Blergh.

A few hours later I could be found puking my hearts out in a public toilet. The lunch ended a while ago with my brother and mom leaving for the airport. Both of my parents were living in another state after all. Stepping out of the stall, I saw a middle-aged man washing his hands, both eyes on me.

“You ok there, bud?”

“Yes, sir, just having an unlucky day.”

He scoffed. “Hah, tell me about it. With the frequent incidents lately, we sure are all having a series of unlucky days.”

“True that. I’m just happy my family is safe.”

“Let’s hope everyone will be,” he nodded in agreement. Before he left, he put a bottle of water on the sink. It was unopened. “Take care, lad.”

I could see the wariness on his face. We all received another alert for a state-wide incident. Things had been really out of control. Crystalline was supposed to be detached from the outside conflict but even the crater walls couldn’t keep the wars outside. Compared to such things, having a crush of more than one year dating your own brother was nothing but a trivial misfortune. Aimless, I walked around the neighborhood. Shops, parks, families having fun—Seventh was eventless as usual. Even with the ongoing incidents, Luxen was indeed a blessing.

“Brother Sota!”

I heard someone calling out to me. She’s a highschooler who lived nearby, Sarah. She was in her uniform standing around a tree with a few of her friends and a group of really young children. That’s a weird group of children.

I decided to approach them as I noticed that one of the toddlers was crying. Timothy was his name, the five years old son of my landlady.

“What’s up?”

The high schoolers snickered a bit hearing my question. One of them pointed at the tree and said “that’s up.” It was followed by the group’s laughter. Timothy cried harder because of that. What the kids were laughing about was the fact that Tim’s balloon flew up and was stuck to the top of the tree. Setting that, I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Ah, Timothy,” I crouched down to him. “You’re actually in luck! I used to be really great at tree climbing, you know?”

“Is that another episode, Sota?”

“What do you mean?”

“Unlucky episodes,” Sarah grinned, curious.

“Obviously it is,” with a proud smirk I walked to the tree, getting ready to climb it. ‘I knew it,’ showed all the high schoolers’ eyes.

“I was eight,” I started telling the episode. It funnily stopped Timothy’s crying. “Aki and I were really hung up on tree climbing, you see. We used to do that every other day to watch the sunset back when we still lived at Tenth. One day, he fell from the top. He bumped onto me and basically treated me as a cushion!”

I could hear the children’s hiss, probably imagining how painful it was. “Did it hurt?”

“Not at all! It was really fun!”

I had to shout as I reached the balloon. The scenery I saw matched how it looked that day. How nostalgic, I thought.

“And that’s number seventy four!”

“Still collecting those episodes, Sarah?” I looked down, noticing her who recorded the whole story on her phone.

“We’re pretty much trading them at school. We even made a whole wiki for that.”

“You know, that shouldn’t even be a hobby for high schoolers,” I mumbled as I enjoyed the breeze. The afternoon sun felt quite nice that day. Peaceful as everyday should be. Breaking the peace, I heard faint screams coming from afar. Squinted my eyes slightly, I could make up details of people running towards our direction through the narrow street.  Something was chasing them. What is that? I could only see a huge silhouette behind them.

Even from quite the distance, I could feel the ground shaking. Something big was coming and everyone was practically running from it. The heartburn came back as I saw the kids waiting for me. I took the balloon and slid down.

“Sarah, grab your bag. Everyone, too.”

“What’s going on?”

“I’m not sure yet but just hurry up!”

“We just came back from school. We’re kinda planning to hang around a little—”

“Ratna Dwi Sarasvati, listen to me and just get your bags. I mean it.”

Seeing how serious I looked, the children briskly collected their belongings. By the time they were finished, a horde of people running down the street reached our vicinity. Panicked by the situation some of the high schoolers ran immediately. I held Timothy’s hand and pulled him to run with me.

Sarah and I were a bit slower than the crowd due to us having children in tow until some of the adults picked them up one-by-one to help them. You had to understand the streets of Seventh Sector were made wide enough for something like this. I only focused on getting us to safety with my head full of the alerts we’ve been getting the past months that I didn’t realize Timothy let go of my hand.

“Tim!” I stopped and held myself against the current. Scanning the crowd, I found him following the balloon he once again let go. It was a miracle nobody bumped into him. I did my best to fight the horde until I reached him. I pulled him to the side behind an electric pole that protected us from the horde of people. I could see the panic in his eyes.

“I’ll buy you a whole cart of balloons after this so follow me, okay?”

Timothy nodded, now holding my hands tightly. Sarah caught up to us. Without saying anything, she lifted Tim up. The horde had passed. We were going to proceed when I saw that thing that had been chasing us down like a predator.

It was a creature at least three meters tall, standing on four feet. Its lizard-like head menacingly locked onto a family of four that was cornered to a wall. The creature found its prey, it seemed. Two pairs of wings flapped intimidatingly followed by a hiss that could be heard from miles away.

“Let’s go! It’s our chance!”

Sarah nudged me but the pain in my chest stopped my pace. ‘Unlucky bastard! Are you ok with this?’ The voice rang repeatedly in my ear kickstarting the gears of my brain. What an unfortunate event, I thought. I could hear my brain working rapidly. You agree, right? Five is more than one. My mind was trying its best to convince me and I couldn’t help but agree with it. 

“Sarah, take Timothy with you. Run.”

“Sota! What are you doing?”