“How…” Grammo averted his eyes from Griff. It felt like he was naked and vulnerable, like all his secrets were somehow out in the open like a book. That was his deepest secret, his shameful history. He tried to bury this part of his life deep within his subconscious because it hurt too much to keep it in his chest.
Griff just shrugged. “Nothing’s a secret with enough money.”
With a little pressure from the Sunverk family name, all of the top private investigators in the nation came running to Griff. And with a generous amount of Chains as a gift, those investigators scoured every piece of information they could find about Grammo Beatik. They would have scoured the world if they had to, just to find the complete exact lineage of his family tree.
Griff could have gotten the information he wanted from the school, however, even they had limits. Taking a C-class Teqx and a Fiendish Armament was a tolerable offense for them, but forcefully going through the school records to find information about a student was a big no-no. Even the Principal would have to intervene and set some boundaries to what a Sunverk could do.
But thankfully enough, the private investigators did their job properly. They came back within a day’s work and gave him tremendous amounts of information about Grammo and Patty.
Patty’s background came up as normal, having lived in a very boring country in the middle of nowhere and transferring to this country when he was ten years old. He had very normal parents with very normal jobs. He was an only child and he had a very normal amount of cousins, aunts, and uncles, but not even one of them visited Patty.
Everything about Patty was so extremely normal that the private investigators didn’t even have to put any effort into finding things about him. There was one investigator who deemed this very normal background as suspicious, but his belief was unfounded. Every single one of the professional, top-of-their-field private investigators concluded that Patty lived a very boring, very mediocre life.
There was nothing that Griff could use to his advantage because nothing about Patty and his background was special. But thankfully, there was plenty of ammo against Grammo. The private investigators spent a lot more time digging through lots of archives until they finally found something very interesting. It wasn’t about Grammo, but his very special sister.
“There was once a very talented little girl way out in the Great Moon that used to orbit our planet. Sound familiar?” Griff taunted him.
“Stop…”
“She was born with the innate ability of having this uncanny ability of singing the highest and lowest voices with pitch perfect accuracy. She was considered talented. Then, she started to play the piano and compose her own pieces. She was considered a genius. And when she combined both of them and performed on top of the moon, she was the gift of the heavens.”
Grammo winced in pain as he heard Griff’s description of her. He kept trying to bury the memories of her, but Griff's words were like a key that unlocked those memories and caused a tsunami of stored emotions and feelings.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
He could see her clearly, with her bright smile, freckles on her cheeks, bright red hair that was somehow both curly and straight at the same time. She was outside the house, with the large figure of the Earth behind her and the immensity of stars looking down from up above her. She was in her piano that their parents bought for her. She was wearing that silly little headband made out of Moon Vines that he made for her. Her hands were soft but it could somehow move the piano keys with intensity like no other.
That day was both a blessing and curse for them. He remembered this moment like it was just yesterday. He couldn’t forget it even if he tried–and he tried.
She started to play, with him sitting just behind her. He watched her get sucked into this trance of playing this new piece that she composed just for him. Her voice seemed so much more angelic than it usually was. The piano was somehow singinging with her, supporting and melding together with her heavenly voice. He didn’t know it at that time, but he wasn’t the only one listening to her.
“I remember that day,” Griff said. “The whole world heard a singing from up in the air. It wasn’t from any speakers, it wasn’t from anyone on the ground. It was coming up above. Everybody remembered that day when they heard the Great Moon sing from up above. I can’t believe that it was your sister who sang that.”
It turned out that his sister’s singing was heard even on Earth. This was an impossible feat as there were hundreds of millions of meters between the two heavenly bodies. And even then, space was completely empty. Sound shouldn’t travel between the two of them. But it did. Somehow, her singing broke the laws of physics and her sound miraculously traveled through no medium and reached the Earth.
This was a feat that no child should ever be able to accomplish. She was considered as a heavenly gift like no other. She was a one in a hundred million generational talent. Calling her a genius was an insult, calling her a prodigy was a step-down, she was her own kind of transcendent being that could not be replicated by any other.
There were even rumors that she had what it took to become a Supreme Being.
That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It’s what started a heated battle by the Alpha Sun God, and the Moon God. These two Supreme Beings started a heated argument that turned into a war between their two nations.
Grammo was too young to see what happened in the war. He was stuck in their bunker deep underground, with nothing but dry rations and recycled water to survive with his whole family. He missed his sister dearly during this time. Because of her importance, she was put in a more secure location where she wouldn’t be affected by the dangers of the war.
He remembered crying, begging for him to see his sister. He stopped eating, stopped drinking, and just stayed still in a puddle of his own tears as he waited for his big sister to return. His parents worried for his well-being, but they could do nothing to cure his depression. He just wanted to see his sister.
And during one fateful day,
KNOCK KNOCK,KNOCK KNOCK
They felt a knock from up the vault. This was either great news or terrible news. His parents were too afraid to answer, but when Grammo heard the knock, he quickly understood who it was. This was their secret knock!
He quickly opened the vault and was surprised to see…
—
“How does it feel, Grammo? How does it feel to be the one who got your sister killed?” Griff shouted at him.
Grammo’s tears flowed as the frustration and sadness in his heart could no longer be contained. He felt angry, not at Griff, but at himself. He stopped struggling from his captivity in the chair and just let the pain of the rope in his wrists remind him of the suffering she had to endure. He deserved to be like this.
He wanted to go back in time and slap himself to stop crying. His memories kept replaying in his mind. He was like an observer of a tragic movie, and whatever he tried to do, he couldn’t change what would happen because of him.
—--
“Happy Birthday, Grammy!”
Grammo was surprised to see his sister as he opened the vault. She was as beautiful as the day she left him. But he should have noticed the bloody shackles she was wearing on her feet. He should have noticed the bleeding all over her wrist trying to get away from the rope that tied her. He should have noticed her face and body full of dirt and grim, he should have noticed her malnutrition, he should have noticed the sadness in her eyes.
But he didn’t. His immaturity only led him to see the perfect sister he wanted to see.
“Big sis Luna! You came! I wanted to see you so bad!” Grammo screamed. Luna wanted to cover her little brother’s mouth before people noticed her presence here, but when she saw that excited smile, she couldn’t do it. How will she be a good big sister if she can’t even let her little brother be happy?
“We need to play a game, alright?”
“What game?”
Luna pointed to a small egg-shaped metal contraption that crashed on the surface of the moon.
“We’ll play hide and seek. You hide over there in that pod, and you hide from whoever is trying to find you.”
“What about you, sis?”
Luna winked at him. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”