บท 1: $500,000 Debt
"That's all for today, Class."
"Goodbye, Ms. Charlotte." The students in unison bid their goodbye to the woman.
Charlotte was already in her mid-20's. She has a pair of blue eyes and black hair that was reaching her waist. The woman was considered to be the youngest teacher in the whole school.
When the woman left the classroom, the students stood up and left the room.
"Are you going home already, Hugo?" One of the students sitting at the back, asked.
Hugo nodded his head and answered. "Yeah." The man waved his hands before continuing his walk.
Walking out of the university, it took Hugo 15 minutes of another walking before he could finally arrive at their tiny house. As he opened the door, he saw his mother and sister sitting at the dining table, eating their dinner.
"Good evening, Mother. Good evening, sister." Hugo smiled sweetly as he gave them a tight hug.
"Good evening, Son. Go and quickly change your clothes so you can eat together with us." The old woman patted Hugo's head and smiled.
"Alright," the man answered before going into his room.
Hugo changed his clothes and went out after. He ate together with his mother and sister before going back into his room to do his assignments.
'So where should I start?'
The man looked over at his table. He needs to accomplish 4 assignments, 2 presentations and an essay for the whole night. Quite a lot, wasn't it?
Hugo started with his assignments first before proceeding to do his presentations. It took him 5 hours to accomplish those two and it was already around 2 am when he started doing his essay.
'What's your dream?' The question asked.
Hugo stared at it blankly. 'What's my dream?' He couldn't think of anything. What he just wanted to do was to provide for his family and for their lives to be better.
A moneymaker perhaps, but besides that, he doesn't know what he wants to do.
To be a doctor? Meh, he doesn't have enough patience to deal with the patients. And they would need a lot of money if wanted to be one.
To be a lawyer? Nah, he's already reading a lot of books now. He doesn't want to read more in the future.
To be an actor? Nope, he won't have enough privacy, although he was sure that he would make a lot of money with it.
"Fuck, why is this hard?" Hugo cursed out loudly. 'I just need to use flowery words on this one. I know Mrs. Villa. She has hots on me. I even wonder if she reads any of my essays or just straight up, grade it,' he thought.
Hugo remembered when Mrs. Villa made them write a 10-page essay. Since that was a week before the finals, he didn't have enough time to finish it.
He already expected that the woman would fail him because he wrote a recipe of brownies in the middle. However, he didn't expect that he would still get a perfect score for that essay.
'I wonder if Mrs. Villa tried that brownie recipe that I found online.'
When Hugo glanced over at his paper, he sighed deeply and started it. He used his intelligence and combined it with flowery words. In the end, he chooses to be the most powerful person on the earth.
'Sounds cliché, isn't it? But I do not care anymore. I need to sleep already so I wouldn't be late for class.' Shrugging his shoulder, the man lay on his bed and sleep soundly.
—
–
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"No, sir! My husband is already dead. How can we pay this debt?" A woman's voice echoed throughout the whole place. It was Hugo's mother, Verda. She was kneeling on the floor, begging the 5 men that suddenly barged into their house.
The man in the middle gave the woman a smug look. He groped the woman's jaw and slapped it forcefully, making her stumble on the floor.
"The hell I care about that. You need to pay your husband's $500,000 debt by next week or else I'll make you pay," the man threatened before signaling his people to finally leave the house.
Hugo was on his way back from school when he noticed that there were 5 men leaving their house.
'Who is that?' He asked himself. He didn't remember seeing them once.
He stiffened in his position. "Did something bad happen to my family?!" His eyes immediately widened. Hugo crossed the distance in just a few steps. When he opened the door, he saw his mother on the floor, hugging his sister tightly.
"M-Mother… what happened?" His voice trembled to see such a view. It broke his heart to see his mother's reddened face and his sister's sobbing sound.
Verda held his son's hands tightly. "Do you remember how your father died?" she asked Hugo in a low voice. Tears started falling on her cheeks as she remembered how her husband had died.
"Didn't father die because there was an accident at the construction site that he was working on?" Hugo's forehead creased when his mother suddenly asked the question.
'Is my mother having amnesia?' He asked himself.
Verda's hands trembled. The woman cried out harder as she shakes her head. "I'm sorry… I lied to you two. Your father died because of the virus."
"The hospital said that your father's medication will be very expensive. We fell into debt of $500,000... It was needed to save your father, but in the end, his body couldn't take it. The virus… the virus killed your father!" Her voice broke, recalling her last memories with him.
Hugo's heart sank. Their father died 3 years ago… just when the pandemic broke out in the whole world. The virus SHR was considered to be the deadliest virus ever discovered on the planet.
The people affected by it instantly lose consciousness and would be awake after a few hours as if they're not themselves.
Some articles show that those people affected showed some signs of the need to kill another human being while others became crazy and hurt themselves. There was some footage where the affected's body became incredibly large.
It was bloody and cruel. There were millions of people affected and almost one-fourth of the world's population ceased to exist because of it.
Lockdowns were implemented for the whole year and yet the government couldn't contain it because of poverty. People had no choice but to go out to look for jobs and food in order to survive.
Some people said that it was better to die affected than in hunger and it was just last year when the government found a vaccine to cure the people affected. And 5 months ago, when everything went back to normal.
"Who are those men, then?" Hugo questioned after his mind finally absorbed the sudden revelation that his mother had uttered.
"They're the people that we are indebted to." The woman tilted her head. She placed both of her palms on her face and cried harder.
"What can we do now, son?" Verda asked in a suffocated whisper.
Hugo's sister, Hailey, hugged their mother tightly. "Hush. Mother. Me and brother will find a way, okii? I can just skip school so you don't have to worry about it!"
Without anything to do, a loud and deep sigh escaped from Hugo's lips. He bowed his head and nodded. He couldn't afford that his 10 years old sister would do that.
"I'll see what I can do, Mother."
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Author's Note:
Hello everyone, I hope you like this first chapter. I gladly welcome you to this book ^-^ Grab your popcorn and drinks as Hugo's journey is about to begin!
Don't forget to add this novel to your library
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