several carafes of sake appeared. I clinked glasses with Mr. Takata and took a drink, doing my best not to wince at the strong alcohol.
I managed to fumble through some chitchat with his family and grandmother in Japanese, but my knowledge of the language was far too lacking to have the kind of conversation I wanted to have with her.
“Would you mind translating for me?” I asked Mr. Takata.
He nodded and waited for me to speak.
I chewed on my lip, suddenly unsure where to start. I had so many questions; they were all trying to elbow to the forefront of my mind, creating a bottleneck.
Something had been bugging me since I first laid eyes on her, so I decided to start there. “Can you please ask her why I could tell she was Vivid—why I could see luminescence around her, but I couldn’t see it on my mother? She was like us too.”
Dutifully, Mr. Takata translated the discussion I’d been waiting to have since that day on the empty train platform.
“Your mother has not been around since you met your Bond?”
Technically, we’d “met” as kids, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t what she meant. “My mother died before I knew what I was.”
She nodded and patted my hand. “You did not see your mother’s glow because you had not yet formed your Bond. The Bond makes us stronger in all things, especially our connection to the Light.”
“Does she know what it is? The glow? What am I?”
“You are a Vital. There is no question about that. You have the Light and you have a Bond. Your Light shines brighter than others’. It is Vivid. You are Vivid.”
“Are there others like us? Has she met others? Why does no one know about this?”
“I knew two others—many years ago—a woman from a village nearby and a man from very far away. They told me of others but not very many. Both of them died in World War II. There have been no other Vivids in younger generations that I know of. In my time, it was something that was not understood, but it was respected. It was said that the glow was sent to us by God, his way of shining his light on our village and sending us strength. It was said that the birth of a Vivid heralded both a great blessing and a grave warning. Death and danger were sure to come, but God had sent us a Vivid to protect us. And indeed, my Bond and I had to do many things to protect our families, our village, our country. But when there is peace, there is no need for the Vivids. We have had a great many years of peace.”
I nodded, my mind whirling with the practical applications of what she was saying. What was the most probable scientific explanation?
I turned to Tyler. “Evolution? Could it be as basic as the idea that nature is compensating for the loss of life by providing a line of defense?”
“It makes sense.” He nodded, leaning his elbows on the table. “This could be a Variant DNA quirk. When certain levels of cortisol are in the pregnant mother’s system, indicating high levels of stress, it could result in the baby being born Vivid. But that doesn’t account for all the stresses of life. Why aren’t women in domestic violence situations giving birth to Vivids?”
“Maybe there needs to be more at play? I mean, we don’t really fully understand the Light. Maybe it has a better sense of what’s happening in the world than we do? But I’m not sure if that adds up either. While most of the Western world has had relative peace for decades, how do you explain the fact that there haven’t been any reports of Vivids popping up in the Middle East, for example?”
“Maybe there have been,” Josh jumped in. “But the number of Variants relative to humans is much lower in that part of the world, thanks to the discriminatory laws during the sixties and seventies. A lot of Variants flee that area. And if it’s dangerous to even have a common ability like super speed, I doubt anyone would be shouting from the rooftops that they can glow.”
“True.” I nodded and turned back to Mrs. Takata. “Do you know why the world is so oblivious to our existence? Why there aren’t even any mentions in history books?”
“The Lighthunters.” She smiled and took a sip of her sake.