“and I will discover my overwhelming strength”. (Screenshot from Kyou Kara Maou.) This is a recurring topic in my fiction writing, but I would not call my current project autobiographical, really. Not in a literal sense, for sure.

“Kiseki” is simply the Japanese word for miracle, although they sure use it a lot more in love songs than we do. That may be because it sounds better, perhaps, or there is some nuance to the word that eludes me, or their culture is simply that much different.

In today’s context, however, Kiseki is the power to perform miracles, inherited by some people in my newest fiction sketch. The origin of the word will probably be explained in passing, at least I have sketched it in, in chapter 2.

As is often the case, this is inspired by some other work of fiction.  This time it is Kimagure Orange Road, a manga and anime from some 25 years ago. You can see it in the style too, it is amusing to see what was trendy back in my youth. Oh well.

When I say “inspired by”, I don’t mean that I am writing some kind of fan fiction. Rather, as usual, I compress the original story down into a long sentence or very short paragraph, then expand it again in a completely different direction. While the two stories may seem identical in their compressed form, it is highly unlikely that a casual reader would recognize any relationship between them when reading the story, if they haven’t read this explanation.

Condensed form: A teenage boy has near-miraculous powers, but have to try to not use them. This is not so easy when there are girls taking an interest in him or the other way around.

In Kimagure Orange Road, the reason to not use The Power seems to be simply to not attract unwanted attention to the fact that they are psychics. Every time the family attracts too much attention, they have to move and break all ties with the past, so that is a fairly convincing reason actually.

In Kiseki, there is additionally a motivation in the way the power works. It can be stored without limits, and the more of it you have stored at any one time, the faster it accumulates.  This is compared to a circle or sphere, which has an ever greater circumference or area as it grows. The larger this is, the more energy is drawn into it, and the faster it grows.  In addition, keeping the Kiseki in your mind for a long time changes you so that you for all future will be able to replenish it faster. It also slows down aging when you grow older.

In the story, it is speculated that this may be a case of intelligent design. People who lack patience and self-restraint are basically not trusted with as much power as those who are more careful and in control of themselves.  It is implied that many of the world’s top athletes and other prominent people are born with Kiseki, but because they use it every day, they never store up enough of it to do anything obviously miraculous. Just enough to give them an edge.

Even so, the young boy is strictly commanded to not have any children out of wedlock.  Even though these children will most likely not have Kiseki, they will carry the gene, and in a later generation they may have children with another carrier, and suddenly some random person grows up to have superpowers but without being prepared for it. The result could be pretty bad.  So the main character, at the age of 15, are told that his sperm is a weapon of mass destruction and could end the world as we know it.  (I did not find a way to literally insert “every sperm is sacred”, but I still may. It is still a rough sketch.)

There are certain things Kiseki cannot do, no matter how much you have of it. Most notably, it cannot bring back the dead. On a related note, it cannot heal someone who wants to die. It also cannot create something from nothing. Among the things that can be done, some take more Kiseki to accomplish, such as transmuting one substance into another, especially if you transmute the basic elements, like lead into gold. Healing is also quite Kiseki intensive, as it has to operate on billions of cells.  Even if it does not require much physical energy, it still takes a lot of “control energy”, which is more what Kiseki is here.

Obviously Kiseki cannot predict the future if doing so would change it. Apart from this, however, it can gather all kinds of information and augment the senses. This is fairly easy. Strangely enough, moving things – including oneself – is also pretty easy.  Flying, teleporting from one place to another in the blink of an eye, or moving at high speed are all fairly easy to accomplish and take little Kiseki. But if you do it often enough, it will still drain you, and there is always the risk of being caught. You don’t want to be “dissected like a frog by secret service” as one parent puts it.

So that’s it for the Kiseki part.  The girls are next up, they are still pretty vague.

***

I think the feeling of being special and having to hide your bright side is pretty common for young people. As for accumulating power and not being allowed to use it yet, I guess that may be derived from the way to wisdom, where you have to store up your reading and revelations and not blather them as soon as you get them. Obviously I still have a tendency to use them at once.  I am sure this will reflect itself in my poor main character. ^_^ But apart from that, not autobiography.