novelraw Chapter 49: Stroll through the Town
Chapter 49: Stroll through the Town
Stanley woke up early the next morning, surprisingly on his own. His brother wasn’t at the door, asking him to wake up like he always did.
Stanley got ready to go train and went to his brother’s quarters to wake him up. A very drowsy Bradley which had junk all over his eyes woke up.
"Huh? Oh, is it time to go train?" he asked.
Stanley looked at his brother’s arm and shook his head. "Actually, I think you should go back to sleep. You can’t move that arm as well, can you?" he asked.
"No, it stings a lot when I try to move it around," Bradley explained. "I really do have to rest."
"Alright, I’ll see you later then," Stanley said and walked away. He looked at his own arm as he left. He was bandaged up as well, but he couldn’t feel anything.
"What am I supposed to do now that I am awake?" he wondered.
He didn’t think he could go back to sleep, and at the same time, he didn’t think he could go train either.
So, all he could do was go around the town for a walk. There were a lot of things on his mind since yesterday that he hadn’t had the time to deal with. It was hard to think about stuff in his tiny rooms where he felt the walls could cave in on him at any time.
He needed the freedom of the outside to let his mind roam free.
’I was useless yesterday,’ he thought, remembering the battle. ’Brother could’ve died if he wasn’t careful. If he had... it would’ve been my fault.’
He couldn’t help but blame himself for their loss yesterday.
’Thankfully, they weren’t lying,’ he thought. ’Those people weren’t there to hurt us.’ In fact, Stanley was almost sure that he even heard some guilt in the woman’s voice towards the end.
’Then... if we had hurt them back, would we have been just?’ he wondered.
As he walked through the city, a Defender walked past him, one that didn’t seem to recognize him even though they had just met yesterday.
Stanley watched the man walk away as his thoughts went elsewhere. ’That’s brother Yasu,’ he thought. ’That person is a candidate just like my brother, right?’
He then started wondering what he thought about his brother being the Mayor. Outwardly, he was in support of his brother. However, inwardly, he was still unsure.
Objectively, he knew this was a good thing. Becoming the mayor would put him in the best spot in the town. However, if he became the mayor, would Stanley then lose a brother?
If what the old man Sam had said was true about the healing power being transferred causing a person’s personality to switch, then he wasn’t sure if he still wanted his brother to become the mayor.
’But it’s still a good thing, right?’ he told himself. ’I shouldn’t hold back brother just for my sake.’
He tried to persuade himself into supporting his brother, but who knew how long that thought was going to last?
He watched through the 4th quadrant, thinking about the other things.
One word that had stuck to his mind that he hadn’t been able to make sense of yet was the word ’Varinox’. That was the word that he had heard that day, right?
What was it? And why did it sound like it had come from within him?
’I must not only be traumatized, I must have gone mad now as well.’ He shook his head and walked away.
The sun was still not over the cliffs, so the town was bright but without any sunlight. People were already on the street, starting their morning.
Carts after carts of food were hauled around to go to different parts of the town.
At some point, he arrived on the 3rd quadrant, near Sheila’s shop. Even this early in the morning, she was working hard, hauling ingredients into her shop to prepare for the day.
She constantly yawned and looked incredibly tired to continue working, but she did. It felt motivating to see someone work like that, but Stanley couldn’t get motivated at all.
Get motivated for what? To do things he had no interest in?
Census, Women’s equality, or even the resistance; he had no interest in any of it, so why would he get motivated to go back to his Defenders training that will force him to work for that three things?
Why couldn’t he just go and fight the Crawlers?
He knew trying to enter the veil was suicide since they were teeming with Crawlers, but if he could kill even just one of them... was that such a bad thing?
The original crawler that killed his mother was already dead, killed by the Defenders. In a sense, the revenge he wanted wasn’t against the one that killed his mother, but rather just the monsters in general.
In that case, if he could even just kill one of them, then he wouldn’t mind—
"Urgent announcement by Mayor at 10. Be sure to be outside to hear it."
A Defender ran nearby the town with many more screaming around the same message not far away. They repeated the words at every short distance so that every person in the town could hear them.
The people started talking to each other after the Defenders passed through. They were curious about what was going on, so most of them made the decision to be there to hear it all out.
’Speech? By the mayor?’ Stanley couldn’t believe it. ’Is it regarding what happened to us yesterday?’
Any and all speech by the mayor that addressed the entire town would be through the speaker system in the town that also worked double time as the siren system.
Stanley wondered what the speech could be about. There were still a good 2 hours before the speech, however, so he had to wait to find out.
He left the area and walked through the rest of the town for 15 or so more minutes before returning to the Defenders headquarters.