I needed more time to process everything but the woman in front of me was still waiting for my answer and I couldn't let her wait any longer. I removed my hand from my face, which pushed her to take a step back.
("Oh my gosh! He looks like a killer doing drugs! Did I involve myself with the wrong person? Me and my nosy personality!")
Alright. Thanks to this woman's precious help, things were a lot clearer now. She reacted exactly like everyone else when they saw me for the first time. But that wasn't the most important point. She hasn't spoken a single word but I still heard her out loud. My thoughts were becoming more and more limpid now. I tried my best to smile at her.
"Thank you for caring, Mrs. I'm fine. I just had a bad awakening today."
This was indeed exactly what seemed to have happened to me. She looked slightly relieved when seeing me smile.
("He doesn't seem to be as bad as he looks like.")
"That's good. Take care of yourself, young man."
She still left as quickly as her good manners allowed her to and I decided it might be a good time to go back to my place to think for a bit. I went up the stairs to take refuge in my small apartment.
I had a hypothesis about what was happening to me but it was so nuts that it was hard to believe. I would need to experiment some more. However, I had to take care of my appearance first. I went to take a shower and the noise of the water helped cloud the voices for a few moments, the pain almost disappearing. It came back when I finished cleaning myself but it was better than before. It felt like I was slowly adapting to the continuous noise.
After drying myself and putting on some clean clothes, I thought I wouldn't look as bad as what the poor woman witnessed, even though nothing could be done about my naturally vicious expression. I headed outside once more and started experimenting with what was happening to me.
It didn't take me too long to realize that my hypothesis was correct. Whenever I focused on someone, I was able to find out that the voice I heard corresponded to the thoughts of that person at that exact moment. A woman looking at her watch would think about the time. A man reading the newspaper would pretty much recite the whole article he was checking to me. People who were watching other people would give their impression of them.
There was no need to wonder anymore. For some reason, I was able to hear other people's thoughts as if they were talking to me, or close to me. This was probably due to the electric shock I received from my headphones, even though it was unknown how that could give me such an ability. How unbelievable.
Since it was Sunday and I had nothing urgent to do, I took the opportunity to try some more things. I roamed around the city, went into some buildings, focused on specific people, and experimented with anything I could think of. After many hours, I was able to get a good grasp of my newfound power.
First, I was only able to hear surface-level thoughts and emotions. Emotions were something quite interesting. I couldn't "hear" them but could "feel" them. Even if I wasn't looking in his direction, I was able to "feel" a man getting startled when his glass fell on his toes. I was also able to "feel" his pain, even though I wasn't experiencing the pain myself.
Another thing was that I was able to hear conversations in my head. When people talked with each other and I was too far to hear them physically, they would transmit their conversation through thoughts. It would become as if I was listening to them talking from very close by.
Next was the range of my ability. I had tried to place myself at specific distances from people to try and get a feel for their thoughts. I then measured the distance from which I started to hear something. After a few tries. I believed my range was about 18 meters, which was both good and bad at the same time. It was good because I could hear people's thoughts even if they were inside a building. It was also the same if they were several floors above or under me.
As for why it was bad, this was related to the third reason. No matter what I did, I didn't manage to turn off this ability. This meant that at any time, I would hear the thoughts of every single person in a radius of 18 meters. And most of the time, in a town, that accounted for a lot of people.
There was still a saving grace. I couldn't turn it off but I could tone it down a lot, to the point that the voices sounded like far-away whispers. I was so happy when I managed to accomplish this that I jumped in place, surprising the passersby around me. Gone were the headaches. I was almost back to normal.
Almost. Once I finished my tests, I also made sure of something else. It was whether this was a temporary or permanent change. The power was still there after this many hours. I would need to check the following days too, just to be perfectly certain. However, if it didn't leave me, this would be big. Now that I fully admitted I possessed a mind-reading ability, I was filled with both joy and wonder. Who cared about being as strong as a bull or being able to create fireballs in the modern world? Mind reading, this was the real power!
Especially for me, it was good beyond any measure. No one could ever lie to me again. I wouldn't be backstabbed by people I thought were trustworthy ever again. I would be able to distinguish good and evil people from the get-go.
But that wasn't all. Wouldn't flirting be so much easier now? Wasn't it exactly what I needed to compensate for my scary face? What about school, then? Cheating would be so easy it would become a joke. Extracting information from people would also be much simpler. Anticipating problems, getting to know other people's secrets, and gaining access to forbidden knowledge.
This was simply the best power ever.