Beep beep… Beep beep…
Suddenly the Terminal on his hand started beeping. Garen raised his hand up and looked at it to realize that Nono’s father Rondo had sent in this month’s living allowance, which was about a thousand Universal Units.
He frowned.
Nonosiva’s family wasn’t wealthy to begin with, and they still had to support his monthly living expenses after paying for his semester’s tuition fee. This placed their family in straitened circumstances to the point where his brother and sister had to give up on going to school to reduce their expenses. All of these had to be done in order to support Nono studying in Blackboard Academy.
One could say that the family had placed all of their hopes onto Nono. His parents scraped by and were very reluctant in eating meat at all and had to eat processed food most of the time.
After pondering for a while, Garen walked towards specific location and gave Nono’s father, Rondo a call.
The phone was instantly connected.
“I can only give you this much. Nono, you should try and cut down your expenses. I’m at my limit…” Rondo’s tired and old face appeared at the end. His eyes were filled with blood vessels and he hadn’t slept from the overtime he had done for two straight days. He did so much to squeeze out his son’s living expenses and even gave away all of his salary. The company wasn’t bringing in money lately so he couldn’t do much more than he had already done. He had no choice but to let his wife handle the housing expenses and the monthly medicine required for his grandmother’s illness. All five members of the house needed to eat and dress, and the financial stress was making him feel stretched to his limits.
Garen didn’t expect that Rondo would think that he was asking for money. Judging on this, it seemed that Nonosiva wouldn’t have called home unless he required more money. This was probably why his father felt so hopeless.
He looked at the pale and tired Rondo inside the monitor. Although he wasn’t his real-life father, Garen felt touch by his actions and hence, he decided to repay them for taking over his son’s body.
He opened his mouth but he wasn’t able to say the word ‘dad’. Afterall he was much older than him.
“I don’t need money and I have enough here. You don’t have to credit me any more Universal Units in the future, so you can save it for yourself.” he took a breath before explaining it to him.
“You don’t need money? Your academy’s expenses are huge. How are you going to survive without money?” Rondo opened his mouth wide as he looked very surprised. “Don’t worry about it. Your brother has recently started working and has gotten this month’s pay. I plan to send his money to you tomorrow but I guess I will credit it to you now.”
He immediately called someone else on the phone and soon Garen’s Terminal beeped again and another three hundred Universal Units had been credited. The payer was Baylon, who was Nono’s brother, Lon.
Garen sighed as he recalled his brother Lon, who had to find work to support his brother’s living expenses in the academy. Frankly speaking, he was rather moved. Nonosiva’s academy life wasn’t considered luxurious but it was at least comfortable enough to not worry. At the same time, he enjoyed his peers’ respect and worship as he was able to pull out eight to nine thousand Universal Units, which was an unbelievable feat. On the other hand, his family members were very reluctant in buying any necessities and would eat the cheapest processed food available. It had been so bad to the point where his brother had to stop going to school and start working to support his living expenses.
He was able to recall his attitude towards his family members from his memories.
It was embarrassment, hatred and zero urge to return home.
He had been embarrassed that he had such a poor family and had even started to hate his family members. As compared to his peers, he didn’t dare to attend most of their gatherings as the expenses were ridiculously large. The same could be said for any outing as well as his training methods, which had been provided by the academy free of charge. Meanwhile, the majority of the students would purchase a training method that would best suit them from outside.
Under all sorts of comparisons between himself and his peers, he eventually resented his family members and wouldn’t contact them unless he needed money.
His family was also one of the reasons he was lonely in the academy. Hence he was good friends with only Aier and Mina. However, these two who lived in the academy didn’t know of Nono’s family’s situation.
“Don’t worry about it,” Garen explained. “I’ve found a way to earn money and train myself at the same time so you don’t have to worry about my living expenses anymore. It’s true.”
Rondo was still very skeptical over all of this.
Garen then used his terminal and credited two thousand Universal Units back to him.
“Take this money and the additional one thousand as my support to the family. Don’t let Lon work and send him back to school.”
Rondo was stunned, and his face in the terminal stopped reacting for a few moments. Nono, who had always been requesting money from the family, had decided to send money back to them?
“Nono… you… you’re not up to something bad are you…?”
“Of course not!” Garen replied with confidence. “Don’t worry about it. I really have found a job inside the academy that is able to give me a small sum of money and I can train myself at the same time.” he immediately sent another thousand back to his brother Lon.
He had earned tens of thousands of Universal Units from the battlenet alone and this money was just money from a few rounds of competition. Even the thousands of Universal Units that he’d credited to them had just been his bonus.
Even though he still needed money to buy the White Peacock Stone, he still planned to credit more back to the family.
“Don’t worry about it. I really don’t need you to credit me any more money,” Garen assured him once more.
Only then did Rondo start to believe his story.
“Don’t let your part-time job affect your studies,” seeing that his eldest son no longer required support from the family, he felt worried and much more relaxed at the same time, because he had budgeted the family’s expenses to the bare minimum in order to pay the Blackboard Academy’s expensive tuition fees and Nono’s huge monthly expenses. If he were to be able to save this amount of money, his family’s situation would be greatly improved.
“Alright I shall hang up first. Give Lon a call.”
“Alright. Take care of your health and study well,” Rondo started nagging.
“Understood.”
Garen hung up as he had already arrived the place where he’s supposed to meet. While he stood by the street and waited, he made a call to Baylon’s personal terminal.
It only beeped once before someone immediately answered the terminal.
“It’s Lon’s brother from the Blackboard Academy!” “Let me see! Let me see!” “His brother is in Blackboard Academy?! How amazing!” “My cousin brother is only from the Swordfish Academy and he threw himself out there every day.”
“Baylon, since your brother is from Blackboard Academy, when do you plan to introduce him to me?” a girl’s voice could be heard.
Baylon’s face was shown on the Terminal and he looked very proud as he looked at the Terminal. There seemed to be quite a few of people around him. There were youngsters of his age and even the voices of adults as well and it was quite noisy.
“Brother, why have you called?” his voice was very soft and he still gave off the timid vibe. “Also… Did you just send me some money…?”
Garen frowned slightly.
“Who permitted you to work outside? Go back immediately! Our home doesn’t lack that little money of yours,” his tone was very oppressing and this scared Baylon to the point that his face turned white.
“The money I’d sent you just now is from my part-time job. You need to go back and prepare to go to school now! Remember to bring the leave procedure with you!” since he had taken over Nono’s body, he decided to repay his parents in his place.
“But… but…” Baylon was so timid that his sentence was broken off by Garen before he could say anything.
“No buts. Go back to school now, we don’t need you to work just yet,” Garen said with a stern face. Baylon was only thirteen years old and was still in high school. If he were to stop studying now, it would be impossible for him to go back in the future.
Although Baylon was on the verge of crying, he was still chided by Garen who wanted him to go study once more. He didn’t expect Baylon to man up and fight back. Although it was just a small refute, Garen could see that Baylon liked to be around these workers and he really liked it there.
“If you don’t feel like leaving, then you should work a part-time job after class just like me,” Garen suggested. Seeing Baylon crying, he still insisted on him giving up his job. “If you need money in the future you can just tell me. I have quite an amount as of now. Don’t worry about it.”
“Oh.. okay..”
“Alright, I’m hanging up now,” with a click, the terminal was switched off. Garen raised his head and looked at the car owner uncle was currently walking towards him. Garen was standing at the blind spot of a small street with very little people around, and he seemed to not have realized Garen yet. As Garen was about to walk over and greet him, he suddenly sensed a faint sound and a gust of wind that was coming towards the back of his head.
Without any hesitation, Garen instantly turned around and by utilizing his powerful rotational force, he used his elbow to hit the person approaching from behind.
Boom!
He hit a student’s head, one who was also wearing the Blackboard Academy’s uniform. He had a black cloth in his hand and it seemed that he had been attempting to cover Garen’s head with it.
After being hit in the head, he took a few steps back dizzily and couldn’t even recover from it.
The other two men didn’t expect things to turn out like this and growled as they planned to attack him directly. Both of them threw a punch towards Garen’s head.
Garen gently moved to one side to allow the fists to pass through his original spot as he struck with his right knee. With a resounding thud, one person fell to the ground.
With his fist in the air, the other man started to sweat as he saw his friend fall to the ground.
“This guy is trained!” the guy who had just recovered shouted. “How…” Before he finished shouting, he felt a sensation in his stomach as he took five to six steps back and could no longer stand.
The last man stared at Garen as he sweated. He wasn’t sure if he should retreat or attack him.
“Who told you to ambush me?” Garen asked calmly. Although this body’s physical attributes were still weak, he could easily deal with these few fellows just based on his experiences in martial arts alone.
If one were to use all of his force during a fight, his momentum would be at its peak and he wouldn’t be able to change his attack afterward. While this provided enough power, one could easily find its flaw when it was avoided and the opponent could be easily dealt with afterwards.
“Ah!!” the last man shouted as he turned around and ran away. However, he didn’t manage to run too far off before Garen bent his knees and made him fall to the ground.
Garen grabbed their wrists, looked at their terminals and kicked them once more before leaving the area.
By then, a lot of bystanders had already gathered and even the car owner uncle looked at him in shock as he gulped and looked back at the three students.
“Ignore them. Let’s move to a new spot,” Garen gestured his hand.
“Alright.”