original

Road of Fog

作者: Varts

章節 1: Chapter 1: Start of Mayhem (1)

May, the season of spring where the buds of love have begun or already bloomed... or so they say.

Yet here it is, three young men sweating bullets moving furniture for their customer who lives on the seventh floor. The three of them don't exactly have big stature so the process is far from easy even with the three of them doing their best.

This trio of sweaty lads need to finish their job of moving the stuff of their client in under 2 hours, otherwise, they might have to pay more for the rental fees of the truck they currently used to move the stuff of the grumpy and cheapskate lady they called as the client.

"Man, I don't know if we should've just accept the normal fee if it's like this." Said the tanned man with the biggest build of the three.

"Yeah, I mean, come on. More than two-thirds of the pay for today's job would be gone for the truck rental, and we only left with chump change and divided by three to boot."

"It's my fault for not checking the situation beforehand and just accepting that lady's words. But the most despicable thing was, what in tarnation is this building that doesn't even have a working lift? It is still okay if we move this heavy stuff by the stairs but we also need to move the light boxes by the stairs. Haaa... let's just work instead of wasting our already short breath by ranting."

It doesn't mean that the easier to carried boxes is more difficult compared to the heavy furniture where the two lads with normal size body needs to hold most of the heavy lifting whilst the bigger one pulls it upward. No! The exhaustion simply comes from the total of stairs they have strode on.

Finished with their ranting slash brief break they continue their work amidst their internal grumbling.

"So for today, we got 2800 Tron instead of the promised three thousand. Anyway, 1800 is for rental fees which leave us with a thousand. Each of us will get 300 and 100 for our emergency funds. Hugo, you send the truck and Rheatt returns home and gets some rest even if you're more or less the biggest of us doesn't mean you have unlimited stamina. I don't want to see you on the news as a missing or dead body tomorrow."

"Man, that's my passion in this life. You don't know it because you don't have one. There's also this bald head. I bet you a drink, this guy will play with his saxophone till late at night every single fuckin day." Rheatt slapped the shoulder of his friend who was preparing to get into the truck and end his job for the day.

"Well, I hate to agree with this ginger cookie but he is right. Link, my brother from a different mother and father. You need to have a dream to be complete. We may not be rich but at least we have a dream. Anyway, are you heading straight to nursery school?"

"Yeah, I might as well pick up my cutie and play with her at home. Don't forget tomorrow we got two jobs, so we will start early in the morning so we can finish it faster and move on to the next one. Oh, I will survey the place this time so I will take the surveyor fee."

"We already told you that you didn't need to equalise your pay with us. You are the one who created this sweat laborious job and also searches for the customers plus dealing with them face. Okay then, see ya in the morning. Don't forget to tell her, her cool and famous uncle Hugo said hi."

The three young men depart for their own destination.

Link walks slowly towards the nursery where he entrusted his niece at. It wasn't far from where he's at right now, at most 40 minutes of light walks.

Arriving at his destination, he can see a tricolour building of pink, yellow and blue with a spacious playground inside its fence, that would be enjoyable for the kids to play with. He has already become familiar with this place and the teachers in this nursery school. At the end of the day, who wouldn't after 2 years of coming almost every day to the same place?

It's been more than two years since the responsibility of being a guardian and parent for his niece fell on his shoulders. The weight of said responsibility made him what he is today. Some people- no, a lot of them- said that he should just put his niece into an orphanage and go search for his future, whatever that means. Nonetheless, his niece only has him as her pillar of support. He did not believe that the orphanage or whatever organisation could give his niece the love he could give her.

Foolish it may be, as it is probably just an act of self-defence mechanism of a young man named Link after losing all his family in one moment. His parents, his tomboy but caring elder sister, her kind and chubby husband and their four-year-old lovely daughter. All of them were buried under the rubble of concrete. After two days of rescue, the only survivor is his niece who somehow only received bruises and lifelong spiritual trauma.

He couldn't possibly in his state of mind to abandon his only relative left in this world.

"Good afternoon Mr Link, you're early today. Please wait a minute. I will get Lucia and her bag ready."

"Good afternoon, Ms Emi and thank you as always."

After a few minutes, the teacher brought a cute little girl with a purple backpack strapped to her shoulder. Seeing her uncle standing outside, she starts to run towards her uncle and hug him sweetly.

"Hi there my little angel, how's your day?"

"Great! Are we going home now?"

"Yes, see you tomorrow Ms Emi."

"Bye bye Ms Emi, see you tomorrow."

Leaving the nursery school, they go to a cafe two buildings away from Lia's 'workplace' or so she likes to call it. They will always go there to buy a jumbo cup of fruit cocktail and drink it on their way home. As the girl is not fond of fruits he could only make her drink this. Most of the time he only gets a few sips here and there while the rest is drunk by the little glutton.

Their slow walk while holding hands looks just like a happy father and daughter that would make those who watch smile.

Link suddenly felt a bad feeling starting to well up somewhere deep within... Not long after a shockwave-like thing passed through his body. He can't tell where it came from as he can't see any visual or physical impact around him following that shockwave-like disturbance. Yet he knows it's not normal.

At first, he thought it was only his imagination but when he looks at the expression of the people on the street and their anxious looks. He knew it wasn't his imagination. It is real. He felt dread, remembering the disaster that had taken his family two years ago.

Instantly he carried his niece and looked around, calculating his next moves. Which route is the shortest to get away from the street to the place that has fewer people so when the panic ensues he still can protect the little girl in his arms and so on.

Lia is still clueless about what happened or why she got carried by her uncle but she seems happy and smiles showing her cute dimples on both of her cheeks.

'What in hell was that? Is it another earthquake? No no no, earthquakes shouldn't be like that. Is it a bomb? But there is no explosion or anything pointing to that and this country hasn't received any terrorist attacks in the last ten years. So is it a comet? If I recall correctly, a few years back a comet impact injured quite a lot of people...' Link's head goes haywire with questions.

He runs toward the place that has no building that would collapse on top of their heads, the city park. The people he passes by aren't exactly panicking, just confused and hints of anxiety start to brew in some of their faces. Some are calling their family, relatives or maybe a friend to somehow quell their anxiety. It is just a matter of time before the chaos resulting from mass panic flares up.

Link did not stop moving his feet while still looking at the situations around him. Some get out of their car and ask the pedestrian what happened or did they feel that too or something familiar along that line. While some other, park off their car in the middle of the road and someone even get out of his car whilst holding his chest. Some are currently picking a fight with another driver, who knows if it can be called road rage or not.

The ember already has enough heat to produce a flame. What's more, Link and his cute little niece, Lia, are still in the centre of a soon-to-be-built fireplace that could cook them both. He had been running for more than ten minutes and some people would look at him but most of them ignored him even with his sharp agitated face plastered on for all to see. As most normal people also feel weirded out about what happened a couple of minutes ago.

Only the hardcore gossipers would look at his face and wonder what is chasing him or something. They're not hailed as hardcore gossipers for nothing. Even with this illogical thing that just happened, they still love to get some juicy gossip to sip on.

As he ran, he felt his hands would give away at any moment. If you carried five kilograms (11 lbs-ish) of weight in your arms while running it would get heavier and heavier because of the fatigue accumulating on your muscles. Now multiply that and add the fatigue from the work he had been doing today.

It wouldn't be weird if he would drop his niece to the ground or fell and dunked the ground. But Link is not a person with a plastic will, no he has the willpower of steel. He may not be qualified to be called man o' steel in spite of that the word steel is there. There is a saying stating, when there is a will there is a way and he just grasps that bullshit concept with all his might. Placebo or not, it works.

When they arrived at the entrance of the park which is quite desolate compared to the bustling pedestrian where they were before. Kneeling, Link put down his niece with his trembling hands. Beads of sweat dripped down his face and his back looked like he had been splashed on by a bucket of water.

Lia, the sweet little girl, opens her bag and takes out a pink handkerchief then wipes the sweat off her uncle's face. Where else could you get a kid this lovable?

"Uncle, are we going to play here before going home?"

Catching his breath Link stood up and scanned his surroundings whether it was fine or not to stay here or do they need to move somewhere else.

Feeling the tug on his shirt he looked down and realised he had forgotten to answer the little girl's question. Link replied with uncertainty deep within his heart, questioning if this place is safe or not. When you aren't sure of the answer just lay out another question onto the table.

"Hmm... what do you think? I see an ice cream truck there, uncle's feels like eating ice cream right now" He pointed at the white ice cream truck not far from the park entrance.

"Want want! Can I get the five flavour ones?"

"Okay, as long as you can finish your dinner later."

"I will, I can. Sir noble ice cream, I want the five flavour ones!"

"Sure thing young lady, what flavour do you want?"

"Chocolate, chocolate chip, white one, strawberry and the one with Cookies." she delightfully answered while raising her hands.

"Ohh, the supreme classic combo. You sure have such exquisite taste there young lady." The slightly chubby vendor looks towards Link with a smile asking for confirmation of the order he just received.

"Give her the medium size one and give me one with chocolate and vanilla also medium size. And did you feel something a couple of minutes ago?"

"Classic? No, I want the special one." Lia interrupted with her stern child voice and innocent answer. She didn't know what classic means but she knows what special means. It means a good one.

"My bad, please excuse this ice-man, I will pick the most special ones for our cute little patron." The ice cream vendor replied with a smile and played along with his cute little customer. "Yes, I do. I thought I had a heart attack or something. It was just a moment, I think it passed in the blink of an eye. However, seeing the reaction of the people it seems to happen not just to me. So I plan to close this after finishing your order… and here you go a special flavour for the lovely young lady."

"Lia, why did you call the ice cream mister sir noble? it suddenly stuck in my mind."

"Do you want the receipt? no? Okay, I don't know where it comes from but I guess it is a trend of some kind. All the kids around her age call me Sir Noble Ice-man and probably other ice cream vendors."

"Thank you, so it's probably a made-up game the kids played. Lia, did you see the bench over there? We'll sit and eat our ice cream there."

"Roger captain!"

"Don't run, if you drop that ice cream I won't buy a second one for such a naughty girl."

The park bench is not that far from the entrance and there are only a few obstructions hindering his view from monitoring the situation around them. He may not look that bothered anymore from the outside but his vigilance hasn't yet gone. He still feels they are still in an unsafe situation.

Link sees his niece setting herself up in a comfortable position and putting the paper bowl down. She stabs her wooden spoon and then takes a big spoonful of her strawberry flavour ice cream to her tiny mouth. Her aura radiates so much happiness that it actually calms his turmoil mind.

'Maybe it's just me overthinking stuff. Let's just hope nothing will happen.' He jinxed.

Letting his guard down, Link also sits beside his niece who radiates jollity all around her with each mouthful of ice cream she takes. Eating his ice cream while watching his niece's joy from eating ice cream makes him remember how simple it was to achieve such happiness.

His desert-like throat and arid mouth felt the blessing of the cold ice cream. It's like a hot piece of steel getting doused in an icy lake, drowning the heat of the steel and assimilating it with its surrounding temperature. This sensation makes him lower his guard another notch down.

"Uncle you know, Cici said, if you don't call the person who sells ice cream using Sir Noble then the kingdom of ice cream won't make any more ice cream for us and then we can only miss the taste of ice cream forever. You remember Cici right?"

'Who was that again?' Though he pondered for a second, he answered with certainty, "Of course." So where is this kingdom of ice cream? Maybe we can visit that place in the future and eat loads of ice cream for free."

"It's on the far faraway land. I think we can go there using a plane. When are we going there?"

"Ugh, sometimes in the future."

"When is that? How many nights do I need to sleep before we can get there?"

"First you need to graduate from nursery school and then we'll go there."

"Okay" Then she returns her focus and proceeds to wolf down her ice cream happily as she gets her answer.

Link also eats his ice cream while enjoying the atmosphere around him.

The gentle breeze at this place surely can make people relax. This is the reason why officials built a park within the confinement of the great concrete jungle. To let the high-stress people enjoy the green scenery and also to increase the price of property around the park.

The city has 3 parks, the central park which is the biggest and also likes its name it is more or less close to the centre of the city, the west park is the place that has many recreational buildings it's also where the rich usually gather and play around, lastly, there is the south park the so-called whatever park built because of the protest of the middle and lower income groups of people asking for their own park. It arose out of the `boundary` created by either the city planner or the governor or whatever officials were involved.

After many days changed to many weeks the demands of the protestors increased as well as the chaos they brought with them to the central city. At first, the people who sit at the chair of power ignore their demand of wanting to have a peaceful talk or so they claim, however, the sitters go about their usual activities as if nothing happens. The peaceful protest or what they called a mass movement turns into the usual gung-ho protest, particularly what you have in mind right now.

The sitters seeing the situation escalate into riots change their stances. They order their mighty groups of muscles in uniforms that most of the time have the purpose of maintaining the said orders. It works, for the most part, but you can't deny that in such a large group of people, there must be one or two- who am I kidding? There are dozens of opportunistic hunters within the group that won't turn down even a chump change they can get. Like jewellery, precious metals, electronics or even the hard old cash.

These opportunistic hunters lit up the flame of some hunters that are less opportunistic or aggressive. The so-called timid hunter. With these new but a bit meek hunters joining the fun, you, my dear reader, can imagine what happens next. Yes. The situation levelled up once again and one way or another casualties popped up, either from the order of muscles in uniform to the groups of hunters.

In turn, both sides called their reinforcement. The hunters call the rioters and the rioters call the original protestors combining their strengths. While the order of muscles in uniform calls for more muscles coated in uniform.

It was chaotic.

If you remember, at first it was just a demand of having their own park built near their community. Then the demand turns into a protest of their unsatisfied law and regulations, even moving to the problem of regional taxing and so on.

Knowing the escalation of the situation, the central government sent a Prime Minister and cronies in charge of national economics as mediators (sort of). It sure is weird how slow the central government responded, it wasn't like how they usually act. Many speculated it had the involvement of a political party. Well, the speculation is indeed correct.

After the arrival of the Prime Minister and friends, the problem has more or less been solved. The rioters who damage or hurt other civilians either get a penalty fine or get barred in jail.

Back in the park, Link enjoys his ice cream bowl neglecting his surroundings except the one closest to him.

"Look uncle, there's a big bee flying towards us."

"A what?" Link turned his head toward the area his niece pointed at. It wasn't a bee but a giant killer hornet much larger than an adult palm. They could and are able to fuck you up when they are only as big as two humanly-size fingers. Now with that size, a swarm could turn an adult man into feasible prey.

Link moves before the Flying Giant Insect gets closer and swats the hornet with his paper bowl of ice cream spilling its contents everywhere. The momentum of the bowl is enough to swat the hornet mayday-ing itself into the ground.

Throwing his paper bowl, Link proceeds to stomp the stunned yet far-from-death hornet with the heel of his work boots, scattering its inside all around his feet.

"Let's go home now."

The kid only needed less than 15-ish minutes to clean her bowl of ice cream, whereas Link still had more than half of his ice cream before it was all scattered all over the ground.

Link holds Lia's hand and moves out leaving the park. He did not carry her on his arm this time as he realised it might take too much of his stamina and he doesn't exactly excel in that aspect. It also narrows his vision.