The Gifted Vol.3 - The Skydiving Club

By Ryosuke Akizuki

At an event being held in the central park of City, a person jumped off from a white balloon with a vivid rainbow line. His parachute did not open and he was slammed against the ground. Saya Touma, who happened to be at the location, attempted to exercise her gift to save the skydiver. However, her gift was rendered ineffectual for some reason, and he could not survive the impact.

In the strange world of dream in which a gifted wearing a white mask killed targets, Saya learned of the secret and became the next target. Can the foursome of Saya and her gifted friends survive the greatest crisis ever, while dealing with the time limitation of having to stay awake to avoid the assassination attempts?

The Gifted series has made a remarkable progress here, in the third installment (Vol.3). The ‘gift’ of the artful author Ryosuke Akizuki has come to fruition in a form of this masterpiece.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Sep 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312560253

Book preview

The Gifted Vol.3 - The Skydiving Club

The Gifted Vol.3 – The Skydiving Club

Originally written in Japanese by Ryosuke Akizuki

Translated by Ryusui Seiryoin

Cover illustration by Makoto Sakuma

Cover design by Makoto Sakuma

Japanese edition copyright © 2014 Ryosuke Akizuki / The BBB: Breakthrough Bandwagon Books

English edition copyright © 2014 Ryosuke Akizuki / The BBB: Breakthrough Bandwagon Books

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-312-56025-3

Prologue

Saya Touma was visiting the central park of City, when people were gathering around the square. She was interested in the bustling atmosphere like that of a festival and was attracted to the direction the crowd was paying attention to. In front of them, men and women wearing flashy white costume with red frills were dancing graciously on the stage to amusing music. It seemed to be an event hosted by City and a dance club in City was now performing their creative dance.

Saya had never seen such a mysterious dance before. Their moves were avant-garde and strange, yet they were also smooth, beautiful, and sharp like classical ballet dance routines. Saya lost track of time and was fascinated by the novel dance for a while.

They might have been dancing for about 15 minutes, and then the show came to an end suddenly. The dancers in the red and white costume posed reassuringly, which was followed by a round of applause.

Next program is by the people from the Skydiving Club.

The announcement was made just as the members of the dance club exited from the stage. It was a cheerful woman’s voice.

I didn’t know the Skydiving Club was active in City.

Saya was excited with curiosity and looked at the sky as if she was drawn by other people’s attention around her. Far above the trees in the park, in the clear blue sky, a white balloon was floating alone.

Wow. Will they dive from over there?

The balloon stayed at the height that was too high to grasp the distance from the ground. Its chalky body with the vivid rainbow line, from red to purple, was shone by the brilliant sun.

Unexpectedly, a figure of a person jumped off from the balloon into the air.

The human shape of the white object became more apparent, as it accelerated more and more toward the earth. And then, it was slammed against the ground in front of Saya.

Flesh was crushed and bones were shattered in a moment. Then Saya heard explosive sounds of splashing blood. The unrealistic incident made Saya speechless. As if everyone was holding the breath, a dead silence reigned in the world and no sound was there. The ground was not splattered with blood because the jump suit managed to contain the mess, but the skydiver lay on his stomach and didn’t even groan. Occasionally, the body was convulsed, which gave her a vivid impression.

I have to help the diver.

After being absent-minded for a moment, Saya came to herself and approached the skydiver immediately. She examined the helmeted head and found that the diver had already lost consciousness. He was showing the whites of his eyes, bleeding from his eyes and the nose, and was frothing with blood at his mouth. It was obvious that he had little time left in his life.

Saya attempted to exercise her ‘gift’ right away.

For some reason, she could not recognize the total number of people under her gift’s influence.

This unexpected situation made Saya panic. Usually, she could recognize the number of people to be influenced by her gift in an instant. But this time, even though she tried to sense the number many times, she couldn’t learn it at all. There weren’t any other options, and Saya tried to distribute the skydiver’s damage equally among the people around her before counting how many people were within