Mizu didn’t tell anyone about freezing the puddle. That night, when he returned to his room, he still had a strange tingling sensation in his left palm. It wasn’t like touching ice – it was like… solving a difficult math problem, and suddenly understanding something.

  A few days later, he tried again. A small basin of water, in an abandoned lab in the basement of Pein Station. No incantations, no mana-conducting tools. Just himself and a vague idea: focus.

  The first time, nothing happened.

  The second time, his hands felt… drier.

  The third time, there was a very slight crackling sound – and a thin layer of transparency rose to the surface of the water, mottled like frost.

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  He wasn’t happy. He just watched. At that time, Mizu didn’t call it “power.”

  Instead, he named it the 47-b reaction.

  Then he began to experiment. Once, when he heated the salt solution, instead of evaporating, it crystallized in a spiral. Another time, when he touched a leaking pipe, the water inside... changed direction. Little things - strange, but not drastic. No one noticed. No one cared.

  But Mizu recorded them all. In a notebook, in neat handwriting, thousands of fragmented notes:

  "The water in the flask reacts if the left hand is in contact long enough - the delay ranges from 0.8s to 1.3s."

  "The feeling of twitching in the wrist every time the reaction occurs - like a reflex system, not related to mana?"

  "Can't control the amount - but it seems... I'm not 'calling' the water, but 'encouraging' it?"

  One night, when he couldn't sleep, he thought: If I don't have mana... then what is reacting?