A very familiar tune followed by vibration came from his pocket. Igor frowned because of the sunrays and barely managed to take the cellphone out of his jeans’ pocket before a sudden shove from the back smashed his nose on the back of some sweaty bald man’s nape.

Feeling the emptiness on his hand Igor immediately ignored the angry bald man and looked back. The sidewalk was filled with people but although muffled, the ringtone was still there.

His eyes locked on a woman wearing common office clothing frantically pressing something on her handbag.

“Hey stop! Guard!” Igor yelled and rushed towards the woman, but once she turned the cell off a hand immediately took it from her and sped away covering his face with a cap.

Igor saw it. The man was thrice his own swarthy skinny size. Gritting his teeth, Igor rushed with venom in his eyes, and a very firm hold on his house's sharply pointed key. “Stop you bastard!” He forced his way through the crowd only to suddenly stumble on something and fall to the ground. 

“PERVERT! HELP!”

The yell stunned Igor and those around. Igor snapped out of it because it was the woman who grabbed his phone under him, but the mob only heard the yell and suddenly there was a man holding down a woman with red-rimmed eyes...

****

Things escalated quickly from there and while he was getting beaten up by the righteous mob,, the woman slipped away with two other men. Battered and tired, Igor ended up watching everything that happened from a camera nearby, of course, he first had to answer three hours of cop questions.

The video was cut short after the woman walked away.

Igor raged inside but was also relieved. Though the man who ran with the cellphone was unidentifiable, the woman and her other helpers were pretty visible from the camera.

 Igor looked up. Only to be met with an apologetic smiling guard.

Something inside Igor’s chest stirred, ‘No this can’t possibly be it.’ Igor thought and locked a forceful gaze on the flabby-bellied guard’s eyes.

"Though it's the shitty kind, it still my phone, and I want it back." It came out more of a snarl than a request.

The cop grimaced, but after eyeing the young man's build and clothes he just shook his head dismissively

"Igor, right? Well, to our shame, that's the kind of petty theft that happens too much and too often, though you can try and press charges, no cop will let go of their busy schedule to search and identify the woman on the camera, it would be a waste of their time and resources." Seeing The dark countenance on Igor's face the cop shrugged. "Even if you do try and force it, your case will be put dead last in line. It'll take half a year at the earliest for your turn to come."

"Half-year? Are you kidding me Mr.belly? Fernand Vidal came last month for a robbed laptop and the police found three suspects for him on the same goddamned day!"

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Igor slapped the table in front attracting the attention of some other cops in the vicinity. The flabby-bellied cop stared with norrowed eyes, the boy just went and gave him a nickname that'll never leave his co-workers mouth.

"Arrange yourself a billionaire father too, half-kilo then you'll have the same treatment." The cop spat back.

Igor reigned in his rage into suppressed calm breathing. He looked at the cop again, this time with calm. "My father is a war veteran."

The cop stilled and a standing officer looked at the boy in a new light. "Your father was a battlemage? or a healer? wich division, he was in?"

Igor coughed. "He was a classless front-liner." 

Suddenly the cops laughed.  and the standing one tsked with annoyance.

"Boy get out of here!" the fat cop said smacking his own leg.

Igor's tired eyes went from wide open with rage to cold and uncaring.

He knew it already. People forgot the first soldiers on the front line quite fast when humanity started receiving the gifts from the otherwordly elven race and beating back the invasion with almost ease.

It was like they didn't even matter, of course, excluding the wealthy ones. His father was just one of the late arrivals at the front lines, but he still held out with a dozen million others gathered across countries against Orks, goblins, and a dozen more abdominal races, through two years, and they did it without magic.

There were funerals and songs made for the fallen soldiers, even a global parades, but it all was easily eclipsed by the endless news that always talked about fantasy becoming reality, humans receiving the teachings of the elves and awakening their powers when touched by mana. It was all too novel and hope-inducing for the rest of the world to even remember the beginning of the war.

In silence, Igor turned around and left the station. there was nothing a penniless nobody with too little mana to awaken a class could do.

Looking at the hospital in the distance, Igor remembered how Fernand Vidal boasted to his friends that all he had to do was say his name, and the police found him three perps to chose from. And the worst of it was that Fernand had just forgotten the laptop on his house.

Laughing sardonically at the memory, Igor chose to take a moto-taxi instead of walking the sidewalk again.

****

Entering the familiar ER entrance, Igor greeted the nurses he knew with a nod from afar and walked directly to the counter. He had brought a cheap bottle of whisky normally it was impossible to bring those into a hospital, but his father him were known. the nurses turned a blind eye as it was something that only happened on the old man's anniversary.

Seeing the nurse Emily occupied, frantically pressing on her cellphone, Igor just sighed the visit book and nodded at her in greeting. she nodded back mechanically but then stopped and looked at him with wide eyes.

Her eyes then turned solemn. Igor felt his throat dry up.

"...W-where's your cellphone?" Her tired, breaking voice asked. The pity and sadness on her voice was palpable

The call before his cellphone was stolen...

Without another word, Igor let go of the bag and hurried to his father's ward.

Emily mindlessly stared at the broken bottle of whisky on the ground, biting her bottom lip until it bled