Only Wisdom Awakened - Chapter 273

Chapter 273: Sorry
It was the second time… and yet, the hesitation he felt was just as much as the first time he had reached that place…

‘Is this really… what should be done?’

He didn’t know…

For the first time in a while, Hans felt like he needed some advice…

He might have been strong as an awakened, but his experience in personal relationships wasn’t much…

He closed his eyes for a second before stepping forward, and trying not to think too much about it, he made his way towards the front gate.

He rang the doorbell and waited for any kind of response…

It took more than half a minute, but the clicking of the door a few meters from him caught Hans’s attention, who raised his head to look towards it.

The door opened slowly resulting in a light but annoying creak.

“I thought so… it’s you again”

The old man’s hoarse voice said.

“May I come in? I need to tell you something”

Hans displayed a slightly pained and saddened expression, different from the one he had the previous day.

The man noticed it and prepared himself for whatever his grandson might have to say.

The door fully opened as the old man moved out of the way…

He pushed a button beside the door, unlocking the fence’s gate for Hans to enter…

“Come in, my grandson shouldn’t ever be kept out of this house… it will be yours in the future anyway”

Hans opened the little gate and made his way through the lawn before reaching the grayed front wall of the originally white house.

He entered the house and looked around.

The whole place had changed… after just a single day, the interior looked brand new.

Maybe it was just the effect of the abundant light that was missing the previous time he had visited, but it now looked like a proper place to live.

The same for his grandfather… he didn’t look like a depressed old man anymore, and he certainly didn’t look like he had just woken up.

The old man noticed Hans’s eyes scanning the place as a hint of surprise emerged on his face, and his lips slightly curved turning into a little smile.

“Is it strange to see it like this?”

Taken by surprise by the question, Hans took a few seconds to reply:

“I… don’t know, I’ve only been here twice after all… but… did something happen?”

“You mean to me?”

The old man asked, and he wasn’t surprised when his grandson replied with a nod.

“I just… had a lot of time to think yesterday, I was fired a couple of days ago, so It took me a while to get back in my right mind”

Hans didn’t know anything about that…

“Why? What happened?”

He inquired.

“… sit down for now… can I offer you some coffee?”

“If you make one then sure, I’ll take one too.”

Hans sat down on the same seat he had taken the previous day and waited patiently for his grandfather to make two cups of coffee.

Not much later, a whistle resounded throughout the house as the vapor escaped from the mocha.

His grandfather picked it up and poured it into two little cups, bringing them to the little coffee table in front of Hans’s seat.

He then sat opposite his grandson and picked up one of the little cups with his thumb and his pointer finger.

Hans did the same and blew on the coffee as he waited for it to cool down, and as he patiently waited to hear what his grandfather had to say.

The old man’s eyes were lost inside the brown shade of the coffee… he watched the cup as he also waited for it to turn slightly cooler.

“That day when you fought with the crimson-

That day when you fought with Anna… I and my team were sticking together with Emma to ambush my daughter’s hideout…

She told me she sent you to Naples in order to scout the area, but the crimson lady would have definitely been there in Rome.

However… it seems like even she makes mistakes…”

Hans couldn’t help but think about it once again…

‘A mistake… right?’

“We made our way into the underground hideout, and we managed to quickly reach the center of that place…

However, when we defeated a man who was standing on the throne in the central room, he pierced his own throat with a pocket knife and smiled as blood flushed down his body, drenching his clothes.

It was so horrifying to see him laugh in such a condition that no one noticed something was amiss…

His body morphed into that of a monster… it looked like he was being ripped apart and rebuilt, just as if he were inside a shredder…

And even he… someone who managed to smile with a knife in his throat, couldn’t help but scream in excruciating pain as his body transformed…

We all watched as it happened, disgusted, but also quite scared…

He… had morphed into a monster, he wasn’t a human anymore… proving it was also the experience we received when killing it.

We were shocked… but since the lady wasn’t there, we decided to head outside for a moment and plan our attack again.

We walked back to the entrance where we came from, but blocking our path were other monsters… they were what had become of the guards and henchmen we had either killed or defeated… and not only them… every single person inside those underground tunnels… seemed to have become a crazed monster.

Before we knew it, they had already swarmed us… we tried to escape as fast as we could, but having one injured in our team greatly reduced our speed, and the monsters were slowly catching up…

Emma disappeared that very moment, bolting away panicked…”

‘That must be when she realized I was fighting the crimson lady alone’

Hans interrupted with his thoughts.

“We escaped to the surface and ran away as fast as we could but… the monsters followed us even there… and not only us… we put the entire city in danger… people lost their lives, and if it wasn’t for the association’s work, which evacuated thousands of people, then many others would have met the same end.

Of course, carrying out a mission in secret that resulted in civilian deaths led to me being fired…

As it should be.

I am just.… sorry for those people”

“I may not be the one with the most experience here, but I’m sure that blaming yourself will get you nowhere, will it?

If you make a mistake try to make up for it, isn’t that the first thing kids are taught to do?”

The man remained impressed by the little advice given to him… he chuckled as he said:

“Maybe it’s been so long since I was a kid that I don’t even remember the basics”

“Perhaps… you’re right”

Hans said.

…

It was now or never… he had to bring up the subject that had been stuck in his throat since he entered the house…

He opened his mouth as if to speak, but a voice overrode his attempt…

“How is… your mother doing?”

His grandfather asked.

Hans was immediately taken aback by the question… did he not know? Did he not know anything about what happened?

Hans was once again faced with the trouble of having to drop a bomb…. A bomb that would probably destroy his grandfather emotionally even more than he already was…

Hans didn’t even have the courage to look the old man in the eyes as he told the truth:

“They… they’re in a coma, my father… my mother… my sister….”

The old man felt his heart drop as his eyes became lucid…

He stared at the boy for a few seconds before asking in a feeble voice:

“S-since when?”

He barely whispered…

Hans tried his best to hold his emotions as he answered:

“A long time… too long… ever since Manhattan’s fall”

The old man felt bad… he lost all the strength in his body, as he watched the boy in front of him with an expression filled with shock and panic…

“How old are you Hans?”

It was the first time the boy’s name came out of the old man’s mouth…

Hans turned his head as he replied…

“Nineteen”

The old man closed his eyes, he held his breath as he tried his best to suppress his emotion… but there was nothing he could do, a few tears still slid off his cheeks…

His lucid eyes stared at the boy as his trembling voice talked once again…

“I am sorry…. I am sorry for leaving you alone all this time…. I am sorry for leaving you, your mother, your aunt… I left you all…. I- I let you all down…. I was just thinking about myself, blinded with revenge…

A lot of tears started escaping the man’s eyelids as he tried to wipe them off and cover them with his hand…

“I am sorry Hans….

I am sorry….”