That is a weird rock! It looks like wood, if wood were dark green with golden rings, and shaped like a cartoon sun missing one of its rays. Seiji isn't normally a Weird Rock liker, but he picks this one up.

It's extremely smooth - not slippery, he can pick it up without issue - and neither cool nor warm to the touch.

Huh, it feels like if air was solid. He turns it over in his hand - it looks like a star that used to have seven points, one of which broke off - and feels for any sign of past breakage.

Nope! It's completely unblemished - no rough edges to speak of. It's also extremely flat - if Seiji expected it to bulge out in the center or taper to points near the edges, his expectation will be bucked. (The edges aren't flat, though, they're rounded.)

Huh, weird. He turns it over a couple more times, then, when this activity hits the limit of his (short) attention span, slips it into his pocket and returns to his actual task, which is checking the mail.

He gets reminded of it and takes it out of his pocket to examine a couple times before bed, but does not uncover any secrets.

The next day:

"Hey, Sylas, check out this weird rock I found yesterday."

"Huh, that is a weird rock. You sure it's a rock and not… I dunno, dyed glass?"

"I guess it feels smooth like glass, yeah, but it isn't - I dunno, clear?"

He holds it up to the sunny window to demonstrate that it does not let light through.

"Yeah, I see what you mean. And it's weirdly matte, too, I'd expect glass to be shinier… plastic, maybe?"

"Yeah, maybe. Wouldn't plastic be shiny too?"

"Well, I dunno, there's kinds of plastic. I guess what I mean is that it looks like it was made."

"Yeah. I mean, it'd be really weird if it was natural, wouldn't it? What with how straight and even the shape is."

"Yeah, and the bit right here…"

He runs a finger over the shortest edge.

"Yeah! Maybe it's part of something? I just dunno what it could be, especially 'cause it's really pretty."

"Well, was there anything else that looked like it nearby when you found it? Where did you find it, anyway?"

"Nnnnnno, I don't think so? I found it by the mailbox. I think it probably woulda looked less interesting if it was - I dunno, obviously a missing piece or whatever? But I don't remember seeing anything else that was this color, or anything like that."

"Weird!"

Sylas doesn't have any other angles at this time, so he lets the topic drop and starts complaining about something that happened in class yesterday.

Later:

He's looking at the rock again. He isn't entirely sure why, at first - he's never had a particular head for mysteries. But it bothers him. It's not just the texture, or the shape, or the way that he can't seem to leave fingerprints on it…

Maybe it's stupid of him, but - maybe the thing that bothers him is that this feels like something from a movie, or Harry Potter. An ordinary person finds something Other and opens up a new world of possibilities. Something that just doesn't happen in real life, even though he wishes it would–

The rock vanishes from out of his hands.

Maybe stuff like that does just happen in real life?????

Maybe it does!

Seiji may notice a new sense! Then again, he may not, since there isn't currently anything to sense.

There might be something, at the edges of his perception, but he might just be imagining it. He's pretty sure he wasn't just imagining the rock, though, he showed Sylas and everything. He resists the temptation to immediately text Sylas for confirmation, just in case… well, he isn't sure what might happen but what if it's bad.

Nothing happens.

Nothing happened yet. He's going to continue to be antsy for… well, not that long, he's still not winning any awards for attention span. But it'll be itchy, as a sort of background radiation thing.

… At least until he accidentally thwacks his elbow against a corner.

There's that new sense, now undeniably detectable! It's telling him that his elbow hurts.

Well, his nocioceptors are telling him that. The new sense is telling him that he can do something with the pain, though.

Okay, sure, he'll - move the pain, apparently, on a dimension that feels like it has a "left" and a "right" despite not corresponding to anything except his new sense of the pain.

An object in the new-to-Seiji genre of Weird Flat Rock appears! This one is different from the one he found, though, both in shape and in general look. It feels the same to the touch - smooth and without any apparent temperature - but it's cranberry-colored and a little translucent and so glossy it looks like it's glowing a little. And it looks kind of like a bird's head - there's six flat sides instead of one, and one long triangle extending from the seventh.

He can still weirdsense the dull pain in his elbow, but it seems to be faded, somehow. Diminished.

He… moves the pain again?

Another rock appears! It's exactly the same as the first one he made. Also, his new sense is telling him that the pain in his elbow is metaphorically greyed out. Still there, still mildly annoying, but inaccessible to be Moved.

He tries anyway.

Yeah, no.

Well, it was worth a shot.

Okay, do these two new Weird Flat Rocks do anything?

They're not exactly levitating from his hands to do a jig.

Well, neither did the first one. He slips 'em into his pocket and continues to his room, since he's abruptly aware that he's spent the past 30 seconds just standing in the hallway dumbfounded and would like to be dumbfounded not in the hallway.

Okay, so.

What was happening when the rock vanished? He - was wanting to be a wizard, or at least the equivalent of a wizard. He wanted this to be… maybe not the call to adventure, he'd kinda prefer to just live a life of magic-augmented fun and comfort, but the promise that this strange thing happening to him was more than just one of the millions of coincidences that happen every day but a strange thing happening to him, a gateway into a world that had been kept from him.

Are these rocks just… magic wands for whatever you want? Powered by pain, and not even that much?

He wishes to be a really good wizard who knows what he's doing.

No knows-what-he's-doing materializes.

So maybe he can't wish to know what he's doing, or maybe it's just that these rocks aren't strong enough. He didn't even get the elbow nerve, earlier.

He sets down the coins and smacks himself in the cheek as hard as he can.

It stings. More importantly, it lights up his painsense! He can tell that it's more than before, not just literally but in the sense that it's over some sort of… threshold. He could do something slightly different, if he moved it.

He does something slightly different!!!

He gets: a new shape! As he could have possibly predicted, it's got two long points rather than just one, positioned almost-opposite from each other on the central septagon.

The aura of usefulness around the pain drops sharply.

With a giggle, he moves the pain one, two, three more times and collects three corresponding one-pointed Weird Rocks. Holy shit this is so cool.

Okay, so maybe he hasn't done much. But he's discovered at least a step towards being able to make a ✨ magic powers ✨ level Weird Rock. And he's getting a better sense for his not-pain sense, too - he can perceive differences in type of pain. It's weirdly… beautiful?

He should probably figure out what either type of Weird Rock can do.

… or maybe he can try to make more of the twofers! And see if he can hit three points! He slaps himself again, on both cheeks, repeatedly.

Well, hitting the same spot twice definitely increases the level of usable pain, though that caps out at just over two two-pointers.

Yeah at this point he doesn't even care because this has gotten weirdly fun.

He makes the coins, though, and it's slightly less fun to smack himself when the pain is less pretty to his shiny new sense.

He calms down marginally and surveys the fruits of his labor. He's got six ones and three twos, for a total of nine shiny red rocks. They're - weirdly uniform, actually. He holds a one and a two up to his face and sees that they're the same thickness, that if he presses the edges together they look like they're part of the same object. He still can't tell if they actually emit light or if they just look really vibrant.

He should probably start testing, then. What's something small he can do with magic… well, he's hungry. He tries to make the first thing that comes to mind.

The two-pointer vanishes. A sandwich appears in his lap.

Neat! So for ones he should be thinking of things that are smaller than making a sandwich, and for twos he can get things of that level. What can he think of that's smaller than making a sandwich…

Well, maybe he can try getting rid of the crumbs that were left behind when the sandwich appeared in his lap with no plate. After he finishes eating.

The one handles this just fine.

Oh cool. Can he use a one to clean his teeth? Brush his hair?

Yes and yes.

Okay, so now he's got three ones and two twos. He can probably get at least another two from smacking his face, then - he's not sure where to go from here. He doesn't really want to meaningfully injure himself, not until he figures out how many points he'll need to do healing, but for now there's something pretty amazing about literally slapping magic out of himself like he's a video game monster.

By the time he gets bored he's produced nine more rocks, one of which is a two-pointer.

Okay, cool. That's enough that his hands are meaningfully full when he cups them around his drops magic rocks. He picks out one of each kind to keep on his person and gets out a pillowcase to dump the rest into. Probably he should secure them slightly better, but - his mom doesn't snoop on him, and even if she did find these he's pretty sure she wouldn't figure out what they're for, and even then he's still pretty sure she'd be chill.

Maybe he shouldn't let her find out about the pain thing, though, that might freak her out.

Whatever, the pillowcase will do fine.

It's pretty easy to settle into a pattern, over the next few days. Most of the time, he doesn't actively think about making magic - it happens naturally when he stubs his toes or gets papercuts, though, and he takes to making sure he has easy places to discreetly store it on the spot. (It's surprisingly appealing to just have the magic and not even use it.)

He isn't sure what to tell Sylas, though. It sounds pretty unbelievable, and even if he's able to get Sylas to believe him, he'll definitely freak out over the details of how getting magic works. Maybe he can do it once he unlocks the three-pointers? Then he'll be able to show off, at least.

About a week after he found the first six-pointer, he wonders if he can figure out what the rocks are made of and if he can break them. He definitely can't snap them in two with his hands… maybe he can smash one with a hammer?

THAT WAS A BAD IDEA

Okay, so on the plus side, now he knows how to get a three. And a couple ones - looks like banging his thumb was just past the threshold. And he can still move his thumb okay (that's worth a two, when he presses it against the side of his forefinger), so it isn't broken…

He should still probably try healing it.

A two does the trick.

Okay, cool, good to know. He… should probably test how that does on cuts before he tries cutting himself for magic.

The weird rocks offer no comment on this.

Yeah, he didn't expect them to. They're pretty quiet, which makes sense, given that they're rocks.

… Then again, he hasn't exactly asked them for comment.

Holding a one-pointer and a two-pointer in his hands, he wishes for some sort of guide. The player's handbook of weird magic pain rocks, or a table of rock shapes and what pain levels and wish sizes they correspond to, or maybe even a note that whoever left that six-pointer might have left for whoever found it.

Nope.

Well.

He does have a three-pointer. It's possible he just hasn't been applying enough magical oomph and this one will do the trick… at the cost of using up his only three-pointer. He's hesitant to use it before he's made another - it feels wasteful.

Maybe he should try thinking about this more logically.

If he doesn't use the three-pointer now, he probably won't use it at all until he's able to make them reliably. Unless there's an emergency and he has it on him? … he can put off deciding whether to keep it in his pocket or in his stash until he's decided whether he wants to try using it to get a cheat sheet.

And if he gets a good cheat sheet, then maybe it'll have a guide to churning out threes or even (he shudders a little) fours. He hopes that he can make fours; he'd feel like a pretty shitty wizard if he was capped at less than half his full potential on account of wussitude. Maybe it won't be that bad if he's expecting it? It'll make it harder for him to apply the required force, but… maybe if he leans really hard on admiring the pain through his magic senses, thinks about the rewards of magic - and magic healing especially.

Then again, he might get a bad cheat sheet. He's not sure what to do about that possibility or how he'd even tell if the cheat sheet was bad.

He's starting to feel like the logic is telling him to try the three. He picks it up and…

Nothing happens.

Oh. Okay.

He should probably think about what sorts of things he wants to try the three on. Maybe he can let that sit on the backburner while he does more magic experiments?

There was one that occurred to him while he was thinking about how to possibly make a four. He reaches down to his inner knee and pinches the sensitive skin with his nails, "watching" the pain increase until it's just before the threshold for a two…

Then bites down on his lip, again being careful to not cross the threshold.

He's able to make a two-pointer and a couple ones.

Cool! That means that even if pain past the threshold for threes (threeshold?) isn't something that he can deliberately inflict on himself, he can give himself a bunch of more manageable pains. It'll still add up, but the idea of spreading it around his body still sounds a lot less scary.

On to the next test. He pinches his leg again, this time hard enough to make a two. Can he make ones instead?

Yes! He can make seven ones and no twos.

Okay, cool. Possibly a two is actually worth six ones and he slightly overshot but it would make more sense for sevens to be a theme. He's not sure if he can test yet if a three is equivalent to seven twos - he'd feel too bad about "giving up" the three.

Speaking of which, he still hasn't come up with anything he wants to wish on a three for. He decides to let it stay in his stash and revisit the idea later.

He really should probably tell Sylas. He'd be great at this - maybe not at hurting himself for magic, but at thinking of things to do with the magic. He just has to think of a way to tell him that convinces him to not spread it further - getting grilled for magic is not his idea of a good time.

Actually.

What if that was why Green Wood Rocks Guy left him the six in the first place? Maybe they made it and decided that they couldn't take the pain, so they'd pawned the powers off on some poor sucker they could make make sixes?

Maybe he should figure out some sort of defensive magic. Can a three protect him from hostile magic?

It stays in his hand, so probably not.

Okay, no, he's getting too far into his own head. Time to change the mental subject.

How about making some more magic?

Yeah, that helps. He can make a handful of twos and a few handfuls of ones. At one point he realizes it'd be extremely convenient if he could consolidate the rocks, turning seven ones into a two, but even the three can't seem to be able to do that. But that's all right - a roomful of ones isn't exactly the worst problem to have.

He should probably use them more liberally, though. Another thing to ask Sylas about.

The next week passes much as the first one did - Seiji makes about five ones per day just incidentally, and it's fun - possibly to a slightly concerning extent, but he decides that as long as he's not getting notably injured there's no real harm - to make magic before bed.

A few days after the two-week mark, one of Seiji's coworkers burns her hand at work.

"Oh shit, let's get that under some cold water-"

If he steers her to the sink, he can probably wish on a two without her noticing that the burn is less severe than it should be. He can't get away with healing it all the way, obviously, but he can at least help.

When he gets close enough to touch her, the burn shows up to his pain sense.

Well, can he use the pain?

Yep! It's a little more effortful than using his own, and he has to feel the pain (weirdly disconnected from his body) before he can, but he can get a three and a pair of twos out of the burn.

He turns his face away so that his grimace won't show, but unlike with his pain, her pain vanishes once he's used it. Probably not for her, though, so he makes sure to follow through with his original plan of getting her hand under a stream of cold water so that it isn't too suspicious when he spends his two to mostly-heal it.

She's too busy being relieved to be suspicious! She thanks him and scurries off to the bathroom to put on a band-aid.

Yeah, no problem, he's just glad that she's okay, yeah he thinks there's burn cream in the first-aid kit. No he doesn't remember where the first-aid kit is, sorry.

Well, he probably has to tell Sylas now.