Chapter 187 Reconcile + Doubts

"Why would you do that? You guys don't benefit from this."

"One of the many ways we'll use to reconcile with you." Jae answered. Lee Seng looked up from his phone and turned to look at Jae. "You said it yourself before the Goblin Horde Invasion. You were too tired to hate us and just wanted to clean the slate. This is our way of doing that. I wanna know your side of the story so I can stop the rumors."

"You say you're gonna do this but is Jason really gonna do it too?" Lee Seng turned to face Jason. He was leaning back in his seat, watching his brother and Lee Seng go at it. Jason nodded, lowering his seat's front legs back onto the ground.

p "I'll do my best to reconcile with you. It's probably the last thing you want to hear from both of us, especially me, but I do want to move past the past." Jason acknowledged. "I know we treated you badly and I didn't get to really hear what you said to Jae, but if we're going to be classmates at the Academy, let's drop the history."

"Easier said than done." Lee Seng groaned. He felt like his brain was rattling. He never thought he'd hear the Kang bros actually trying to apologize and reconcile with him. "I guess I would be going back on my word if I didn't try. Two of my friends knew the procedure the rest of my friends who transferred the same time as us followed along. When the North tunnels got compromised by hounds, we fled West. I got us safely down into the sewers and we found information about the infected areas in the sewers. We got hit with a 'recently red' zone so that's why my friends aren't here. We got ambushed shortly afterwards, so that's also the reason why we got moved."

"The rumors really do blow it out of proportion." Jae brushed his chin.

"Mmm, some of the rumors are saying you somehow orchestrated the whole thing to prove to the Creator that you're fine on your own. You got someone to attack you and insisted on taking loads of injuries so you and your friends could be excused for a while." Jason told Lee Seng.

"The rumor sounds like I'm trying to swindle my way through the Academy and rise up to the top."

"Well, the other stories about you with your powers kinda blew the story out of proportion." Jae pointed out. "You took the exam two weeks after getting your powers. You cleared and didn't get hurt that badly. Some people think your connections got you into the Academy and it was just an act. On top of that, stories about the Hell weekend are still circulating on social media and tabloids."

"People will snap at anything to get a story about the Creator's son." Jason shrugged. "But going back to what you said, we'll spread it around so it can squash the rumors. You just need to focus on the fight that's going to happen after school."

"<strong>After</strong> I do the check-up exam… Ugh, I've been in a hospital facility for the last three weeks and I'm not sure if I'm going to even pass." Lee Seng slumped onto the table and rested his head between his arms.

"The exam is easy. It's just the ranged run from three weeks ago with a combination of indoor fighting and sneaking or no sneaking around. They just want to see what you're capable of. As long as you do your best, I don't see a reason why they would score you low." Jae told Lee Seng.

"You two already took your test?" Lee Seng turned his head to look at Jae. Jae nodded his head and drank the last of his water.

"The Fighter stuff will be easy for you. They just wanna see your progress. Since we're transfer students, they used footage from the exam to compare."

'Crap, hopefully they cut the footage of me with the Protocol up…' Lee Seng thought.

"You're a Specialist, right? I don't know how they're going to handle that for you…" Jason began to think of something but knew no Glasses he was friends with.

"It's fine. I take my Fighter test first and then go do my Glass one. The Glass test is testing ranged capabilities and mock fighting. Fighter test will be a piece of cake." Lee Seng brushed the test off. "The only thing I'm worried about is overdoing it and using too much Dark Matter. I need all I can get for the match after school…"

"The test didn't take that long to complete. You should have enough time to rest before the match." Jason nodded.

"Mmm, now's not the time to get nervous about these things. You just need to get to the exam and do your best there <strong>then</strong> do your best to win against Tristan." Jae added. Lee Seng glanced at his phone. He had the profile up for Tristan and scrolled his pictures. Tristan seemed to be socially popular. A lot of his pictures were always at parties.

"He parties a lot." Lee Seng sighed. He let go of his phone and turned his head to face the table. He groaned for a while and then lifted himself away from the table. "Not sure what else to expect. If he's here, I should at least be wary of him."

"A reasonable thing to do." Jae nodded. The bell rang and Lee Seng sighed. He grabbed his phone and shut the screen off. He stuffed his phone into his pocket and grabbed his backpack. He slung it on his shoulder and grabbed his tray and stood up.

"Well, I'm going to get out of here before more people decide they want to say something to me." Lee Seng pushed his chair in and walked off. Jae stood up and leaned over to his older brother.

"You sure he's gonna be okay against Tristan? You could've told him Tristan's–"

"That's for him to figure out." Jason waved his brother off as he stood up and gathered his things. "Let's go see the Bet Match later. I wanna see how much he has improved. I didn't get to see him fight all that much during the Goblin Invasion."

"You're really interested in him. Why did you take this long to give up on 'revenge'?" Jae followed after his brother.

"Well, the more I thought about what we were told about, the more it made me mad. The more it made me mad, the more I thought about it and that eventually led to me not understanding how Lee fits into that whole problem."

"That he became friends with us so he could sabotage Mom and Dad's businesses and get Mom and Dad to easily merge with the Creator's huge corporation?" Jae recalled.

"Like that late bloomer could sabotage our family. I'm starting to think someone higher up took advantage of Lee Seng."

"What're we gonna do when we figure out who did it? Mom and Dad's businesses are thriving because of the merger. They told us to stay away from Lee Seng and didn't give us much after that." The two dropped their trays off and Jason turned to face his young brother.

"That's why I wanna get close to Lee again. If he does know, then he'll eventually tell us, right? If not, we'll figure out other ways to get that information from him." Jason reminded Jae. Jae sighed, frowning at the idea.

"The last thing he needs is both of us to backstab him." Jae told his older brother. Jason put a hand on his little brother's shoulder and sighed.

"We know Mom and Dad hid a lot from us during the merger with Chang Corp. They also didn't give us many answers about why we couldn't stay friends with Lee. Some random dude beat the shit outta us in order to get that point across. Remember that." Jae winced at the mention of him and his older brother getting beat up by some guy. The memory flooded back and he remembered finding the bloodied note in Lee Seng's handwriting.

Jae shivered at the thought of that and shook his head.

"Just remember why we're doing this. I'm heading to class, 'kay?" Jason patted.

"Mmm, bye, hyung." Jae waved. He watched Jason pass him and walked the opposite way. The memory flashed in Jae's head.

Jae and Jason walked home, eating ice cream. They caught a movie and split with their friends and were about four blocks from their house.

"Hyung, what did you think about the movie?" Jae asked him to take a bite out of the ice cream bar.

"Mmm, it was good. I liked the scene where the main guy used his powers to trick the enemy into thinking he was giving into their demands. At the last second, he…" Jason made a loud whack noise and the two brothers laughed. They decided to cut through the park and a shady guy wearing a hoodie in 80 degree weather stood up from the bench.

"Jas…" Jae whispered his brother's name. "That guy." He began to point when the guy started to move straight towards him. The two brothers moved to the right side, stepping on the grass and the man continued to close the distance. Right when they were about to pass, the hooded man's hands turned into bats and he swung at the boys. Flashes of the memory snapped Jae out of it. He twitched and forced himself to stop remembering. Flashes of the memory finished with him looking at his older brother.

"Hyung…" He croaked. A bloody note dropped from the hooded man's hand. He remembered Jason grabbing it and blacking out.