Chapter 41: Cause And Effect

Chapter 41: Chapter 41: Cause And Effect

The evening air was cool.

It carried that particular smell after a light drizzle. The wet pavement, distant food stalls, and flickering streetlight added to the ambient atmosphere.

Victor walked beside his father, hands in the blanket over his shoulder. For the first time in longer than he could remember, the silence between them wasn’t uncomfortable.

"So," his father said, glancing sideways at him. "Working out, huh. When did that start?"

"A few months now." Not entirely a lie. Just not entirely the truth either. After all, he had come back from the future.

"Hm. Should’ve told me. I’d have stopped buying you those instant noodles by the carteen."

Victor laughed, and his father smiled at the sound of it like it was something rare and worth holding onto.

He never thought he’d be doing this. Walking next to his dad, just talking, about nothing, and about noodles.

All those years they’d passed each other in the hallway like strangers who happened to share a last name and apartment, and now here they were, and it felt almost stupidly normal.

"You know," his father said after a while, looking straight ahead, "when your mother was pregnant with you, she used to walk with me like this. After her shift. She’d complain the whole way about her feet, then insist we take the long route anyway."

Victor glanced at him. He didn’t talk about her much. Almost never, actually.

"But she was pregnant?"

"Yes, she said taking care of a kid took too much time, and it was her way of ensuring we still spent some time before you arrived." His father’s mouth curved, somewhere between a smile and something sadder. "She knew I would have to work extra hard for us, and was already preparing."

Victor didn’t say anything, just let him keep going, because this was the most his father had said about her in years and he didn’t want to be the one who made him stop.

"I used to think I had all the time in the world to just... I don’t know. Be a better husband. Better everything." His father shook his head slightly. "Funny how that worked out."

"You’re a good dad," Victor said. He really meant it.

He could have left Victor on the street or escaped responsibility some other way, but he was always the there. But the best father, but he never left.

Victor watched his father’s shoulders ease at hearing those words.

"You have no idea how this makes me feel?"

"Guess I was overdue."

They walked the rest of the way like that, having small talks of nothing important, and everything important at the same time, until the apartment building came into sight.

Victor and his father paused, wide eyes.

An ambulance sat outside. It’s lights spun red and blue across the building’s front where a small crowd had already gathered.

Paramedics were pulling a stretcher out of the entrance, and the man on it looked like he’d been put through a wall, and then carved out at the chest.

It was an unnaturally gory sight. There was also his face that was swollen past recognition, and lastly, one arm had been bent to the wrong angle.

"What happened?" Victor’s father asked, already moving closer.

Smelly Joe sat on the curb a short distance off, watching the whole thing with a hollow, unreadable stare. Like he was disappointed in his inability to have done anything.

"What do you think happened? I was out begging, and by the time I returned. They... They’d already done him in." he said, eyes cutting toward Victor for just a second too long before sliding away painfully.

Victor understood.

The loan sharks. Before he went to the yellow gate at the park, he’d seen them entering the apartment building.

But something about the entire thing just did not feel right.

It was a small but very cold detail that made him see things differently.

Firstly, Victor’s Babarian nature had enhanced his entire being, memory included.

Therefore, he remembered what happened at the time the yellow gate appeared in the park, and at that time, there was no assault in the apartment building.

Although there’d been noise and complaints from the neighbors. Victor even remembered some rumor later about a Ranker showing up and roughing up a couple of people causing problems, which was very rare, as this neighborhood never produced such incredible people.

But that was it.

Back then, none of the residents got beaten to the edge of death...

His thoughts paused. Something had changed.

Something... somehow, beyond his control had changed, and now... his eyes fell on the stretcher.

The chest torn open to look like the flesh made a river way. A cleavage.

Just like their gang name.

Someone got hurt because of me. Victor felt the weight of guilt.

His eyes moved and found a woman embracing her son near the entrance. That was Mrs Kelly.

She had tears in her eyes. The street police kept asking her questions, but she said nothing. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ

"She is not going to talk, you know." Smelly Joe spoke up beside him. "If she does, they’ll cut open her chest next." He sighed, turned and walked back to his small cardboard house at the corner.

Victor let out a slow breath.

Something, somewhere, had changed because I got involved. Just because I went to the yellow gate.

His intuition told him this.

It was just a small thing I did, but it was big enough that a man who shouldn’t have been in trouble was wounded.

Does this mean that every move i make now will have consequences? But if I don’t do anything...

The image of the artificial sun falling came to mind.

They will all die.

Victor gritted his teeth. There had to be something he could do.

He closed his eyes as another thought came to his mind. If he made changes and people got hurt or died because of it, would he be able to live with himself afterwards?

Then the image of his mother came to mind. Her smile. Her death. And now his father’s smile.

He suddenly understood the moral dilemma those Manwha and Manga protagonists always faced.

Victor was not a bad person. But if he could not even protect his own father, what was the need to know the future?

He immediately steeled his heart. He would do it one at a time.

Then he stared at the retreating ambulance. "I’ll make it right." He promised silently.

But first, he needed to write everything down. Every detail he could still remember, before the timeline moved any further.

What was coming, when, who mattered and who didn’t.

But at the same time, he would need to be careful, and keep his footprint small wherever he could help it, and heavy only when he should.

He looked at the sun. "I won’t let you fall."