Hello, guys.
Are you coming here to see the interesting battle between me and that idiot streamer?
It’s kind of you to do so, but… no, we don’t fight.
Oh? You ask why?
Ha ha, it’s just a little mistake, a really tiny one.
“Slam!”
Not even closing the plastic box containing the electrical fuse with all my strength can cool down my fury now. It also has my finger stuck for a second, thrusting my nerves, and I just can’t hold back all my bad words like any other normal person. Of course, the one in the fire of anger.
“I’m gonna hang that guy! Holy shit! Why the hell does he shut off my circuit? Today is damn hot and you come to switch off the others’ power?”
And… yeah, you know the reason. An irritating event called artificial power cut, with an informal way to explain that phrase: there was a damn miserable guy coming to my family’s fuse box, turning off the power at noon, right at the moment I was about to take a serious fight. The capitalized ‘serious’.
Like eating a delicious hamburger every day for a century, winning ten thousand matches is absolutely boring. Or it’s maybe even guilty while fighting against the ones I knew they would never defeat me as well.
At first I could console myself that there would be a big gift from Rhoha after gaining this result, such as ten thousand dollars, like what players had rumored on forums. But nothing appeared after I got the 10000th victory. Rhoha just played the fool to encourage people to play Sky Force for many years without being revealed—because no one can reach and break my record.
Then, in shock and disappointment of being cheated, I posted on the Sky Force’s global forums that I got ten thousand dollars as a gift, spreading the fake news with a picture of payment from my damn rich friend and…
Nah, there was no ‘and’. No matter how I cheated on other players, I lost the feeling for Sky Force.
Till the day I got cursed.
For my title’s sake, that dunderhead still wants to be a famous player on Sky Force after yelling at me and pointing at my nose? Ridiculous! If some guy didn’t interrupt my battle, I could destroy the opponent in fifty different ways, without doubt.
But why? Why is everyone stopping me from playing just a match?
“Electric! Big brother! Electric!”
While I am still sighing in boredom and a bit of anger, a little ‘cannonball’ comes from the opened door, targeting at me, shouting in joy. I don’t know where that joy comes from, but my weak heart immediately jumps up to my throat when I see both his trembling legs running as if his fragile face will slam the front steps anytime. He is going to break his head! My Goodness…
“Dude, why do you run this fast?” Thanks to my long legs, I hold his shoulders when he is about to reach the stairs. He himself can’t fall now, but to make sure, I sit down and try to hold him while my heart is still racing. “Why don’t you take a nap? Seeking a chance to kill your brother with a heart attack, huh?”
I have always been full of anxiety since three years ago—the day this kid was born. His appearance also played a role when I gave up playing games, because he always cried and my parents were busy all the time. I used to hope that he would be a good boy in the future, but now, except for causing me more heart attack because of his stupid actions, I can’t find anything else.
To respond to my worry, this little bastard just laughs and catches my clothes with his tiny, soft hand, and of course, not answering my question.
“Brother! Electric! Purple electric!” Sir, it’s a grammatical mistake. And I don’t know what you’re saying, either.
“It’s ‘purple electricity’.” I correct his mistake, “Now get back to your room and I’ll turn on the electric fan. If you don’t sleep, you’ll see the electricity in at least seven colors.”
“Purple…” He looks back at me, a hilarious smile showing up, “… electric!”
This creature is my little brother, three years old, named Nhật Anh (sunlight). Err you shouldn’t care about these words’ pronunciation as well, because even I usually call him ‘little bastard’ as another solution. About the nickname, I have to clarify that I don’t hate my brother. He is cute instead. But it’s likely that our signs don’t get along with each other (mine is Aries and his is Capricorn), therefore, I can’t love him for over three seconds.
Such as this case.
“Brother, pick me!”
I literally look down on the ‘mushroom’ grasping my clothes, and my black eyes bump into those exactly same ones, splashing lots of pieces called ‘speechlessness’.
“Dude, you’re heavy like hell.”
Nah, nah, it’s my imagination, not the actual speech. He will burst into tears if I do so.
I can’t handle anything heavier than five kilograms. I might have been much healthier in the past, but now it’s the limit. A three-year-old boy is approximately fifteen kilograms, then you can realize one thing without using your brain. How the hell can I pick him up? The last time I tried to carry a five-kilogram-rice-bag, I couldn’t breathe for a while. Now if I carry him, my heart will stop beating, I swear.
“Can you go back to the bedroom yourself, little bastard?” The sun keeps shining on his sensitive skin, so I turn my back to the heat and try to push this troublesome thing into the bedroom.
And of course, this guy never listens to my words.
“Nope, brother, pick me!” He stands with arms akimbo, looking up at me and pointing his little finger at my leg—it is his height limit now, “And I am not the little bastard! Don’t call me ‘little bastard’, I know what it means. I am three now and you can't yell at me like this.”
Wow, you know you’re three? I’m eighteen here, kid.
“No, I am not.” I answer while slowly pushing this thing back to the bedroom, with a hilarious face turning away not to let him see, “Oh, how can you say that to me? Who told you that? I’m your brother. I will never yell at you. See, I am now protecting you from the sun. I love you like hell, so how can I yell at you, little bastard?”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I’m your dear brother, taking care of you since the day you were born and now you don’t trust me? ‘Little bastard’ means ‘little buddy’, believe in your brother.”
The kid stares at me without a word, as if he was thinking about whether I was true while letting me take him back to the house. It is the only thing I don’t like about my brother. Why? He doesn’t act like a three-year-old kid at all. This little bastard is not ordinarily intelligent but something greater, always suspended and looking for the real answer to all the questions!
Oh yeah, okay, you’re a curious boy, interested in new knowledge, and I take the responsibility of responding to your concerns as a brother should do. But everything has its own limit, like your height, dude. I’m not an encyclopedia.
Yesterday, this hateful bastard bombarded me by asking where to find an alien in Vietnam and with tons of related questions. Can you see his swollen eyes from crying? He also cried and shouted when I sighed in helplessness, begging him to set my poor brain free because I knew nothing about this nonsense topic!
Can my answer be ‘at the mental hospital’? It cannot, of course.
I am just an ordinary person, and I will meet no aliens in my whole life, thanks.
“Brother, the aliens…” Oh my goodness, again?
With the speed of light, I reply without hesitation, “Nope, I am human, not Martian. I know nothing.” And don’t make my head more painful, dear.
When I put my troublesome brother into the bedroom, turning on the electric fan and luring him to sleep, it’s 2:00 PM and I get a call from Long—the billionaire—right before I go to sleep. For God’s sake, I am furious and feel like I can grasp a knife to kill him anytime. My lifelong headache only gets better in my sleep, so I have to sleep twice a day to be normal.
I don’t hide my anger as well. “You’d better find a rational reason or I will kill you.”
“People rumor there are aliens in our neighborhood. Do you know that?”
If people hear about the aliens, they mostly show their concerns towards this mysterious and interesting issue. They often ask for more information, even fake news, for fun. Sadly, after my brother tortured me with his scary questions, my reaction was alone two words with a dumbfounded face showing how helpless I am.“Sorry, what?”I hear a motorbike from the door at the same time I reply to him. It’s familiar to the point I definitely know who is coming without looking through the glass window. My mother.Even though it’s earlier than I thought, my mother may have done her work at my aunt’s home and is now parking her motorbike in the front yard. Then I put aside what I heard from Long to go out of the room. Aliens? What are they? Are they edible? Surely they can’t be used as food, but my mother will bring back to me some bánh ú (beng u) for me.Is there anything more important than my favorite dish my aunt has promised to send me before? No, of course. It’s a pity that I nearly forg
Besides the identity of Leo Pavilion, I have a job as the one owning a part of this luxurious restaurant. Yeah, you don’t misunderstand. It’s me, who has just graduated from high school.To be honest, the birth of this restaurant derives from lots of factors: Long’s own dramatic parents, his mental wound, and a crazy moment of mine. Not the intentional idea to startup at a young age, certainly.The guy who is grabbing every piece of abalone over there is Long, one hundred per cent. He is ugly; I have to accept that reality, with naturally brown skin, black curly hair, a round face, and congenital myopia which forces him to wear glasses all the time. Those are the reasons he got rejected by his own parents.I don’t know it clearly, because it was Long’s sad memory, anyway. I just heard his butler saying that his mother, a young wealthy heir (yes, childish too), slept with her boyfriend and gave birth to Long a year later, when she was just sixteen. She rejected the little one who was h
I have never known that it doesn’t take much time for me to establish three levels of meaning of the word ‘aliens’.If ‘aliens’ in my little brother’s words just made me feel helpless, then that word turned into something like a tool to provoke my anger, when Long the brat interrupted my precious spare time with that damn reason. And now, at the moment I hear those letters from Khanh’s mouth, the third level of ‘aliens’ just encourages me to get back home! Immediately!!!It’s the third time I heard this word from three different people. You might not know this, but for the Vietnamese, anything that happened at least three times continuously is worth thinking about. How the f*ck can they scare me this way? It chills me to the bone, okay?Alien attack? No, it’s just the product of the imagination. Exactly.Though I’m trying to warm up my freezing blood this way, my ears are still uncontrollable, and those freaky whispers are still audible to me. Things get greater when that topic is dam
Like solving a mathematical problem, let’s analyze with simple eyes.If the culprit is not an alien, there must be someone throwing a huge rock, or something similar to a rock, into Nam’s room. Though a big rock can break the glass window easily, it’s not that easy to move the tool away. It’s in the victim’s room, right? But no one mentioned something like a rock when they talked about Nam as if there wasn’t any rock.All of us know the sound when someone throws a rock through the window. ‘Shatter’, and that sound is loud for sure. But the sign taking the neighbors to Nam’s house is the scream of his parents, not that sound. So, if the tool is not a big rock, then what breaks the window, causing no sounds and leaving a big hole in the road?If we suppose the culprit is something nonhuman, we have another scary scene.The time when that thing attacked Nam was half past thirteen. I didn’t check the clock, but according to Long’s irritating call at fourteen o’clock, I can guess that Nam
On behalf of an innocent man who falls, or used to fall, in love with this beautiful girl, I expect her to say something like ‘take care’. Who you love the first time will not be the one who you will marry, I know it. Khanh doesn’t know my emotions, and I’m not rich enough to say ‘I love you’ or something. My future is full of plans, and this love should end, or at least till the day I can lead a business empire. It’s damn hurt here, in my little heart, so I need something to be a beautiful memory…But what she tells me just drives me insane.“Can you ride Thuy back home with you?” Khanh might realize how resentful my look is. She knows that I’m weak, but it doesn’t stop her from smiling and keeping convincing me for unbelievable reasons. “Thuy is just a girl, and the evening is not safe for her. She is injured as well.”“She is literally light, too.”Thuy?She is a gangster, lady! The girl who is infamous for fighting, till the level where our homeroom teacher complained with her gra
Though our neighborhood is just a suburb lying not so far away from the center of HCMC, we got an area with about one hundred houses abandoned twenty years ago. People said it used to be the place where illegal residents lived without permission. When the authorities moved them away to build a factory here, a monetary problem arose, and they had to stop their plan.From then on, this uninhibited area turned into a point where gangsters and criminals gathered.They can be anyone. Please remember the fact that we’re living not so far from one of the biggest cities in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City. Kidnappers, human traffickers, or even drug dealers can appear in this abandoned area. The only unexplainable thing here is why they can be here.As mentioned, we got a police station near this area. The police check out randomly, so even if this place is on the way leading to our neighborhood, the chance to come across those dangerous criminals is tiny.Here, congratulations, we spin to the box ‘
So, it turns out that aliens are real? Not the synonym of that bad word?It is the final thing appearing in my mind before my body falls to the ground, sliding backward while the broken pieces are splashing on, and I end up slamming the brick wall behind.“Ouch…”I swear on my honor, it’s the most painful moment that I’ve ever gone through. I can barely breathe. My back is so hurtful that it’s no longer sensible. The worst part might be my left arm, which definitely got a crack from that accident and is now causing me terrible numbness, spreading all over my body and worsening my bad health.As the pain gets worse and worse, I crawl up with the limbs, which can’t be still for even a moment. They’re all trembling uncontrollably. There is nothing fine remaining in my body, and for me—a person who can’t even be able to suffer minor pain—it is the true nightmare. Now crawling up is also a difficult task. I got a broken arm, hurting legs, and a blurred vision, which just allows me to see t
“Where are you going?”I grasp Thuy’s wrist with the fastest speed I can reach. She stops, and I ask her in a hasty voice. Some dust from the polluted air drops into my mouth, and I cough uncontrollably.Thuy looks back at me with a calm expression which can’t be any calmer, “I have other things to do now.”I forget to cough as well.It’s not until now do I realize that there is nothing called the most unexpected thing, because it’s just more and more things you can’t expect. According to the restrictions of normal inference, I do not know the way to reply to her as well, though this language is my mother tongue.“What is it?” I ask her. My face might get some wounds after the accident, so it turns to be very painful when I open my mouth. Releasing her hand, I slightly rub my bruises while continuing my question, “What can be more important than your life? Do you know what ‘aliens’ means? You would be a roasted chicken if I didn’t pull you aside!”When saying this, I don’t mean to emp
Then I sob while waiting for the alien's action. But it just sits there in silence, and it's quite illogical.The most perfect lie is a combination between right things and wrong ones. My muscles are actually useless after years of being weak, and… yeah, I can't live my life because I am too weak to do anything. Most of my words are spoken from the bottom of my heart. My actions are high quality as I have learnt it from a famous actress.I have to be the director, the script writer, and the actor at the same time. Ain't I talented? Why doesn't the alien trust me?Luckily, the alien comes closer to me, slightly patting on my shoulders. I look up with my tearful eyes, and those compassionate eyes look back at me.“It was a pity to hear that from you. She stole your power and now you have to follow her as a subordinate, begging for her protection…” Those words are fine for me, but the last ones force me to look up at the alien, “Women should never have powers.”Excuse me?‘Women should ne
If you have ever failed in imagining how aliens would look like when they were in war, now I can tell you some with my damn experience.It is just… chaotic, in the way that you will easily recognize that they're in war. Only in war.This hallway is full of aliens, where I can see all the possible combinations of colors, shapes, and sizes on the humanlike bodies, which are the first thing that an Earthling like me has ever seen, smelled, or heard of.The atmosphere here is definitely not good for my health. The scent of grass, mixed with dust, roses, burning flesh, and something metallic like blood. Sometimes you can smell a bad odor as if there is a dead body. It is absolutely terrifying, but I see nothing but a dense crowd in the hallway.The headache tortures me. I want to vomit. But I have nothing in the stomach, and there is just no way to escape from this circumstance.Sighing in silence, I walk ahead, trying to pass through this crowded hallway as if I am one of them… Or maybe n
After that humanlike creature leaves, I look around the room and don't know what to do next.If describing my emotions now as something figurative, then I suggest calling it a mixture of an avocado, some pepper, and a cup of coffee. An inedible mixture, which is as weird as my emotions are.My situation may be the most hellish one ever in humankind's history. After being chased by drones, fighting against an alien battleship, I'm probably caged for the first time ever in my life.Yes, caged. No matter how prosperous my imagination is, I have never expected that one day I will be caught, or caged—if you prefer the second word.I have been a good citizen for eighteen years of my life. A really good one, I can swear on my honor that even if my three years old little brother was a criminal, I would never be. My body is just simply unqualified to be a criminal, so if I ain't the victim, then there's no way that I will be the culprit.Thinking again, the only serious crime that I have commit
PART TWO: Not Home, No Home“Wake up already?”A morning light ray shines in my eyes at the same time I hear this voice. I'm confused for a moment, my sleepy brain hasn't started working yet. I just follow my instinct, turning my head at the place where the voice echoes. Sunlight goes across my skin, leaving some warmth, which makes me feel a little… unfamiliar?Huh?Why is it unfamiliar?“Why are you standing right there? Go and bring those trash bags to the outside. The garbage truck will be here later… Can't you hear me?” The voice appears in my ears again, bringing some anger as I don't pay attention to the content.I look up. My eyes open wide. And, though I don't know why, my mouth has opened and said what it wants.“Mom? Why are you here?”My mother is holding a handkerchief. It seems that she is going to clean the glass window which is covered with fog droplets. She looks back at me with a complicated expression, then she throws that handkerchief at me. That thin object doesn't
Right after making a fragile bond between an unknown danger and a victim, that ‘danger’ picks me back to the control center because I can't walk.The lighting system couldn't escape the fate of being destroyed in the fight. We can't see light from outer space as well—maybe we have gone away from that cluster. The dim green light from the control panel is the only thing we can see in the dark, and it's obviously not enough.I slowly wave my hand on the floor to make sure that I'm not going to sit down on sharp metal pieces, then lean against the cold wall while Thuy comes closer to the control panel. Green light reflects her curious face when she stares at all the virtual keyboard, radar system, and the three-dimensional simulation—an expression which I can barely see on her cold face.“Looks great, right?” I ask her with a low voice but full of obvious pride. All the spaceships I designed in Sky Force follow the highest standards of aesthetics, so how could they be unimpressive?“Yeah
Actually I don't know what I'm thinking about, when I'm still lying on the metal floor and looking up at the electric sparks like a crazy guy.My head is aching, again.It feels like you met some fuckin' scary guys and they smashed you, at your head, with a hard brick. It was painful at first, but when they started changing their weapon into a block of metal, you…No.Now I just want to slam my head into something, or anything possible, to end this unbearable pain. I don't know if this pain comes from the weird substance which I got injected, but it is absolutely worse than the usual ones.For a moment my nervous system has stopped working. But just a second later, it starts, once again, thinking of some negative things like what I had to suffer in the past. They bloom in my chaotic mind as a call from hell, or an ugly hand waving me from the dark.The headache gets worse. Now it feels like someone is stirring my brain, and I can do nothing but bite the sleeve so as not to accidentall
Xeros 5M is never a good choice for face-to-face battles, especially for an unequal fight between a small spaceship and a huge battleship.Though its damage is perfect for long-range targets with a good motion detector, the cannon will break into pieces if we fire closer than the minimum distance. The weapon itself will become a disposable product—and it's a critical, deadly waste in fighting, which is usually prohibited (in Sky Force, at least).Because of that reason, not many players know that it was the muzzle that restricted Xeros' capacity, and it's just enough for an impressive headshot.First I move around the enemy battleship to check if it has anything related to my memories. Although it sounds ridiculous and crazy, I can't hold back thinking that this damn world might have some relation to Sky Force and… my spaceship design.We got a ship with all the functions of my Hurricane, now there is a battleship using something that looks exactly like the camouflage cover I have use
Wars follow humankind on their way to evolution.Before Christ, we had lots of wars in Egypt, Babylon, and the Hittite Empire, which were reflected in several famous comics which I don’t even read.The Roman Empire was in the spotlight for being involved in so many wars until the fall of the East Roman Empire in 1453 A.D.The Middle Ages was known for the Crusade.And the modern era shows us World War I and World War II, which everyone has already known after years in school.Differences and similarities are the main reasons that lead to wars. You’re afraid of something weird, ugly, unknown, and different from you, and then your instinct tells you to destroy that object to prevent any harm. That’s how war happens.No one wants war, or at least we ordinary people don’t. I am too.I don’t believe what the AI system’s voice said at first. I stand up again and look for a camera to check it out, thinking that it's just an error. I have a habit of taking photos of my opponents from behind,
At first, I didn’t recognize what it was.The first scene which catches my eye is a big room with a metal floor, and three huge glass-like cracked windows showing nothing outside. It is pure black, just like any normal scene coming from a science fiction movie. I am not attracted to this, because everything that draws my attention is the way to unlock the control panel. It’s the crucial part here. Nothing else.I’m trying to guess what the alien engineers thought when they created this spaceship. It’s time-consuming and patient-required. I have to make lots of ways, as much as possible, while the right arm—which is not broken—keeps on touching every single inch of the floating plate, to find something useful, shown clearly through lots of blood lines that my fingers left on the way.Where can the control panel be hidden?Aliens are not us. I have to forget all the usual methods of inference to think weirdly, as an alien does. Can this plate be the control panel? If not, why is it here