The Earth After Rebirth

They had great time together, as people who came from the slums together, they thought they could spend this time together.

It was also an emotional time for Hiro and his family. They missed their father, and Kiyoko her husband. They still had a great time though. They tried to believe it in their hearts that he was still alive and one day, he'd come back to them.

Kiro vowed to turn every stone possible to find Hiro's dad. He didn't have hope for this grandfather, when he mentioned something worse than death, Kiro only hoped he had met with the end he wanted.

But they made it a point to enjoy this with their newfound friends. Hiro especially had hope, he had hope they'd find whatever the Sanctum was hiding and hopefully his father amongst the things, alive too. Even though they never talked about it, he shared Kiro's sentiments.

They were all experiencing this Christmas dinner for the first time, as wealthy as Isla and Saanvi were, this was also their first experience.

The next day, Kiro woke up very early before anyone else, well except their workers. He sat at his desk, intending to finally crack the information. He took out the padlock and stuck in the port.

"Well then, let the games begin." He cracked his fingers.

The clicking sound made his head hurt, it wasn't anything that he could get used to. Their computers now had a virtual keyboard, this one didn't. He put music on, to drown the sound that would surely invite his parents to his room.

He started doing everything he had learned to ensure the information came out well and unbroken. He was instructed to not look away because the machine would occasionally crash, and he'd have to punch in codes to stabilise it.

He soon learned the pattern, it happened every 30 minutes. He couldn't be away from it for more than 30 minutes or the data would be lost.

He decided to not even show his face to his family, incase his mother found him something to do, she was like that sometimes when she saw someone doing nothing.

They were used to him being in his room, gaming for hours, so it wouldn't be suspicious.

But by the looks of it, getting all the data would take him days, weeks even. That's how slow the computer was. He took comfort in the fact that, the unstabilised stage would take at most 2 days, after that he could leave it unattended for hours.

But he kept sighing every hour, the percentage that told him the amount of information he'd decrypted didn't seem to be moving at all. Which made him sigh and groan.

He couldn't believe how slow the software was back then, he couldn't understand how they survived at all with something that uploaded and downloaded at a snail's pace.

Days came and went, he still hadn't left his room. He was disturbed by a knock at the door. He slowly got up, shuffling his feet. On the other side was his father.

"What's up, I thought I told you to not play games so much? Your mother is pregnant, what if I wasn't here right now." He asked sternly.

'You are though.' Kiro said internally, though he was sure if that left his mouth he'd be in bigger trouble.

"I'm not playing games—I'm—well, I'm studying. Studying. Yes, that's what I'm doing." He said, as if to convince himself and not the person in front of him.

"Ki, I've known you for all your life. You don't study. I know you pass, but you never really study, not this seriously anyway."

"Turning over a new leaf?" He gave a toothy grin, hoping that made him believe. "Why are you still here anyway, the plant, what about it?" He tried changing the subject.

"I can't leave, your mother is about to give birth. Since that's the case, I'll be here from now on, to annoy you I'm sure you think that." He said, with a questioning smile.

Kiro thought about telling his father the truth, about everything. But he also didn't want to drag him into such a mess that was their society, his most important goal was to ensure his family lived well without much worry.

He contemplated for a few seconds and decided against telling him. It was simply too dangerous, if anyone deserved to die first in this time, it was him. That's at least what he believed.

He couldn't see himself going through the same thing of losing everyone. He'd rather be the first one to go, he understood how selfish that was but sometimes selfishness was important.

For his mental health, he'd rather not go through such a loss. Although he didn't know what toll it'd take if his grandfather was truly dead.

"Honest dad, you can come in and look, I even built an old computer with Hiro. So we could be good at practicals when they start them at the academy." He told a half-truth.

His father craned his neck, seeing the computer he'd just mentioned. He nodded in agreement, he was an engineer. He hoped his son would come to him for help with these kind of stuff.

But it didn't seem like he needed much help, that made him jealous a little bit. Made him sad. As this would be a father-son thing, they didn't have something like that, just the two of them.

"I can see that, good job. Don't miss dinner tonight, or else it'll be your mother you'll have to deal with next." He whispered and advised his son.