Chapter 38: Seeing dad again
"I've created a game! Angry Birds!"
'Huh? Michael not only plays, he makes games? Let me check it out.'
Click.
"Hey, everyone! I'm Michael North. And today, I'm not sure what channel this is, because I posted this video to all three of them. This is the first time I'm advertising something, and it's a game my friends and I made. Right now, you can already buy it on iOS and an Android version will be available in a month. Excited yet?"
'Launching birds at… woah, that was cool. You can even use this angle?'
"I designed the levels myself, and I promise you, there is more than one way to pass each of them and get three stars. You can use the surroundings, too. See that tree on the screen? Surprise, it looks like background, but it isn't!"
'Ha-ha, what, he used that tree like a trampoline. OK, I gotta play that sometime.'
"Starting tomorrow, there will be walkthroughs and insights into the game on my channel, North Gaming. If you're thinking about doing something similar, I think you'll find them entertaining and useful. But there's more! Angry Birds costs $3 and is already available for download. But then I thought, why should my viewers pay? So you'll find a code under this video, and for the first ten thousand people who enter it in the game, it's free. Just like that."
'What the heck, it's been less than an hour since the video was posted. I still have a chance!'
Michael's channels were fairly popular, with right about ten thousand regular viewers. He used them as a spring to advertise the game. Vice versa, in the game credits there was a small comment under his name, prompting the players to visit his channels. Between these two platforms, Michael's name started to gather a following and became a small-time brand.
"Do me a favor, guys. Spread the word. Tell your friends. The birds are angry, and they thirst for revenge!"
…
Two days later, everything was ready.
After Michael prepared and notarized the contracts, passed the formula to Anna and advertised the game however he could, he rested in bed. It was almost the middle of October, six weeks after the start of the school year. According to schedule, students had a bunch of tests coming up, and North Academy grew in viewership.
Michael spent all his glory points on easing LZD1's symptoms. The difficulty was, he couldn't cultivate while he was affected by it, or find new opportunities to earn points. Overcharge didn't help – Glory refused to issue another quest until the current one was completed.
There was only one visitor that broke the ordinariness of young cultivator's bed rest. Friday evening, the principal entered the room tacitly and took a seat near the boy.
"I'm curious which one of us has better hearing," the old man began, "You who woke up the second I came in, or me, since I noticed you weren't asleep."
"Let's settle on a tie. Good evening, Mr. principal," Michael lay down on his back and moved into a half-sitting position.
"I'm happy you're awake, Michael. A fine thing you did, saving that young woman."
"Thank you."
"We all have moments when we must fight to protect those dear to us. There's no telling how far some men can go to hurt others. And some men, to save others."
"Sir?"
"I also had such a moment recently, you see. In my old age, I get sentimental. Forgive me."
'See, we have a problem. That girl is my granddaughter. Bang! Bang!'
"Don't worry about it," Michael smiled. His normal human eyesight couldn't catch Graves's eyes get hazy.
"I'm proud of you, young man. Thank you for saving one of my wards. Because of you, we had no casualties."
"It was the right thing to do."
"Yes! Right thing. I'll leave you to sleep. Sorry if I disturbed you."
"No worries." Michael had no idea why the principal visited him that evening. He couldn't know that Mr. Fluffy turned out to be a dead end. Graves had to come to terms with the fact his granddaughter might be in constant danger. It awoke obscure memories in old agent's mind: of spy work, of the men he killed and friends he lost.
But his worries were for naught. Another attempt on the girl's safety wouldn't come for months.
So, after spending a week in bed, the next Sunday after the comet, Michael stood up and walked out from the medical unit. To his mother's awe and the doctors' worries, he was completely fine. He had managed to get LZD1 down to less than a 1000% severity which would be enough to make the trip. And tiredness from his healed wounds always worked as an excuse for the damn disease's symptoms.
Their plane landed in one of four Moscow airports, Sheremetievo. Michael's mother was in high spirits, able to speak her native language again. For a short while, her husband's illness didn't weigh on her that much.
The family still owned a small apartment in Moscow they purchased when they were financially stable. Michael's father earned a small fortune in the 90s by smuggling goods into and from Russia. After USSR broke apart, there were many opportunities for men who didn't mind getting their hands dirty. Even if some of what he did was unlawful, Michael's father never hurt anyone, only circumvented tough customs policies.
The Severniys enjoyed a slightly excessive lifestyle for a few years. They moved to the capital from an industrial city in Ural Mountains that lay between Europe and Asia. Michael grew up needing for nothing. However, his father fell sick when he was 7. Millions of Russian currency were spent on treatment. Finally, when his father's cancer went into remission, Michael was already 10. The Severniy family was left with an apartment that was difficult to sell, a small legal second-hand clothing business and a tidy sum they owed to the banks.
Since then, the science moved in great strides, but the cure still didn't exist. The family fell onto hard times, taking any contracts they could. Michael learned not to ask for anything, to stay humble, not to envy others. However, now that he traveled 20 years into the past from another world, the sight of his mother's rough aged hands made his heart ache.
Mother and son's taxi stopped near a hospital. It was an oncology center that combined research and patient care. Treatment in such a facility was expensive, and it sucked up all of the family's funds they earned in the last four years. But this was the best Russia could offer, not inferior to American research centers in the least.
They went inside, where security checked their documents and allowed them in. Michael's mother inquired her husband's room number from a middle-aged registry worker. Their documents were inspected again, and finally the woman confirmed the two to be a patient's family members.
Michael treaded through the halls, leaving his mother behind. She was sure to cry at a time like this, and he had no way to make her believe she had nothing to worry about. He could only avoid seeing her tears.
Arriving at his father's room, young cultivator stepped inside. There were two beds, both had unconscious men lying on them, attached to a multitude of sensors and machines.
A pale-skinned man in his early fifties was in the bed further from Michael. He had a wide face with some wrinkles near his eyes, something his wife had yet to see in the mirror. The dark hair he passed on to his son were touched by grey. His beer gut seemed smaller after weeks of hospital stay. Unlike teenage girls and young women drawn to sculpted abs, older Russian women admired powerful shoulders and strong arms. Those arms Michael's mother was once attracted to were now thinner and softer. The man had weakened greatly and lost a lot of weight.
Accompanied by his mother's soft sobs into a handkerchief, Michael approached the man he could barely recognize. This was the person who taught him to fish, who taught him to hunt. Whose gaze would suddenly harden sometimes when they played table games, then he would grab his son's shoulder and impart sudden wisdom or make the boy promise he would take care of his mother if something happened.
The man who had been dead for fourteen years.
"I'm here, dad," the dutiful son whispered, not to let his mom hear. "I will make things right this time."
.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
BlackInk
BlackInk Hey, everyone.
I'm not sure if it's exhausting to read "mother" and "father" every time, because I'm a first-time writer. But I have a specific moment in mind to tell you their names for the first time. Bear with me.
Like this story? Not really? Please, tell me in a short review on the novel's page.
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