- Oliver -

"Oliver, what was your family like?" Isabela asked.

The boy, who had a slice of dry bread in his mouth, almost choked.

"Cough, cough. Where did that question come from?" he commented.

"You basically already know everything about us," Isabela said. "I've even told you about the dog I had on our farm. But I feel like we still know almost nothing about you."

Oliver raised his hands as if he were surrendering. "Alright, alright. Let me think."

Katherine, who was also focused on chewing a piece of dry bread, began to pay attention to the conversation.

"It's been a long time. But my mother, she was normal," he began to explain. "Like all the other mothers."

"That's not fair. Think of something," Isabela pouted as she scolded the boy.

These were some of the few moments that kept the group's sanity. Being able to talk about a lighter subject than the hell they went through day by day—a rare way to imagine they weren't there.

"She was beautiful. Even as a child, I knew that. When she came to pick me up from school, there was always a child or two who were impressed by her," Oliver said, slightly blushing.

Isabela smiled upon seeing her friend feel shy about talking, which only made her even more curious.

Oliver continued, "However, at home, she was the queen bee. She bossed my dad and me around. I always tried to pretend there was no schoolwork to do, but she always found a way to find out."

"What did she do for work?" Katherine asked.

"She was a teacher. However, after we moved, she started spending more time at home with me," Oliver replied, trying to pull as much as he could from his memory. He felt a bit sad, noticing that when he remembered his family, they were nothing more than shadows—he even had difficulty recalling their features.

"And your father?" Isabela asked.

"He was FRICKING smart. That was the only description everyone gave me about my dad. Even though he was young, he left Seoul to come to live in the U.S. and work with a company that did energy research," the boy explained.

| Crap

'Crap?' Oliver thought upon seeing Athena's notification.

"Wait. Your father came from where?" Katherine asked.

"S-Seoul," the boy repeated, realizing the mess he'd made.

| Now you noticed?

'Hey! You could have warned me earlier,' he tried to defend himself against Athena's judgment.

"Where is Seoul? Is it some colony?" Isabela asked.

"Ummmm," Oliver didn't know what to answer; he didn't want to have to lie to the two girls.

"Seoul, Seoul. I've heard of that city before. Wasn't it—" Katherine began to speak more softly until she fell silent. "It's not possible." She looked at the boy as if she were judging him.

"Hey! It's quite uncomfortable to have someone looking at me like that." He pretended to be embarrassed, covering his private parts.

Isabela punched him in the arm. "As if after months here, we haven't already seen that."

"Even so," Oliver pretended to have his feelings hurt.

"Alright. What did you remember?" Isabela asked Katherine, who was still looking strangely at the boy.

"I remembered one of the first history classes. About the beginning of the war," she said.

"Beginning of the war?" Isabela asked, not understanding.

"Yes. Seoul was the first city bombed. Since the first wave, it doesn't exist anymore. There's no way your father could have worked there. Or is there?" Katherine spoke while looking intently at the boy.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

"Good thing you can't shoot lasers from your eyes. You're so fixated on this that I feel like at any moment you're going to pierce me with your gaze," the boy commented.

"Spill it," Isabela said to the boy. "Clearly, you're stalling."

"Ah," Oliver sighed.

"Alright, but I'll only tell you under two conditions," he began to speak.

"Yes?" the two responded almost in unison.

"First, what I'm going to tell you is true. I have no way to prove it, but it is. So no freaking out. Second, you can't tell anyone," Oliver laid out the conditions.

Unlike Nico, he didn't know if they could handle this information; besides, Nico had already figured out everything just by looking at the boy.

'It's not like I could have prevented Nico from discovering something,' he thought.

| True.

"I promise," the two girls raised one of their arms as if making a vow.

"Alright. My whole family—and not just my father—is from Seoul," Oliver explained.

"B-but how?" Isabela asked, still not understanding the implications.

"I was in the first wave," the boy commented.

"What?!" Isabela almost shouted.

For the two, some things began to click.

"You would have to be about a hundred and fifteen years old? Although it's possible to extend a person's average life with the use of Energy, it wasn't a known technique at the time," Katherine commented.

"With VAT. It was a little before the first wave that they started testing it; at the time, it was supposed to be just for small injuries and still only for tests. It wasn't for the general public," Oliver commented. "I believe that because of the war, they had no choice and started putting everyone who was badly injured."

"But that means you spent almost a hundred years frozen in a VAT. I've never heard of anyone who survived that long," Isabela commented.

"I can't say what happened either. One moment, I was almost dead; the next, I was being released onto the streets of New San Francisco. Without documents, without money, and only with some clothes," Oliver explained.

"Now your questions about Houses and Great Houses make a bit more sense," Katherine commented.

"Wow!" Isabela exclaimed, her eyes shining with excitement. "What was it like before the war? Why didn't you learn about Houses? Is it true that before the war, there were no Rangers?"

She was firing one question after another without giving Oliver time to select one to answer.

"Calm down. Calm down. One at a time," he said, seeing Isabela's excitement. "It was normal; I don't know what to say. We didn't have a war; obviously, there was always the possibility of a conflict, but it wasn't something constant."

Isabela couldn't grasp the question; to her, war wasn't something so close. Sure, from time to time, there were Orks trying to attack Earth or land in some remote area. However, for her, it didn't seem that bad.

"Why didn't I learn about the Houses? Information isn't that accessible, especially for someone without money," he commented. "A person living on the street doesn't have school, NET, or anything like that."

"Besides, it's hard to ask about something you have no idea exists. At first, I even had difficulty accepting that I wasn't dreaming; after that, it was a struggle to update and understand the English we speak nowadays," Oliver explained.

"What? The English spoken today?" Isabela asked. "Has it changed that much?"

"There are still some similarities, but it's wildly different. It's been a hundred years; everything has changed," the boy explained. "After that, I tried to get a job to have food and a place to live. Luckily for me, many other Nameless were going through something similar, and they guided me through part of it."

Now, it wasn't just Isabela who was impressed with the conversation but Katherine as well, who had her eyes shining while listening to the adventure.

"Imagine sleeping one day and waking up in a world a hundred years in the future?" Isabela said aloud to Katherine.

"It must be..." Katherine spoke in a low voice. "Awful."

Only when the girl spoke did Isabela realize that it could be a terrible experience to go through something like that, especially for someone who lost their entire family.

"But your parents, are they also in a VAT?" Katherine asked.

"I can't say. Actually, no one can say. It's not like there are many people left from the time of the first wave," Oliver commented.

"Yes," Katherine agreed.

"Alright. Now it's my turn," Oliver said. "What will you do once we get out of here?"

The two were silent for a while.

"Go back to the Academy," Katherine replied first. "I need to get into the Red Division."

"Why?" Isabela asked.

"I still want to find my brother. It seems like the best place to find other clues," Katherine replied.

"Makes sense," Isabela commented. "I don't have anything clear yet. I want to go back to the Academy—not for something as noble as Katherine's—I just had a dream of being a Ranger. I come from Area 55, where there are basically only cattle and plantations. It was my way of having an adventure."

"But what changed?" Oliver asked.

"Maybe I've already had too many adventures after this," she explained.

"Maybe," Oliver commented.

"And you?" Katherine asked, looking at Oliver.

"We have the same goal; I'm going to join the Red Division," Oliver replied.

The three remained silent for a while, not knowing what else to say.

Katherine felt a bit happy knowing that if she at least got out of all this mess, she would have a friend within the Red Division.

Oliver stretched to open one of the eggs on the ground when he started to feel the ground shaking.

"Are you—" Before he could finish asking, the three heard a massive explosion.