Ch 5: Hiro or Hero?

Ace held his arms close to his chest as he braced for the fall.

But it never came.

One second of floating, and he was snapped back from gravity’s pull like whiplash.
Squinting through the rainfall, he jerked his head upwards. It was the young man with brown hair.

“Hnggghh!” The young man grunted, holding onto the fabric of Ace’s collar.

Ace grasped onto the young man, the image of his head bursting on the pavement causing his fingers to tighten.

Tumbling onto the wet stone, he gripped his tattered shirt, attempting to vacuum as much air into his lungs as possible. But it still didn’t feel like enough.

“You’re welcome,” the young man said with a grin.

It fell with a flat tone.

Ace’s mind was still buzzing from the decision to jump, thoughts too fast to catch. He tried to speak, but the words were lodged in his throat.

The young man was facing him, still waiting for a response, but he dodged to look at the ground.

I know what he must be thinking. I was repulsive. A skeleton, quite literally standing on the edge of death.

“Th-thanks.” Ace finally managed to mutter.

The young man turned and walked to the door that led to the rooftop.

Leaving already, huh?

He stood holding the door open, looking towards Ace, who hesitated for a moment, almost as if seeking permission to follow.

                                                                                   ***

They sat down opposite each other, water dripping from their clothes. From this distance, Ace could see the runic detailing patterned on the man’s cloak. It glowed green, matching his neon straps and hazel-green eyes. Tools and attachments hung from various places on his black tactical gear.

Empty and hollow, the room reverberated with the splattering of the rain from the rooftop. There were thousands of lifeless rooms just like this one, on every floor of the hundreds of high rises around them. Ace felt like he’d seen all of them the past two weeks. The buildings were nothing more than steel pillars jutting out of the pavement, and each room was a synthetic cage of long-forgotten memories.

A shiny box scratched across the floor, releasing a sweet aroma Ace recognised.

“Here. You look like ya need it,” he remarked while tinkering with the gadget in his lap. It resembled a crystal, emitting a mystical aura around it, protected by a makeshift case.

Ace yanked the lid off the tin, not wasting a second to consume the cloudy balls of rice.

With a clink, the young man placed the gadget on the ground, lighting a cigarette with a flame from his fingertip.

Magic.

Ace wanted to ask, but was too busy devouring the small balls of heaven bestowed upon him. The man gestured in his direction. Ace shook his head.

Smoking was something Cecilia would never approve of. Ever.

Puffing a small cloud of smoke, he opened his mouth again.

“Why?” His voice was energetic. Almost bouncy.

Ace took a second to let the question sink in. Why. He repeated the word in his head. Again. Then again. And again.

He opened his mouth as if about to speak, then stopped. The tides of emotions welling up inside him made it hard to think clearly. In that moment, he realised. He wasn’t thinking at all; he was feeling.

On the second attempt, Ace mustered up the courage. His voice was broken, woven with shattered hope.

“I thought for once that it could be me. That I could be the…hero. You know? That I could be someone greater than what everyone told me I could be. I thought that for once, I could give my life meaning. That I could find some sense of purpose. And now…Now I’ve lost everything. My home. My friends. My family. Cecilia. All of it. I have nothing left-”

“It can’t be changed. The past will always be the same, no matter how many times you look back. When you wake up and the Seraph rises past the aurora, you’re given a blessing. Ya know what that is? It’s making it to the next day. The truth is, no one knows when their last day will be. You should thank the shadow of salvation that it wasn’t today. Because it almost was. But right now, you’re still alive. You may not be able to fix the past, but you can still change the ending. Outnumbered, you saved that girl. And escaped Dragus, even if it was thanks to the Celestial Moon.”

“Where is she??” Like a corpse coming back to life, Ace crawled forward, eager for an answer.

“Who knows. You’d know better than me.”

Ace returned to his slumped posture. The smell of cigarettes began to irritate his nose.

“What’s ya name?” the man asked.

“Ace-bartholomew, but you can just call me Ace.”

Everyone who ever met Ace thought his name was weird—one of the reasons why he always hated it.

“Ace… Bartholomew? I like it. My name’s Hiro. But you can call me your ‘hero’.” He extended his hand out toward Ace.

No way he just said that.

For a second, Ace thought he saw tumbleweeds roll by.
Yet Hiro was grinning from ear to ear.

Ace held out his hand to shake his, slowly, stopping just before touching, showcasing the grime covering them. Hiro shook it firmly, regardless.

“So…why? Why did you save me? How did you even find me?”

Hiro’s eyes darted to the strange gadget before pointing to the bracelet on Ace’s wrist. The one he'd been struggling to rid himself of. Hiro hovered his hand over it, and the runes on the bracelet glimmered an indigo hue, releasing a soft chime as the bracelet’s mechanism released.

Ace ran his fingers across the faint grooves that it had left on his skin, slightly warm to the touch.

“I tracked ya location, not to save ya, though. Sorry to disappoint. There’s no good reason why someone would be in the Barrens.”

So, he tracked me here? Wasn’t the timing too convenient to show up at the perfect time to save me?

Hiro grabbed a second cigarette from one of his pockets, once again lighting it with a fire from his fingertip.

“Wait, how do you do that?”

“Huh?. OH… Well, I’ve been smoking these since I was like fourteen, so-“

“I meant the fire.”

Ace couldn’t tell if he was lacking social cues or was just playing around.

“Huh? What kinda planet ya from if you don’t know about runes?” He leaned back, placing one leg over the other.

“The planet I’m from has no runes, no robotic birds, no goblin piss potions, no cat-grannies, no lightning rifles, no magic floating circles, no green ogres, no purple space wizards. None of it.”

Hiro paused for a moment to think.

“Sounds like a pretty boring place to me.” He said with a cheeky grin.

Perhaps this was the standard attitude you needed to get by in this world, Ace thought.

“Ha. So, ya can smile after all.”
Huh. Ace was smiling, even if only slightly. Somehow, without realising, this man had made him forget the weight of his problems. Even if only for a moment.

“To put it simply, runes are like letters of code. String the right ones together and they form a word or command, well, in this case, a spell. By the same principle, you can also decode and disrupt people's rune circles, known as spell-hacking. There are eight echelons of spells in total. Echelon eight being the strongest. ”

He pressed a button on his visor, projecting a holographic chart of runes. They looked kind of like Greek alphabet letters superimposed on one another.

“So, how do I make fire from my fingertips like you did just now?”

The runes on the hologram rearranged, leaving only two runes.
“Picture these two runes in your mind. Hold them there. Concentrate on them.”

Ace held out his finger, trying to imagine the two symbols, but nothing happened.

“Try to visualise the flame that burns from your finger. You need a strong image in your mind.”

Again, nothing happened.

“Ah, well, that’s no surprise. It normally takes people years to cast new spells. Keep practicing it, and over time it will come naturally.”

Ace released a small sigh. Not everything turned out like in fantasy books, where the main character was blessed with super-overpowered abilities. Oh well. I’ll have to make sure to keep practicing.

Hiro reached into the bag slung over his shoulder. Taking out another metal tin.

“Tsk. Last one.” He remarked. Sliding it on the concrete. Though the lid was still closed, Ace could catch a hint of its sweet aroma.

Last one, huh. Throughout Ace’s life, he’d always felt like he could read the room well. This was no exception.

Ace stood up.

“Hey, I appreciate you answering my questions and saving my life and everything. And all the food…”

He paused, feeling the saliva crawl down his throat.

“Let's get straight to the point, Hiro…What do you want from me?”

As the words left his mouth, they coated the air in a thick silence. Even the splattering of rain had ceased. Yet Hiro continued to smoke his cigarette. He was comfortable with it, as if allowing the silence to sit and settle.

After around 30 seconds, Hiro sat up from his relaxed posture, stubbing out the end of his cigarette on the concrete.

“Hey, Ace. You should join me.”