Seeing the future would always change the present, for better or for worse. By learning the future in advance, it becomes an aspect of your past and alters who you are in the present.
“By the way—I don’t get to know what sort of future the people I use my power on end up seeing. I get to see how confused they are by the imperfect visions my power grants them, but that’s the only part of Innocent Onlooker’s effects I actually get to witness,” said Sagami.
Interesting. I’d hadn’t had any clue how a power like his could possibly be useful at first, but it really did have a surprising number of applications if you got a little creative with it. Even more than that, however, I was struck by just how unpleasant of a power it was. Its core function seemed to be letting its user mess with people by showing them deeply flawed visions of the future, just for kicks. It was irresponsible, tasteless, and, in a sense, exactly the sort of power I’d expect Sagami to end up with.
“Ha ha ha! I’ve heard that the powers we get from the Spirit War are supposed to express something about our deep-seated, subconscious desires and psyches...but I’m not so sure that’s really true. Take my power, for instance—even if I’d ended up with something completely different, you’d probably still end up thinking that it’s perfectly suited to me, wouldn’t you? Akutagawa—a kid I’m acquainted with—once told me that ‘If it seems like someone’s power reflects their personality, that’s just the Barnum effect at work.’”
The Barnum effect, huh? That’s when you say something super broad and vague that applies to pretty much everyone and people end up thinking it’s a personalized statement specifically about them, right?
A few good examples of that sort of statement would be “you sometimes suffer from indecision” or “you’re currently worried about something”—very basic statements about someone’s personality, essentially.
When Sagami put it that way, I had to admit that the whole “your powers are representations of your innermost desires” shtick that came up so very often in supernatural battle anime and manga really could very easily be written off as a simple manifestation of the Barnum effect. It didn’t really matter what power you had—if someone told you that it reflected your psyche, you’d probably find yourself convinced. Even if your personality and your power had nothing to do with each other at a glance, it wouldn’t be too hard to come up with a satisfying explanation.
Take my power, Dark and Dark. It, well... Okay, so I’ve always been very proud of how perfectly me my power is, but imagine if I’d ended up with another power instead—say, one of the ones that one of the other literary club members had awakened to. Under those circumstances, it’s totally possible that I’d still be able to come up with a convincing explanation for why that power was perfectly me as well. If that sort of convenient self-deception could be filed under the Barnum effect, then it wasn’t hard to imagine that the same was true of the relation between everyone’s powers and personalities...though, of course, I might have just been Barnum-effecting myself into believing that theory as well.
“You know, if someone tells you that something’s the Barnum effect and you end up seeing it that way as a result, isn’t that kind of the Barnum effect in action? Then again, this is going to get way too complicated if I follow that train of logic, so I’ll just call it a day here.”
Good call. Especially since we’re hitting the point where “the Barnum effect” doesn’t even sound like a real phrase to me anymore.
“Anyway, based on what I’ve observed so far, I do think that there’s at least some small relation between an individual’s personality and the power they awaken to. That’s just the way I see it, of course, and it’s entirely possible that you and the other literary club members are exceptions anyway. This story’s author’s given all of you a little too much preferential treatment. You’re in a category of your own,” said Sagami. He was clearly implying something, but before I could get at what it was, he added, “Whoops! I’m getting off topic, aren’t I?” and dropped the subject.
“So, Andou—it seems I accidentally caught you in Innocent Onlooker’s area of effect. How was that? What sort of future did you see for yourself?”
What sort of future had I seen? I thought back on all the futures I’d just witnessed...and suddenly found myself feeling very uncomfortable.
“Ha ha ha! I’m guessing that reaction means you saw a romantic entanglement or two? Were you dating someone in your premonition? Or maybe you got a harem ending? Or a few endings, each with a different heroine—one of those open-ended what-if scenarios?”
Oh, can it. Mind your own business.
“Hmm. Who would you end up with? I’m as curious as could be...but sadly, this isn’t exactly the right time for me to be worrying about that, now, is it? Hell, I’m not even sure how long I’ll be alive at this rate,” Sagami said—though actually, said probably wasn’t the best word to describe what he’d been doing this whole time at all.
Although every bit of Sagami’s speech had been in his usual aloof, vaguely condescending tone, he hadn’t spoken a single word of it out loud. Rather, his words had rung out sourcelessly within my mind. It was like he’d been beaming them into my head telepathically without ever actually making a noise.
“Oh, nah, telepathy’s not quite right. This is actually a form of precognitive vision too—it’s a practical application of my power,” Sagami said into my mind, which it sort of felt like he’d also just read. “Right now, the real me is thinking about how he’ll say all of this stuff to you later. Making that decision means I can beam my words to you in real time in the form of a premonition. Basically, it’s a form of pseudo-telepathy made possible by way of precognition.”
Hmm. So basically...
Sagami decides something he’s going to tell me → At some point in the future, Sagami actually does tell it to me → In the here and now, he uses his power to show me a vision of him saying those words in real time
...or something like that? I kinda get it, but also, I don’t get it at all. Like, the logic more or less checks out...but isn’t it weird that we’re, y’know, talking like this? How is the you in my premonition of the future having a back-and-forth with the here-and-now me?