Chapter 3 - Did I Just Gain Powers?

"What the hell is going on…" Ethan mumbled with a bewildered look as he poked his flying phone, only to have it get attached to his finger.

"Huh…" Ethan blinked his eyes, wondering if he was still dreaming, and shook his finger to make it free itself from his phone.

But it wouldn't budge and was clinging to his finger like a magnet. He then used his other hand to remove the sticky phone from his finger, and it fortunately worked.

However, right when he thought things were alright, he saw that his phone was now stuck to the palm of his other hand.

"The fuck is this??" Ethan felt as if this was all just a weird dream, but things just seemed too real, and he was pretty sure by now he was wide awake but was unable to comprehend what was going on.

"What is wrong with my phone!" Ethan shook his left hand vigorously to make the phone drop to the bed, but it was not budging at all. As he tried to shake it off, his body moved slightly on the bed and touched the keys of his cycle, which clung to his arm just like the phone.

"You gotta be kidding me…" Ethan gulped as he began to panic slightly, not understanding what was going on, and got off the bed, only to realize that some objects in the room, metallic ones to be precise, were shaking vigorously, and the closer he moved towards them, the closer they were trying to come towards him. He was also feeling a strange buzzing sensation all over his body and couldn't comprehend what the hell was going on with his body.

In fact, a metal pin that was lying on the table beside him suddenly levitated into the air and clung to his body when he stumbled near the table.

"Get off me! Shit!" By now, Ethan felt like he was losing his mind and hoped that all this was not real. In fact, he was wary of using his hands to pull off these objects clinging to his body, afraid that they would stick to his hand instead.

But amidst all this confusion and shock, he noticed that things like plastic stuff, clothes, or glass objects were remaining stationary and was not showing any weird behavior even if he was literally standing near these things.

All the objects that were sticking to his body were metal, including his phone, which had a metallic side.

'Why only metal?' Ethan realized that this strange phenomenon was happening only with metal objects while the rest of the non-metallic ones weren't showing any weird behavior.

In fact, he took a small risk and picked up a plastic box with his right hand, and as expected, it wasn't clinging to his hand.

'Did I become a human magnet or what??' Ethan's heart was still pounding with adrenaline, making him more aware of what was going on.

His first instinct was to call for his mother, but then he stopped himself since he didn't want her panicking as well.

He then remembered the breathing techniques taught to students in the martial arts class, which could also help relieve tension and deal with shocking things.

He closed his eyes immediately and took a deep breath through his nose and then through his mouth while clearing his mind and only thinking about making these metal objects fall off his body.

After doing this for a few moments, he was astonished to feel the metal objects wobbling on his skin, and the next moment they completely fell off!

"Whew…the heck was that!" Ethan opened his eyes and saw that the metal objects were no longer clinging to his body and fell on the floor.

He also noticed that the other metal objects near him stopped shaking and vibrating, and everything seemed normal.

"My phone!" The moment he calmed down, he realized that his phone had dropped by over a foot on the floor and was about to pick it up, worried if he broke it since he couldn't afford to buy another one but stopped himself in worry that it would again stick to him.

But after some hesitation, he decided to pick it up slowly, and to his surprise, it wasn't sticking to his hand like before, and he was able to hold it normally.

"How weird…" Ethan mumbled as he picked up his keys as well and saw that nothing strange had happened.

He was sure what happened a minute ago was real and not just some dream, and so the sparks of curiosity within him were urging him to try and see if he could replicate the same phenomena.

He placed the phone and the keys on the bed as he stood beside his bed and pointed his palms at them as if trying to grab them from the air.

"Let's see…stick to my hand like before…" Ethan mumbled as he focused on the phone and the keys.

His eyes suddenly widened the moment he felt a weird sensation inside his hands including a strange pulling force emanating from his palms. And the next moment, the phone and the keys suddenly levitated into the air and rushed towards his palms on their own before sticking to them!

"Holy cow! No way! Did I really gain the power to move metals??" Ethan was totally mind blown by what he was seeing, something which he had seen only in superhero movies.

This time instead of feeling panicked or worried, he was feeling a strange sense of excitement and fever at the idea of gaining powers even though he had no idea how.

Superpowers only existed in fantasy or sci-fi novels, and looking at his hands which were trembling in excitement, he wondered what happened to him while he slept since he was damn sure he had never experienced something like this before.

Still, he decided to worry about that later but instead excitedly explored his newfound abilities as he took a deep breath and focused on making the phone and the key drop on the bed.

This time he was able to drop them with ease by simply focusing on his hands and wanting them to drop.

Then he motioned with his hands to make the phone levitate into the air instead of sticking to his hand, and astonishingly he was able to see the phone slowly go up in the air and down according to the motion of his hand.

"T-This is…unbelievable…" Ethan mumbled in exhilaration, feeling a sense of power flooding his mind upon seeing that he could move around metal objects as he wished. He was truly wishing this was not a dream and could feel his heart loudly thumping against his chest.

He repeated the motion of lifting the phone up and down in the air again as if playing with it to see how much control he had over its motion.

He found that he could pull it towards him or send it away from him. And to find out the range of how far he could send it away, he pushed it away towards the other end of the room where he suddenly felt a loss of control over the phone and…

*Clak!*

It fell on the ground immediately, making him clutch his hair for being dumb on trying his experiment on his phone. He immediately ran over and picked it up and was relieved that nothing bad had happened to it.

However, he found out the hard way that he would lose control of the object a few meters away from him.

Still, he wanted to know if he could move big objects since all this time, he only tried on small ones.

And so he looked at the large 2-meter long metal cupboard and put up both his hands in the air as he focused on moving it even though he knew it was quite a heavy object.

"Ughh…come on!!" He gritted his teeth as he tried his utmost to move it, but as expected, it wasn't budging a single inch, and he felt as if all the air inside his lungs got siphoned away. Apparently, using his ability came with a price and a greater one if he were to strain himself.

*Bang!*

"Dude, where the fuck are you? My sister will get pissed off if you don't get there soon!"

Ethan got startled when suddenly the door opened with a bang, and his best friend rushed in, huffing and panting.

However, he didn't notice the metal cupboard swaying a bit to the front before returning to its original position.