Only Wisdom Awakened - Chapter 60

Christmas
In his lonely and spacious new room, Hans woke up.

The lack of any furnishing made the room look even bigger than what it already was, and the huge door windows let the early morning sun shine upon the wooden floor.

Hans watched the clock on his phone, before walking all the way downstairs, and starting to prepare breakfast.

It was 9:30 am, about time to wake up Aiden, so he decided to prepare him a small meal.

Two pieces of bread were toasted on the toaster, and the eggs were nicely scrambled with a bit of olive oil.

He also pan fried the bacon, careful not to burn it.

Smelling the heavenly flavour that came from the kitchen, Aiden woke up.

“What’s with the kindness?!”

Jumped back Aiden seeing the table full of food after entering the dining room.

‘Is there a catch? Normally, when I come out of my room it would be like this’

thought Aiden, imagining an empty room, with nothing on the table and in the fridge.

Could he be planning someth-‘

“Bam” Hans’s hand hit Aiden’s head.

“Brat! What are you thinking about, come eat with me”

Aiden, without any other choice, followed Hans.

“My bad my bad Brother.

So? What’s the occasion?”

“You kid, don’t you know what day today is?”

Said Hans pointing at the young guy.

“N-no, but the teachers said we don’t have school this week”

“It’s Christmas, Christmas!”

“Oh, I heard about it, isn’t it the day the messiah of the Christian religion was born”

“Anything else about Christmas?”

“Mhhh, no, that’s all, Logan didn’t speak of it and I don’t believe in God, so I don’t really care about it.”

‘To think there was a kid who grew in worse conditions than me, when I was younger, i at least got a taste of happiness and joy, but this guy.. how does he not even know about things like this? Has he never received a gift?’

“Hey Aiden”

“Wit brudr” (what brother) replied the other while wolfing down the food on his plate.

“Do you want anything?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean for your daily life, or something you might need”

“Mhh, actually, I wanted to ask you, could you perhaps buy me a phone?”

The request was simple, and not that difficult, but Aiden felt so shameless asking for something else after all Hans had done for him, on the other side, Hans treated it as a relatively basic request, that couldn’t even be categorized as a gift, he actually thought that Aiden already had one, but it seemed like Logan didn’t want him to know anything at all about the outside world.

The only reason he was sent to school was to keep a facade, because it would’ve been suspicious for someone that age to stay inside their house all time, since he was still under the age to officially work.

However, other than that , Logan tried to keep Aiden unaware of everything, after all. the best type of puppet..

is the one who doesn’t know how to think.

Hans brought Aiden outside, to let him see how the various shops had decorated their windows.

But the guy didn’t really find it surprising.

“There it is”

Said Hans with his chin up, watching something in the far distance.

“What?” Said Aiden while raising his eyes.

“Wooow” Aiden’s pupils widened witnessing the magnificent sight unleashing in front of him.

The beautiful and elegant winter sunlight was reflected on the enormous white amusement wheel that was standing a few hundreds meters away from them, on it, were hanging many cabins, filled with people, who also watched the astonishing scenery of the city covered in a thin layer of snow, that came to be during the previous freezing night.

“Didn’t you say you wanted to go to an amusement park? Let’s go”

One, two, three, four hours passed, and the only attraction the two young men hadn’t visited was the wheel.

And so, snacking on some sweets they bought here and there, they paid the tickes and got on it.

During the whole duration of the ride, they both watched around them.

The beautiful setting sun, whose light had changed from elegant to warm.

The lively lights and people below them.

The moving cars on the busy city’s streets.

All these things created a breathtaking atmosphere, that made even the composed Hans falter, getting emotional while watching.

‘Dad, mom, sis, don’t worry, I’ll make sure to bring you here, no matter how much it takes. In the meantime, I’ll put my all in defending this city for when you wake up.

“Merry Christmas Aiden” said Hans, distorting the sight from the view and facing the young guy in front of him.

“Thank you, I don’t really understand how it works, but I should say it back right?”

Hans nodded.

“Then… merry Christmas Hans, thank you, really thank you for everything you’ve done so far.

Wouldn’t you have come to pick me up from there, I would still be starving in Logan’s house right now.”

‘Smile’

At home,

“Here”

“W-what is this brother?” Asked Aiden seeing a packed box on the table.

“Haha, a present, feel free to open it right now”

“Should I have given you one myself?, I’m sorry, I didn’t know about this procedure, and even if I did… I don’t have enough money to buy one, I’m sorry.

Like if he had suddenly said something unreasonable or stupid, Hans laughed in front of his face.

“Don’t worry about anything like that, here, just open it”

“Ok then, thank you brother”

Taking away the gift paper, remained behind a small white box, that had a very famous insignia, stamped with the name of a company that had been famous well before the disaster.

But even without knowing anything about it, he immediately thanked Hans with all his heart for the gift, and decided that once he would be working, he would’ve repaid him this favour.

That night.. holding his phone with both his hands, Aiden was searching on the internet for something, pressing the buttons extremely slowly, since not used to them.

[ Hans Ritcher] he searched like this simply because of a single feeling, every time he was around Hans, he felt a strong danger, not like it normally bothered him, but it looked to him that his ‘brother’ was extremely strong, even if only admitting of being a low rank.

In case Hans was strong, he wanted to know how much, and in case he was weak, he wanted to know how to protect him.

he stumbled upon a news article featuring Hans Richter. The headline caught his attention – “Powerful Awakened Mage: Hans Richter Emerges as a Defender of the City.”

Aiden’s eyes widened as he delved into the article, discovering that Hans was not only an Awakened, but a high-ranking mage, known for what he had done against Logan, the figure he once called father.

It was truly shocking for him, so much that he couldn’t sleep, and spent all the night continuing his search.

And surprisingly, after the whole night of research, the articles still hadn’t finished.

The following day.. as Hans was getting ready to go to work, Aiden woke up.

It seemed like he was really sensitive about sounds, well, all the better for him.

Even if he had huge dark circles under his eyes, he insisted on eating breakfast with Hans, so they both dressed up and went outside.

“Brrrr” the cold had definitely woken Aiden, making him shiver and tremble.

But that only made the entry in the warm and welcoming cafe even better.

After eating, Hans went to work, while Aiden returned home, since he didn’t have any classes to attend to.

‘What a draining job, even students are enjoying their holidays while here I am working myself to certain death.

“Sir, sir'”

Someone rushed into the room trough the door, that lately had been used more for decoration than for anything else, since no one seemed to be knocking before entering.

‘

“What are you still doing here sir?”

“What do you think? I’m working”

“That’s not what I meant”

“Then explain so I can understand what you meant”

The man sighted before sitting down in front of Hans.

He was Lucas, the observation director for the Chicago branch.

While establishing many branches over the years and the globe, the association had many problems controlling the branch leaders.

Like fools, they tried to create their independent association, and ended up back to square one.

The problem with this, wasn’t fighting them, but the time lost while battling amongst humans couldn’t be spent repelling the beasts.

To avoid these kind of situations, they sent a special informant in every branch , that helps the association main branches know when to strike to avoid further troubles and disruptions, the man that was currently standing in front of him, was that person, in other words, he was the feet and the ears of the association branch.

“To sum it all up what you’re saying is…”

“Yes, you need to have a meeting with all the branch leaders, and it’s scheduled tomorrow in New York”

‘Damn…. do I perhaps have a chaos magnet that I accidentally picked up?!’