The bags suddenly felt very heavy.
Karl stood at the corner of his own street, watching nine sets of eyes watch him back. He knew who they were. Everyone in this neighborhood knew who they were. Black Snakes. The kind of people you crossed the street for, then crossed back once they were gone.
What he didn’t know was why they were outside his building.
’Keep walking turd, why you looking at us like that?’
He made it three steps before the heavyset one on the stairs stood up, rolling a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other.
"You’re the son, yeah? You got your old man’s face."
Karl stopped. Something cold slid down the back of his neck.
"I don’t have an old man."
"Ha. That’s funny. That’s what he probably tells people too, wherever he’s hiding." The man came down the steps slowly, unhurried, the way people move when they know nobody is going to stop them. "Your daddy borrowed a lot of money from us, kid. Then he grew wings. Your mama’s been paying his bill ever since. Every month. Like a good woman."
Karl’s grip tightened around the plastic bags. Why? Because he knew the story all to well, and to hear it come out from the causes’s mouth was another spit to the face.
"She’s missed three months now," the man went on. "Three in a row. And see, we’ve been patient, because she’s polite and she always paid before. But patience is a budget too. Ours ran out."
"How much?"
"What’s left? Forty-two grand."
The number hit Karl somewhere below the ribs. He reached into his jacket anyway, pulled out the envelope, and held it out with a hand he was forcing to stay steady.
"There’s eight hundred in there. Take it. I’ll get the rest."
The man took the envelope, thumbed through it once, and laughed. Not cruelly. That was the worst part. He laughed like Karl had told a genuinely good joke.
"Kid. This doesn’t cover the interest on the interest." He tucked it into his pocket anyway. "But hey, I’ll count it as a down payment on the conversation we’re about to have."
"I said I’ll get the rest. I just need--"
"Everybody needs time. Time is the one thing your family keeps spending that isn’t yours." The man stepped closer. "So here’s what happens now. We leave your mama a message. Something she can look at every day and remember the due date."
It took Karl one second too long to understand the message was him.
He got one arm up. It didn’t matter. The first hit folded him sideways into the fence, the bags splitting open, apples rolling out across the pavement, and then there were too many hands and too many boots and the ground came up to meet him.
[Notice: Multiple hostile signatures in contact range.]
’Do something.’
[This unit has no combat function outside the dive.]
’Then what good are you--’
A boot found his stomach, and the thought scattered. He curled around himself on the concrete, tasting copper, listening to his own groceries getting stepped on, and somewhere very far away he registered that not one window on the street had opened.
[This unit is required to inform the Administrator that his vitals remain within survivable parameters.]
’...’
He didn’t hear the door, but he immediately heard her voice.
"Stop! Please, stop, he’s my son, please—"
Karl forced one eye open. His mother was in the street in her house slippers, still in her work uniform, and she was on her knees. On her knees, on the pavement, in front of the man with the toothpick, hands clasped like she was praying to him.
Something in Karl’s chest broke quietly, in a way no boot had managed.
"Mrs., we talked about this," the man said, almost gently. "Three months."
"I know. I know, I’m sorry, my hours got cut, I’ll fix it, I’ll fix it, just please, not him. He has nothing to do with any of it. Please."
The man crouched down to her level. He looked at her for a long moment, then at Karl bleeding on the concrete, then back.
"Two months," he said. "Full payment on schedule, plus what you missed. That’s the last extension you will ever get from us." He stood, brushing off his knees. "And if the money isn’t there, we’re not coming back for furniture."
He looked at Karl when he said it.
Then they left, unhurried, the way they came. One of them stepped on an apple on the way out.
...
The kitchen was too bright.
His mother’s hands shook the entire time she cleaned him up. Antiseptic, cotton, a bag of frozen vegetables for his eye. She worked in silence, and the silence was worse than crying would have been, because Karl could see the crying stacked up behind it, waiting for her to be alone.
"Mom."
"Don’t talk. Your lip is split."
"Mom. Dad’s debt."
Her hands stopped.
"How long?" he asked.
She sat down slowly across from him, and for the first time in his life, his mother looked her age. Older. She stared at the frozen bag in her hands like it might have an answer printed on it.
"Six years," she said quietly. "He took the money and was gone before they even came asking. I only told you about the debt he took, not that he ran and i was the only one paying for it." A small, terrible laugh escaped her.
"He didn’t even leave a note, you know. Twenty-two years, and I found out from a gangster with a folder."
"Six years. You’ve been paying them for six years and you never--" His voice cracked. He hated it. "I could have worked. I could have done something."
"You were a child."
"I’m twenty-one!"
"You were a child when it started!" Her voice broke on the last word, and there it was, the crying, arriving all at once like a wall giving way.
She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth and breathed through it. "It was mine to carry. That was the one thing I could still give you. A life where you didn’t know."
Karl stared at the table. The tea he’d bought her was somewhere on the street, in a torn bag, stepped on.
"Two months," she whispered, mostly to herself. "Okay. Okay. I can pick up nights at the depot. And there’s... " She hesitated, and something moved behind her eyes that Karl had never seen before and never wanted to see again. "There are places that hire women my age. Nights. The pay is... men will pay for company, Karl, it’s not, it wouldn’t be--"
"Stop."
"It would just be until--"
"Mom. Stop." He reached across the table and took her hand, and his voice came out low and even and completely unfamiliar to him. "You will never do that. Look at me. Never. I’ll get the money."
"Sweetheart, it’s forty-two thousand--"
"I’ll get it."
She searched his face for a long time, this quiet son of hers who never raised his voice, who she suddenly could not read at all.
"How?" she asked.
Karl held her hand and said nothing, because the honest answer would have sounded insane.
...
His room was dark except for the monitor.
Karl sat on the edge of his bed, ribs aching with every breath, and stared at nothing. The fear had burned off somewhere between the street and now. What was left underneath was simpler, and heavier.
[Administrator.]
’Not now.’
[Correction: now. A new quest has been issued.]
A panel of pale light unfolded in the dark of his room, and Karl lifted his head.
[Quest: Find a new tournament. Earn money.]
[Reward: EXP conversion bonus. Additional rewards scale with prize amount.]
’You saw all of that tonight,’ Karl thought slowly, ’and this is your response. A quest.’
[Affirmative. This unit cannot fight for you. This unit can only ensure that you never need it to.]
Karl sat with that for a while. Then he exhaled, wiped his face with the back of his wrist, and stood up.
’How shitty can this gets. At least give me something to work with.’
[Complying.]
The dark filled with quiet panels of light.
[Bonded hero: Charlotte. Bond interaction progress: 40%].
[Skill acquired: Clear Vision.]
EXP balance, conversion thresholds, and a locked tab he couldn’t open yet that simply read: Restricted. He went through all of it line by line, asking questions, memorizing answers, the way he’d once memorized jungle timers at fifteen.
’Tournaments, if i need to earn money, are my best bet, but speaking to the coach, is out of the question.’
[Query: Reason?]
’He knew my name without asking. I’d rather keep my distance from him.’Karl pulled his chair to the desk and logged in. ’I need another way in.’
The client loaded, and his inbox nearly crashed it.
Ninety-plus unread messages. Strangers. Clip channels. Two semi-pro orgs. Everyone in the district asking the same question in different fonts: was the masked player at the exhibition THE Kazu?
And there, sitting near the top, one name he actually recognized.
Elsa.
{Elsa: Hehe. I have a question. Did you play a tournament recently? Do be honest.}
Karl stared at the message. She hadn’t found the masked stand-in from her team. She’d gone and messaged the rank one account directly, like a detective knocking on the one door that mattered.
’Sharp. Of course she is.’
She was also, he realized, his best bet. A local player, plugged into the scene, already half certain of his secret, and the only person on that team who had treated him like a person instead of a problem.
His cursor hovered over the reply box.
He typed and deleted it and typed again.
{You: Depends on who’s asking.}
Then, after thinking hard about it, he sent it.
After all, this was truly the first time he had ever bothered to respond to messages in-game.
The reply bubble appeared instantly, like she had been sitting there waiting all night.
....
[A/N: If you like this Chapter so far, and hope for more faster updates, do please send me powerstones to show your support.]