Having devoured my diabetes-inducing breakfast, I barely got out of my seat, my overfilled stomach weighing me down as I levitated out of my seat instead.
After I tasted the wonders of levitation, I no longer feel like walking.
Huh, so this is how those who just glide around all day must feel... pretty wonderful if you ask me, not to say extremely convenient.
Anyway, I think it's time I head to school.
So no one would see me, I flipped a proverbial switch and turned myself invisible. It felt a bit freaky at first since I couldn't see my own hands even though I was holding them in front of my eyes, so I made myself visible to me at least, though a bit transparent lest I forget I'm still invisible to others.
With that, I levitated towards the window, which looked big enough to be a fortress's wall from within, but probably as small as it originally was from the outside. When I took the first step out, space went swirly and stretchy, and then I suddenly found myself out of my room, standing on grass.
I looked back at the tiny window. Seeing the great hall within, I had it returned to its original state for obvious reasons. Maybe I'll try to find out later whether I can affect people's perceptions, so I can permanently expand the space under everyone's noses.
Now then, how do I get to school?
Looking at my brand-new watch with fancy mechanical mechanisms and runic numerals that runs on ambient energy, it seems that after a bit of play in the bathroom and a good meal, it's become a bit too late for my usual bus, and I have only about ten minutes left before classes begin.
With a distance of over thirty miles to cross, it's inevitable that I will be late again, or at least it was.
But now?
Still invisible, I started lifting off the ground, feeling my foot go up from heel to toe till I felt nothing against my feet at all. Now I'm completely hovering above the grass, at least an inch, and increasing distance.
My feet, no, I am slowly leaving the earth. I continue to levitate, eventually floating at least six feet above the ground, the world below me looking surreal since I'd usually be standing on something from this height.
My stomach churned at the realization that I was rising higher and higher above the ground, a deep-seated instinctive fear of heights instilled in all ordinary humans threatening to take over.
But I no longer am an ordinary human. So I swallowed hard, pushing the fear down with this thought. I couldn't let some monke psychological constraints limit me now...
I certainly did not feel such fear when I was a leviathan earlier.
I pushed down the fear that had been with me my whole monke life and willed myself higher, diverting my gaze from the ground to the horizon and the blue sky above. I rose to the level of the highest branch of the tree in the lawn, from which I took a leaf as the gentle breeze rushed past my face.
Well, this height would surely severely injure my human body, if not kill me, if I fell down.
Still, I flew higher, rising above the tree, not once looking down as I flew higher and higher into the sky with increasing speed, intending to reach that cloud high over there.
But then, morbid curiosity took over, compelling me to turn my gaze below for that brief moment.
Then I saw it: the world shrinking below me as the ground went further and further till, eventually, the houses and buildings started looking like tiny toy models.
The ground seemed impossibly far away, and a wave of anxiety hit me.
My stomach tightened again, and I hesitated flying to further heights.
For a moment, I wobbled in mid-air, fear of falling clawing at my insides, telling me to just levitate back to the ground where all monke belong.
I closed my eyes to stop the stupid ass self-preserving function of my monke brain; I took deep breaths to calm my nerves and the instinctual fight or, you know, flight response.
"Be calm, stupid monke brain; there is no danger to respond to..." I whispered to myself. "I'm the one in control, for fuck's sake. No one else is. How do you think I got up here? Everything is under my control. So fuck you, or rather, fuck me!"
"..."
"....Hahaha~! I really am fucking stupid!" I couldn't help but laugh at the stupidity of that part of the human brain, which I suppose, since it's a part of me, is my own stupidity.
Trying to preserve the tangible body while being a complete hindrance to my more intangible cognition. It is the physical root of all mental malady, I tell you, specifically its fight-or-flight response function, which bastardizes the clarity and stresses the fuck out of your mind.
So I laughed.
The passing wind seemed to carry not only the sound but also my nervousness as I laughed at my own stupidity. Laughter and smiling do help quite a bit in producing happy dopamine to counter the damaging effects of stress-causing cortisol. And I guess it's kind of working.
Hmph, if it holds me back from having fun then...
Fuck the instinctive fear of the human in me!
With that, I steeled myself and opened my eyes as I flew even higher at an accelerating speed, nearing and eventually flying past the clouds, which did not at all feel soft and fluffy but wet and a bit lukewarm like pee.
Upon reaching high above the clouds, I assumed the 'T-pose' like I was Superman and stared below at the sea of clouds and the tiny little world we live beyond them.
The sensation was beyond anything I could have ever imagined as I continued to gaze down—I think the sheer magnificence of the view is making my fear seem trivial.
And so I flew faster, faster, then faster still as I went higher and higher. The feeling was pure freedom, the kind of feeling people only dream about. Ever dream of flying? This is like that, except, you know, to me it's real.
Before I knew it, I was zooming, zigzagging, rolling, and looping through the sky, the wind whipping through my long hair, which felt amazing.
I darted through the clouds; the moisture, which had been warm at first, grew cool as it evaporated from my skin and clothes, and I reached a speed fast enough to feel the warmth of air friction. Aerodynamics tugging at my body while I rejected the force 'logically' big enough to destroy my monke body.
"HahaHAHAHA~! I love being human~!" Or so I realize after overcoming a fear that only plagues humans.
Oh, humans and the thousand natural shocks and outrageous fortunes their flesh and mind is heir to. If I were a creature that can naturally fly like a dragon or leviathan I probably would not fully appreciate the joys of overcoming something as basic as a fear of height, for I would not fear it in the first place.
The tiny little inconveniences like hunger, clothing, shelter... worries, and dreads. All sorts of human shit thrown at them by fate, if I were a creature beyond all that, would I enjoy life as much?
As the saying goes, extremes go hand in hand; the more you suffer, the sweeter the joy when it comes. If there were no obstacles, how could there be an accomplishment? If there were no inconvenience, how could there be convenience?
And so I've decided to be as human as possible.
After all, now that I seem to have endless means, I just need endless ends.
In this regard, being human is absolutely perfect, I suppose.
With such thoughts in mind, I searched below. I wanna see the distance more clearly so I can find my school. Thus, I temporarily upped my visual acuity a bit. Around a thousand times, to be exact...
Something which I instantly found to be quite significant as all of a sudden, the world was a thousand times sharper, a thousand times more vibrant, and had a thousand times greater depth, allowing me to see forms, textures, and colors I couldn't before, something which I confirmed by looking at the exquisite structure and wings of a butterfly hovering above the flowers growing on a mountain hill in the far far distance.
Looking for a sign of where that hill exactly was, I found it, and it was...
Hundreds of miles away in another freaking city.
Well, that is absolutely wicked.
In fact, my eyesight has become so good that I can even see microorganisms, which was the reason I had limited my casual daily view to 8k to begin with. But well, I guess it's a bit late now as I caught a glimpse of them on my skin.
Ew!
With a hurried thought, I obliterated all the icky wriggling countless microorganisms on the surface of my body, and to double down on it, I also willed it so that if any microorganisms like bacteria or viruses, heck, let's even extend it to all filth in general, including dirt and dust.
If any of such taints ever so slightly touched even the fabric of my clothes, much less the surface of my skin or hair...
They will be eradicated from reality.
Of course, I'm also aware that some of those microorganisms are actually beneficial, like the microbiomes in your stomach helping you break down food or on your skin helping you keep moisture, so I left the rest to reality to deal with any complications that may arise from their absence.
After all, I believe all that I really need to be healthy is to think that I'm healthy.
And now that I have no singular bacteria in me, I will no longer suffer from body odor, nor will my shit even smell like shit anymore since they were apparently the cause of such trouble that plagues humans.
Now feeling slightly better that no other icky little squirming and crawling countlessly reproducing living organism anywhere near my body, I directed my gaze once again at the sights increasingly far below me as I flew higher and higher to the very edge of the part of the atmosphere where it's as cold as winter.
It was then that I caught a glimpse of a city below; although it was the city where I live, I'd never seen it so far above before. From this high up, the farms of skyscrapers look so small and insignificant. But with my new eyesight, I could take in all of it and see even the little details all the way from here.
All the buildings looked smaller than a Lego set, yet I could see every little detail on them, all the amount of build-up shit on a statue's head or focus in on the eye of a small bird that for a brief moment, we've basically locked eyes without it knowing...
Looking at the grand city at least a hundred thousand feet below me, I thought the view would once again cause fear to grip me, but unexpectedly, I couldn't help but grin.
What was I so afraid of?
Evidently, gravity no longer has a hold on me.
If it did, it wouldn't have let me go so far from its clutches. So why should I be afraid of its hands now that it could no longer pull me to my death? I should not fear it at all.
On the contrary...
It should fear me.
I'm the one killing it right now, not the other way around. Its death was the reason why I was floating all the way up here in the first place—the death of gravitational forces acting upon me.
Knowing this, I continue to take in the great view below with nothing but admiration and not a single hint of that initial fear. All so far away yet so close, a vast expanse that is all within my unclouded vision. Yeah, this kind of feels like I'm a Creator looking down at my creation.
The feeling was something else...
With that thought, I aimed for the horizon and willed myself forward, faster and faster, as the increasingly colder wind only abated by my clothing rushing past my face until the world below became a blur. The speed was a rush of adrenaline that made my heart pound with exhilaration.
Experimenting further, I tried different maneuvers. I looped and spun, twisted and turned, each motion more daring than the last. The wind roared in my ears, but it felt like music, a symphony of my newfound power. My fear of heights eventually turned into nothing but laughs and giggles as I conquered the sky, making it my new playground.
"Hahaha~! I can fly~!" I said to the sky, laughing all the way.