Father tried to wake me before dawn.

  He pushed the door open with a careful gentleness. “Jun-Tao,” he whispered. “Depot day. Come on.”

  I curled deeper into the blanket. The air outside the cocoon was cold, and I didn’t want to be a tool monkey and floor sweeper this early. Or at all.

  When he shook my shoulder a little harder, I let out a theatrical groan and buried my head under the pillow.

  A quiet exhale. One of those breaths adults use when they decide a fight isn’t worth it. “Fine. Sleep. Your loss.”

  The door clicked shut a moment later.

  I lay there a long time after that, half awake, half drifting. Not really thinking. Just feeling.

  It’s inside me.

  Not like hunger or a heartbeat. More like a Tower poking out like a pimple — constant and impossible to ignore now that I know it’s there. When I close my eyes, I see the bag again — the same one from the dream. Five things lying in a circle, their edges sharp in my mind’s eye: brass, silk, glass, silver, key. They glitter like they’re alive.

  I eventually drag myself out of bed, legs heavy, the chill of the floor a reminder that the world is still the same, even if something in me isn’t.

  Mother’s already in the kitchen, hair still damp from a quick wash, uniform half on. She eyes me over a chipped cup of Fake!tea. “Decided to rejoin the living?”

  I grunt something that can be generously interpreted as “good morning” and sit down.

  She slides a bowl of rice porridge toward me and ruffles my hair. “Your father already left. You can tell him why you were too delicate to get up when he comes home during lunch.”

  I eat in silence, spoon scraping the side of the bowl. It tastes plain, the kind of food that doesn’t demand attention. Which is good. My attention is elsewhere anyway — on the protrusion inside me, steady as breath.

  When the bowls are clean and dried and Mother leaves for work, I end up in the bathroom to mess with the only resource I have an unlimited amount of.

  The mirror looks back at me while I stand on a stool. I cup my hands under the faucet and fill them with cold water. Then I just… stare at it.

  I don’t need to speak or gesture. I just reach for that thing inside. The Tower. The bag.

  It answers.

  The warmth doesn’t crawl from somewhere inside me, down my arms, and out through my fingers. No. One moment I feel nothing outside my body, and the next the water is an extension of this newfound sense. The surface tension thickens under my palms. The water doesn’t slosh or spill.

  I slowly let it trickle down onto the porcelain sink, dragging my fingertip through it. A line forms — not just a streak of wetness, but a clean, formed shape, like glass pretending to be water. I draw a curve. It holds.

  It’s beautiful. Not complicated. Not grand. Just… exactly the way I wanted it to be.

  When I swipe a finger through the curve, it shatters soundlessly into drops and runs down the drain like nothing ever happened. The water disappears from my sense.

  I try again, slower. The energy appears just as easily — almost like turning on a light. It’s less about movement and more about intention. When I swipe the enhanced water, it holds its shape until I don’t want it to anymore. Then it flows like normal. When I try to make specific shapes, the enhanced water returns to the original form as long as it has energy. The more it’s disturbed, the less I can feel it. Once the energy is gone, it obeys gravity and slides down the drain. Several tries show it can take one big change to its form or three small ones. How fast the change happens doesn’t seem to matter, but a handful of water poured slowly versus thrown makes a bigger difference in how the shape breaks.

  Then I get creative with the way I write, and the energy flows into my hands instead of the water. I don’t feel it beyond that sixth sense, but when I shape unenhanced water it transfers into it with every stroke. It feels less like I’m the one shaping it and more like the energy is taking my intentions and making them real.

  Triangle. Circle within a circle with not a drop between them. Even a three-dimensional pyramid stands without a wobble. And the moment I willingly take the energy away, stop paying attention, or manifest it elsewhere, it returns to normal and flows down the drain.

  Does it return to its unenhanced state because it’s water, or will the same happen with metal?

  And underneath it all, the bag in my mind hums softly — as if watching. Approving. Every time the energy manifests, the hum falls silent.

  I rinse the sink, shake out my hands, and the water swirls down the drain like it never held anything at all.

  The apartment still has its usual weekend quiet after I dry my hands.

  Mother’s still here — she hasn’t gone to the garrison yet. She’s in the small workshop adjacent to the living room, the one she calls “the corner” like it’s a territory claimed by wires and the smell of solder. Something buzzes, then the sharp scent of heated metal drifts through the doorframe. She’s working. Which means she’s only half aware of anything else.

  Perfect.

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  The living room is modest but lived-in — a single, open space that carries the quiet weight of routine. A low, state-issue couch sits against the wall, its fabric thinning at the seams where Father always rests after shift. A rectangular table built for six dominates the center, a reminder that the state expects families to grow, to fill the chairs with children. Only three are ever used. The remaining seats stay tucked in tight, their surfaces gathering a thin layer of dust.

  The shelves along the wall are cluttered with the detritus of a family that had just enough to allow waste: a chipped ceramic soldier figure from one of Father’s postings, a yellowed photograph of Mother beside her former Catapult — hair shorter, smile sharper. An old wind-up clock from my dead grandparents that no longer ticks but still gets dusted every week. A dented thermos. A stack of ration tins turned into makeshift containers for papers. A cracked mug Father swears came from “the good times.”

  None of that can be touched. Not unless I want both of them breathing down my neck.

  But then — tucked inside the utensil drawer, half hidden — I spot a coaster. Cheap, gray composite. Probably from the same state factory that made half the furniture in this district. No one’s ever cared about it.

  I pluck it from the shelf. It’s light. Rough-edged. Useless and perfect.

  I sit cross-legged on the floor with a view toward the workshop door and balance it on my palm. The Tower is there, waiting, like something that’s always known this was going to happen.

  The first try is clumsy. A nudge rather than a command. The coaster warps only a fraction before the energy is spent. The fingerprints I made on it don’t go away.

  The second push is smoother. The warmth bleeds into the plastic, and it softens — not like melting, but like clay performing its function. The air doesn’t move. No sound. Just a quiet reshaping under my fingers.

  The edges stretch when I imagine them stretching, and amateurishly pull. The center dips when I think about hollows and inexpertly push with my thumbs. It’s not forcing the material; it’s guiding it, like brushing dust off a surface and finding the thing underneath.

  The bag hums silently in my mind.

  I run my thumb along the new shape. Not a coaster anymore.

  A small, shallow sake bowl with soft edges and a single clean line down the middle — because that’s what I thought would be beautiful.

  The bag hums louder in my mind. The brass gear turns. The silk rustles without wind.

  A laugh slips out of me before I can stop it. Quiet, but real.

  Then I let go.

  The energy is gone within a moment. Yet the bowl doesn’t change.

  It holds.

  Somewhere in front of me, something clatters on Mother’s workbench. She swears under her breath.

  I freeze, listening.

  Nothing. No footsteps coming my way.

  I run my thumb over the smooth curve of the bowl again. It’s cold. Solid. Real.

  I need to get a notebook and write down my findings.

  Experiments, Saturday Morning — Jun-Tao

  Date: September 16, 2999

  Pressure test

  I press down on the bowl with both thumbs, expecting it to crumble or melt. Instead, the shaped part resists. Not unbreakable, but just as strong as it should be for something this cheap. The edges don’t even flake.

  Re-shaping

  I focus on the line running through the middle, imagine it bending upward. The surface softens again under my touch, flowing like heated wax, but without heat. I guide the curve into a small ridge. The moment I stop, it hardens in place. The bowl is now partitioned into two.

  No hands

  I set my palms on my knees, stare at the bowl, and try to push that warmth outward without moving. It almost works — the air doesn’t shift, the bowl doesn’t tremble, and the shape doesn’t change. I can feel the resistance, like trying to lift something just a bit too heavy. I try to pull it back, to make it float or slide. The shape holds still.

  Breaking the shape

  I smack the ridge with a tiny fist. It doesn’t shatter, but it creaks like the weak plastic it should be. When I push the hum through my fingertips again, it smooths itself out.

  Other objects

  A ration tin folds just as easily, like soft clay. A chipped spoon curves into a spiral and sharpens into a knife. A chunk of soap melts into clean, sharp lines the moment I think, make it beautiful. But when I try it on the wall tile, nothing happens. Too anchored. Too much part of the world. Other household objects like the stove can be manipulated, but only the parts I can see. I refrain from messing too much with it out of fear.

  Changing density

  I picture the coaster as something solid. Press on it with all my might. Nothing. The material I can shape is only the part I put energy into.

  Two things at once

  I grab a broken spoon with my other hand and try to reshape both objects together. The moment I split my focus from the first item, the energy thins out, and it can no longer be shaped.

  Tool use

  I take the knife and, as I imagine the shape the bowl should take, the energy flows through my hands into it and stays there. I expected it to feel like a cliché — like the knife was now an extension of my hand. Instead, it feels as if something is guiding my hand to fulfill my design with every cut and poke into the bowl. In the end, my name is engraved into it as if by a 3D printer out of my old life.

  Combination

  When I wedge the knife — sharpened to the maximum — into the bowl and try to fill the creation with energy, only one of them reacts. The other stays the same. When I grab another coaster and lay it atop the bowl-knife thing, it also counts as a separate object.

  Reversion

  I press the coaster flat again in my mind. The edges soften, flow back down, and then, without much fanfare, it reverts. As do the tin and the spoon. They lock into the exact shape they were before I touched them. Same scratches. Same dinged corners. No trace of my meddling.

  I wipe my hands on my pants, pick up the once-again utensils, and set them back exactly where I found them. If anyone checks, they’ll never know they spent the morning being a bowl or a knife.

  I sit down on the couch and lean back.

  The apartment is still filled with the faint whirr of Mother’s tools in the workshop. She hums to herself, out of tune but steady. If she walked out right now, she’d find nothing out of place — no reason to look twice at me. Except for the fact that an eight-year-old is sitting quietly on a couch in a room with no entertainment.

  I rest my chin on my hands and look at the clock. In a few minutes Father will come back for a short lunch before returning to work. That gives me a little time to think.

  This power — this Bag thing sitting inside me — doesn’t scream. It doesn’t need to be seen. It’s quiet. Controlled. Invisible, if I want it to be.

  Which means it can stay a secret.

  For now.

  Telling Mother or Father… the thought crawls along the inside of my skull. What would they do? Would Mother march me straight to the garrison? Would Father tell me to keep my head down and wait for someone in uniform to decide what I am? Maybe they’d call it a “gift” or a “mutation.” Maybe they’d test me. Strip everything away until this thing isn’t mine anymore. For all the times it feels like I don’t live in the future, I still know they have advancements we couldn’t have imagined back on Earth. Things I still can’t imagine.

  And I don’t want to find out.

  Not when it feels like my chance at greatness.

  No one noticed the water in the sink. No one noticed the coaster. As long as I keep my head low, no one has to.

  I could practice in the quiet moments — mornings, nights, when everyone’s too busy living their lives to look at me. If I’m careful. If I keep it small.

  Do I even have to practice? This power doesn’t feel like something that changes. It feels like a constant — an ability with limits but no cooldown.

  I’ll keep this between me and the Bag.

  Now to think about how to make money with it.