But before I go on, I think I'd better explain what an elega is first. Its name is a mesh up of "electric" and "gakki", the Japanese word for musical instrument. It is shaped longish, like a guitar but not quite. And it isn't played like a guitar—instead it's played more like a keyboard, a keyboard with no keys. There's just a smooth, plain, skateboard-like flat surface that reacts to the subtlest taps. You need to tap it exactly the right way, in the exactly right place for it to make the exactly right sound, and it takes a lot of practice because the "right place" isn't marked. Instead of seeing, you have to feel, until your fingers remember the right positions, until it becomes a sort of intuition instead of something you actively strive to get perfect.

And its sound—well, it can sound like whatever you want it to sound like. It's complicated, so I'll just say that there are two sets of keys split on both sides of the elega. One set controls the sound itself, its quality, whether it sounds more reedy or more brassy or stringy or is basically percussion. The other set is what you play the notes with. It can either run on batteries or be charged and can be folded very small, which is pretty great because you can carry it everywhere, it doesn't weigh much.

It takes a long time to master one, and since it's a relatively new-fangled instrument (it's been on the market for only ten years or so, I think), not many people have become truly expert at it yet. You can tell who's an expert by the lights. With every different "sound" you control at a time, a small light flashes on the surface along with the rhythm you play. Experienced players, the famous ones who are invited to appear on TV shows to exhibit their skills at least, can usually do about five "sounds" at once. Their fingers fly everywhere fluidly, so quickly you barely see them, while the audience ooh and aah and praise their multitasking skills.

Me, I can do around twenty. Maybe more, I just never had the motivation to try. The more sounds the less harmonic it gets and I hate it when sounds clash and contradict each other and take away from the main melody. Personally I prefer using only one sound (that of the acoustic guitar, which we call acogi here), but it's just one light so doesn't look very cool.

I'm good at the elega not because I'm any better of a musician than the experts on TV, just that I've been using one longer. My family owns an instrument store in our humble district, so as soon as the elega began existing (I was like five, I think), I have been playing it. And you know how children learn really fast. Also having small childish hands helps; most of the experts on TV have the disadvantage of possessing large, wide hands that would probably make them excellent pianists, but when playing the elega long and thick fingers just get in the way. You don't want large fingers, just nimble ones that know how to find the perfect feel for the sounds. An elega is a heavily feely  instrument, I guess.

I've only played in front of people a couple of times, once in elementary school when I didn't know better and thought it was totally okay to jam ten instruments at once in front of the whole class. The teachers were horrified; a lot of them didn't even know what an elega was, and what I learned later was that people fear what they do not know. My homeroom teacher reasoned to me after class that I needed to practice less, because it would take away from the precious time I could use to focus on my studies. 

I never played in front of them again. I'm surprised that Shun even remembered; we were like nine.

But playing in front of my classmates now, people I like and trust, that's a different matter. I don't mind letting them know what I can do.

I decide to play them something about the mock-mission we had just this afternoon. My fingers find the chords on their own, and a second later I am playing the dust, the redness, the heat, the strange rock formations, the chaos. The quick tempo of the drums is the bullets bouncing off the rocks. The urgent brass sounds in the background signal the impending doom of the enemies drawing near. But it soon clears up and flows into an exciting blend of synthetic strings and electric guitar. It means my team is here and no one messes with my team.

For example, the almost grating guitar screech is Natsumi speeding past. The booming orchestra hits are Yukiya throwing fireballs. The light silver bells that tinkle about swiftly—that's Ririka flying everywhere like the little fairy she is.

No, she is not a literal fairy, it's a metaphor. Just in case I didn't make that clear. Just because we walk around in people's heads doesn't mean that we're not normal humans.

I pull to a sudden, climatic stop. This means that the mock-mission is deemed over and we're abruptly disconnected from the machine by a teacher.

I put down my elega, a bit breathless. Right on cue, my classmates erupt into appreciative cheer.

"That was amazing! Fantastic! Like a... movie?" Jin shouts. Jin is a happy-go-lucky guy with the annoying habit of ending his sentences in question marks. He is very good-looking in a cute, enthusiastic kind of way, with way too much facial hair for a sixteen-year-old Japanese boy and way too childish eyes for someone with muscles as well-toned as his.

"A movie about our mock-mission today, I believe," Natsumi adds.

"I hear myself in it!" Ririka exclaims, beaming.

I awkwardly and humbly thank my classmates for their lavish praises. I've always known I'm good at playing the elega.

But this doesn't help solve my problem here.

"Like, yeah, I can play the elega, but what does this have to do with mindhacking?" I point out, trying to get everyone back on track. "I mean, it's not like I can kill any of the bad guys in people's heads or protect myself by playing the elega."

Others laugh and agree with me, but Shun looks thoughtful for a moment.

"Well, I think you might be wrong there."

–

Night time at our school is homework and training time. Homework can, of course, be done in your dorm room or the library (duh), and training is done in one of the small rooms you can book on the top floor of the main school building. They come equipped with simulators, the machines we do mock missions with, which don't serve to let us actually hack minds but instead simply place us in a virtual space where we can practice using our own specialized weapons. I've been to the training rooms a lot in the past year, both alone and with my roommates, always intending to find something I can actually conjure up and put into use. But no such luck. Always, after the two-hour sessions, I walk out as clueless as when I went in.

Today, Shun says, will be different. And even though my past experiences tells me otherwise, I can't help believing him.

People with charisma and confidence, they do that to your brain.

The lady in charge of the training rooms, Miss Furukawa, greets us with a huge smile. She has long, slender legs like a crane and a tendency to overenunciate her words. We swipe our student IDs (which sound all fancy and high-tech but are in fact ugly, poorly-designed affairs) and take the room at the back.

The training room is awfully cramped and allows only five people to be hooked up to the simulating machine at one time at most, which is a pain in the neck because everyone is jumping around wanting to join me and Shun so that they can see firsthand what he meant when he said I was wrong if I thought my elega skills would be useless in mindhacking.

"So who's coming with me and Tomomi?" Shun asks, propping himself up on one of the mattresses at the corner of the room. Each training room is equipped with a good five or six mattresses, since during the simulation we need to be relaxed so as to use our minds in their full capacity and will do better lying down.

Katsuki is the first to volunteer, but we decide that he will be our spotter instead. Simulating machines show the heart rate, blood pressure and various other signs of the person hooked to it, and it is a spotter's job to make sure that nothing goes out of the abnormal range. If it does, the spotter will have to unhook the person from the machine, but if one yanks at the wrong moment it can cause all kinds of problems (that legendary teacher-in-a-coma, for example, could have definitely avoided that coma had a spotter unhooked him at the right moment—at least that's what the teachers had always told us. But then in their defense they were still less knowledgable about mindhacking back then than we are now so didn't even have a spotter).

This is why during mock-missions there must always be one responsible and experienced teacher playing the role of spotter. In training rooms the school's a bit more lax; since the environments the simulators the training rooms offer drop us in are usually mild, calm ones without any crazy enemies hiding around the corner like in mock-missions, a teacher's presence isn't required and a student can do the spotting too.

I've been spotter for my roommates once or twice, when they were practicing their insane skills. I don't think I'm particularly good at it since keeping up with more than one monitor is already problematic for me and spotting for four people means keeping up with four different monitors. However, Katsuki is reliable and generally everyone's favorite spotter—he knows the machines better than any other student and if anyone can be trusted to pull the wires to prevent a problem at the right time, it has to be him.

We don't really know what happens if we are unhooked from the machine at the wrong time, or not unhooked at all even. All we know is that if you "die" in the target's mind during mindhacking, and the spotter does not unhook you before it happens, the result won't be too good. The teacher who got buried by lava and ended up in a coma is a good enough example. Of course, it's true that everyone else had been super careful on mindhacking missions, so we don't exactly have more ample data to go on (and I hope we never do).

In the end it is decided that Jin, Natsumi and Ririka will be hooking up to the machine and coming in with us. Katsuki will be spotting, and the rest dissipate off to other rooms to do their own practicing. After all, now that they are here, they might as well train a little too.

Katsuki clips the icy metal cusps on both of my wrists, my heels, and then place an equally icy metal circlet over my head. I squirm a little because of the sudden chillness against my skin, and Katsuki chuckles. Around the room, I hear the others getting ready too, Jin laughing and Ririka giggling because both of them are very ticklish.

And then I see Katsuki give me the okay sign with his bony hand. He zips up a plastic hood over my face, and I feel the familiar sensation of being submerged in water.

I know it is not real water, just a normal transition process between our world and the simulated virtual one, but I still instinctively take a deep breath and hold it as I feel myself plunge in, all the while wondering aimlessly what the virtual world I'm going to land in will be like. It's always different, randomized, not only for adding spice and variety to our tedious student lives (though I suspect it's half the reason), but also to help us adapt better to whatever environment we are going to eventually find ourselves in one day on real missions.

And then light shines through, I open my eyes and everything is lovely. We got a nice world this time. All meadow and blue sky, brightly colored flowers dotting the ground. There is a slight breeze and the temperature is just about right.

I could live here forever. Too bad each session is just two hours max (stay longer than that and the teachers get mean) and besides if I stay in this world for too long my poor real body will start getting thirsty and starve—but before either of that happens I'll have to pee too and if I don't wake up before that let's just say it will be very embarrassing.

The others materialize around me, all looking quite satisfied with the world we have ended up in. Natsumi begins training promptly, forming a sheer layer of ice on the ground beside her. Ririka and Jin are more relaxed; they are running about and smelling flowers like five-year-olds.

Meanwhile, Shun focuses on me.

"Okay, the reason I think an elega can in fact be a good weapon for you is that, well, all of our weapons are used for fighting off the dangers that live in people's minds, or in Riri's case evade them, right?"

I nod.

"And you're right, an elega can't help you do either of that. You can't kill people with it or anything. But what you just played back in your room gave me a different idea. I'm not sure how to put it—what you played was like a movie about our mock-mission today, right? That's what Jin said it was. And Riri says she hears herself in it."

"It makes sense," I say, "because that was what I had in mind when I was playing. The silvery bells that trail around in the background, that's Ririka. I was going for the fairy kind of effect and—"

"I know," Shun cuts in, "and the thing is—why do I know? Why does Ririka and Jin know? It's not like you said before you began playing, oh I'm gonna play a song about our mock-mission today yo, and hey by the way the bells are Ririka. You didn't say anything of the sort. And yet we still know exactly what you were playing! Think about it!"

I think about what he said carefully, but Shun looks rather cute all serious so I get kind of distracted. Don't blame me; you know you'd be like that when you're standing in a lovely flowery meadow talking to your long-time crush too.

"Er... so?" I finally say.

Shun smacks his hand on his forehead. "I can't believe you. Think about all the songs you've ever heard. Songs without lyrics. Songs without a music video or a background story or anything like that. Can you tell what the song is supposed to portray? Can you pinpoint like one particular instrument and say, oh I know, this part stands for the composer's fear of being abandoned by his girlfriend of six years?"

I lift an eyebrow. Shun stares.

"Wait, don't tell me you can?"

"Uh..." I begin.

"Okay, maybe you can do that, but let me tell you—us normal people—I'm not saying you're not normal but you get the gist—us normal people can't. For everyone of us in the room to think the exact same things and understand exactly what you're trying to portray, it means you have crazy good skills. You can make everyone think and feel the same thing, you get that?"

I nod slowly, digesting the information. I've always known that I'm good at playing music, but hearing it come from Shun's mouth is an entirely different matter.

In case I haven't made it clear enough, I'm the kind of pathetic person who thinks everything her crush says is the gospel truth and full of philosophy and wisdom. Like Shun could say "damn I took such a huge dump today" and I would still feel like it's the most glorious concept I've ever heard.

Okay, maybe I wouldn't, that's just nasty.

"So um, how can I use this in mindhacking then?" I ask, feeling all sorts of stupid because after all those passionate paragraphs that Shun just spouted I'm still not quite sure where he's going with this.

"I think, I'm not sure if it will work but I think—you can change your target's mind. Like literally change their mind. Think about it, all we do when mindhacking is steal information, we don't change the target's mind, like we shoot some people maybe but we don't make any difference to what the environment is like per se. You get me? You, on the other hand, you can use your music to make the target think what you want them to think. And you know how when targets think differently their mindscapes change. That can be big, you know? It can change the whole concept of what we know about mindhacking!"

Shun has gotten very excited and begun using huge hand gestures as he speaks. I feel bad for not acting as enthusiastic as he is, but in my defense when Shun gets excited his eyes shine and it's really nice to watch and besides even though he just talked about me like I'm some kind of once-in-a-thousand-years rare talent, I know for a fact that I'm still a useless little twat who can't even get things to materialize in a mock-mission.

But somewhere in my heart, hope has sparked. Like if we can hack into my mind right now, we will probably see that spark randomly dancing around on my bedroom floor. Because while some people might have really interesting and cool spaces in their minds mine will probably just consist of my bedroom. I'm boring that way.

Also it will probably consist of a lot of posters and shrines of Shun so I pray that people never try to hack in my mind because wow that's super lame.

I look at all-excited Shun, and pretend to mull what he told me over in my head, while all the time I'm just thinking he looks really great when excited. His eyes melt like cream and I meant it in a nice way. Finally I speak. "All you've said, it sounds pretty amazing. But are you sure I can do that?"

Shun does not detect the self-defeatism in my voice. "We'll have to see. Let's start from the obvious—conjuring up an elega."