The sun blazes down from a cloudless sky.

All around me, cicadas buzz noisily, their cries ringing out nonstop.

I walk along a narrow country path, rice fields stretching out beside me.

“Hot…”

I wipe the sweat seeping out with my hand.

It’s summer vacation.

My family and I are staying at my paternal grandparents’ house. We do this every year, partly to visit our ancestors’ graves.

We finished the grave visit yesterday, and today I’d been lazing around in my room since morning, rolling about, killing time by droning “ahh, ahh” in front of the electric fan, until Grandpa finally kicked me out, telling me that kids should go play outside.

That said, there’s nobody my age around here to hang out with. So I plan to wander around aimlessly for a bit, then slip back home once enough time has passed so I don’t get kicked out again.

Before I knew it, I’d reached the foot of a mountain.

Come to think of it, there’s a small stream nearby. Maybe I’ll go cool off, I think, and head that way.

When I arrive, I see someone’s already there.

A kid about my age.

She’s sitting under a tree near the riverbank, knees pulled up to her chest. I can’t see her face since it’s buried against her knees, but judging from her girly clothes, she’s probably a girl.

What should I do? Maybe I should turn back? As I hesitated, the girl reacted to the sound of gravel crunching under my feet and lifted her head.

I catch my breath.

This might come out of nowhere, but I’m a sucker for pretty faces. Yeah, yeah, I can already hear someone telling me to look in a mirror before saying that, but cut me some slack. My childhood friend happens to be Asuka, the (soon-to-be-cuckolded) heroine of this world. Of course my standards would get raised.

Even so, from my perspective, this girl easily earns a perfect ten out of ten. She has an undeniably cute face.

For some reason, though, she’s been crying, and her eyes are red.

What should I do? Go for it? I should, right? I have to!

I’m looking for a new encounter with a girl, after all!

“Hey, hey, what’s wrong? Did something happen?”

“…It’s nothing.”

“I see.”

I walk over to the girl under the tree and, with a heave-ho, sit down beside her.

Hmm. So… what now?

…Like I’d know.

I have no idea how you’re supposed to comfort a girl you’ve just met.

If I were that good at it, I wouldn’t have died single in my past life.

While I was going back and forth in my head, trying to figure out what to say, the girl spoke up first, to my relief.

“I can’t use my power very well.”

“Your power? What kind?”

“My… abilitee.”

“Oh, an ability.”

Abilities.

In this world, there are powers like that.

People who can use them are called ability users.

The country actively promotes the development and training of ability users. The reason for that, something I still find hard to believe even with memories of my past life, is that this world is home to demons, which are super-lifeforms that constantly threaten humanity’s survival.

“Sorry. I don’t think I can help. I can’t use abilities or anything.”

“Eh? You can, though?”

“I can? What do you mean?”

“Your… abilitee. You can use abilitees.”

“So I can… wait, what!? I can use abilities!?”

“Y-yeah. I can tell.”

“Huh.”

I look down at my hands and clench and unclench them.

It never even crossed my mind that I might be one of those mysterious power users.

I’ve been a hardcore mecha anime fan ever since my past life.

But I don’t dislike ability battle stories either.

Somehow, it feels like my sealed right arm is starting to throb.

I thrust my right hand forward with a sharp motion.

“Be swallowed by my jet-black flames――Big Bang!”

“…”

“Tremble before the thunder sent from the heavens――Meteor!”

“…”

“…”

“…”

It seems I managed to stop the girl from crying, if only by accident.

I clear my throat awkwardly and then ask her,

“So… how do you use abilities? Could you teach me?”

“You feel mana.”

“Mana…”

“Mana is near your heart.”

“I see.”

Mana. Come to think of it, I’ve heard of that before.

Mana is a mysterious energy used to activate abilities.

Whether someone is an ability user or not depends on whether they possess mana.

In other words, since I’m someone who can supposedly use abilities, that means I have mana.

And it’s near my heart.

Satisfied with that explanation, I close my eyes. I take a deep breath in, then let it out.

I turn my attention inward.

Entering a state of selflessness, becoming one with nature…

“So? Did you feel it?”

“…It’s hot today.”

“Yeah. So, what about the mana?”

“I don’t feel anything at all. Not even a little. Can you really feel it?”

“I could feel it right away.”

“No way, that’s a lie.”

“It’s not a lie! It’s true!”

The girl puffs out her cheeks in a sulk.

“Sorry, sorry. Don’t get mad. But it’s true, I really don’t get it. What do you think I should do?”

“There’s a way to practice it.”

“Oh? Then could you teach me?”

“Ask your dad or your mom.”

“You can’t teach me?”

“I just… don’t want to.”

“Ah, is it some kind of secret technique?”

“Secret… technique?”

The girl tilts her head to the side.

After asking her more about it, it turns out it’s not some secret technique after all. It’s a training method any ability user uses, something I could probably look up online once I got home.

The reason she was hesitant seemed to be that she simply didn’t want to teach me herself.

But still.

Here I was, with a golden opportunity to have a cute girl teach me hands-on.

There’s no way a guy would back down at a moment like this.

“Please! I’m begging you! Just this once!”

“…Okay.”

She finally gives in to my desperate pleading.

The girl timidly reaches out and takes both of my hands.

We end up staring at each other from up close.

Big, round eyes. Really cute.

“How is it?”

“Huh? Is this… already starting?”

“It doesn’t hurt or feel bad or anything, does it?”

“W–wait, is it really that dangerous!?”

She looks at me anxiously.

I start to feel uneasy too.

But so far, there’s no sign of anything unusual happening to my body.

For some reason, the girl looks confused.

“What should I do… Is it okay if I make it go around more?”

“Go around?”

“Well, um… I pass my mana to you through my right hand, and then it comes back to me through your left hand.”

“Huh.”

So basically, her mana flows through my hands, circulates through my body, and then returns to her through my other hand. That’s how it’s cycling, I guess.

“All right. Then let it go around more.”

“Is that okay?”

“Yeah, probably. There’s nothing weird going on with my body.”

“O–okay.”

The girl was extremely nervous at first, but once she realized that nothing was happening to me even as time passed, she gradually got into the swing of things and started smiling.

“Here comes a fresh order of spinny-spinny! Spinny-spinny, please!”

“Yeah!”

“Table eight is getting spinny-spinny too! Extra spinny-spinny, please!”

“Nfufu, spinny-spinny.”

We laugh together for no real reason.

That’s just how kids are. It’s all energy.

With energy alone, they can become friends.

Evening comes. Two shadows holding hands stretch long along the farm path.

As we walk back, we reach a fork in the road.

“Ah… I go this way…”

The girl’s face clearly shows how reluctant she is to part.

I clench my fist.

Today, I managed to get a little closer to this cute girl. If we keep growing closer like this, then someday we’ll become really close as adults, and maybe even end up getting married…

Luckily, I’ll be staying at my grandparents’ house for a few more days.

“Do you think we could meet again tomorrow?”

“Huh?”

“Well, I never did manage to feel mana, right? So I was thinking it’d be really helpful if you could teach me again tomorrow.”

“Yeah! Sure!”

“Then let’s meet at the same place as before after lunch tomorrow.”

“Okay!”

The girl lets go of my hand, waves goodbye, and heads off.

I wave back and watch her go.

Ah, there was something important I forgot to ask.

“I’m Saitou Shouta! What’s your name?”

“I’m Mirai! Isshiki Mirai!”

“Mirai…? Huh, Mirai!? Isshiki Mirai!?”

“Yeah! See you tomorrow, Shou-kun!”

As she turns back toward me with the sunset behind her, I can’t help but picture what Mirai might look like ten years from now, all grown up.

Like I’ve said before, this world is the setting of a certain doujin manga.

And the author even drew a sequel.

【Naturally, I’m NTR’d (Ability User Arc)】

After having his childhood friend Asakura Asuka taken from him, the protagonist, Saitou Shouta, spends his high school days in a bleak, colorless haze.

A turning point comes in his second year. After a class reshuffle, he ends up sitting next to a girl and gradually becomes close enough to talk with her regularly. Her name is Isshiki Mirai. Alongside Asuka, Mirai is one of the most popular beauties at school.

As they grow closer, Shouta learns that Mirai is an ability user. Despite possessing extraordinary talent, she is considered a failure because she can’t properly control her powers. Shouta begins accompanying her during her training.

Though Shouta isn’t an ability user himself and can only cheer her on from nearby, for reasons unclear, Mirai eventually learns to control her abilities after several months. She even succeeds in defeating demons, the duty assigned to ability users. The two share in that joy together.

However, from that point on, Mirai becomes busy with demon-hunting missions and starts missing school frequently. Their chances to interact dwindle. By their third year, another class reshuffle places them in separate classes, leaving them with almost no contact at all, and when Shouta occasionally sees her in the hallway and tries to speak to her, she acts distant.

Then, one day during a holiday, Shouta spots Mirai in town, happily linking arms with an unfamiliar man. When he calls out to her on impulse, Mirai tells him the man is her boyfriend. He’s a confident, lean, muscular handsome guy.

That night, Shouta sat at home, still shaken, when his phone buzzed. It was a message from Mirai, with a video attached. When he opened it, the screen showed Mirai in an indecent state, having sex and crying out again and again. The man was probably the same one he’d seen earlier that day.

“Until just recently~, I liked you, Shou-kun~♡ But now~, compared to you, Shou-kun, who can’t even beat a D-rank demon~♡ I loooove~♡ a dependable, super-strong handsome guy who can take down A-rank demons~♡ Sooo, sooo, sooo much~♡”

“Hah…”

The cawing of crows pulls me out of my flashback and back into reality.

Mirai is already gone from the dirt path between the rice fields.

I drop to the bare dirt, both hands and knees hitting the ground.

So that’s it… someday, that girl is going to be made to go ahe-ahe by a lean, handsome guy…

In the first place, I was supposed to meet Mirai in high school, right? I had no idea we’d run into each other in a place like this…

I really thought we could get close… but just like with Asuka, is giving up my only option…?

I tilt my face up toward the sky. As I let out a sigh, it melts into the darkening sky where the stars are beginning to appear.