excitement mixed together on my second day at Gaon Special Abilities High School as it came to a close.
I looked at the business card Chaeyeon had given me and thought that tomorrow's me needed to be at least a little different.