Under The Veil of Night

"Can you see the movement of my finger?"

"Sometimes you’re too fast," Kanae said awkwardly. She felt rather embarrassed that she couldn’t see clearly what the words were because she shifted her attention to the monitor and keyboard a few times.

"I have to be fast."

In the end, Kevin talked about the market for a longer time to Kanae until the girl felt bored with the conversation. She still couldn’t understand why a lot of people liked to play with those items that she didn’t understand.

Kevin noticed Kanae’s mood changed. He stopped explaining. "Make me a coffee."

"Okay President."

Taking the cup from Kanae, Kevin recalled another thing. "Do you have to work today?"

"Yes," Kanae answered.

"Maybe you want to check the place. There are a lot of places that get destroyed because of the fight," Kevin reminded.

Kanae knew that there were indeed a lot of places that got destroyed as the side effect from the battle, but she never thought that it would be her working place. She looked towards the President for a moment before a smile emerged on her lips.

"I think it’s impossible, President."

"Why? You’re the one who says that the location is near the street, right?" Kevin asked with an eyebrow raised.

Well, she did say that, but she couldn’t believe that her workplace was getting attacked. She loved working in that place very much, and she didn’t want to leave that early. Although there were still some possibilities, she couldn’t bring herself to think about it.

"I’ll check the place later," Kanae answered. She returned back to her seat and then she started to read the review from the last year’s event to make sure that she didn’t forget anything.

They stayed silent until it was the time for lunch and Kanae headed towards the canteen. The moment Kanae walked out from the door, Neo turned his head towards Kevin.

"You already know that the area for the store is being attacked, why don’t you say that to her outright?" Neo asked in frustration.

Kevin shook his head. "There’s no need for that."

"What are you talking about?"

After eating her lunch, Kanae didn’t return back to the Student Council Room as she headed towards her workplace. She knew that the president was telling her that this place might be attacked. This made her rather worried, so she sprinted all the way to her workplace.

What she saw nearly made her unable to move. She could see that the streets were filled with numerous broken things. Even the roads were not spared as many holes were created on the tough surface.

Her feet brought her to the noodle store. She saw numerous glass pieces in front of the store, and she stopped her movement. Her heart felt hurt when she saw the place she loved to stay for the past few weeks got destroyed just like that. After all, she always enjoyed her time working in that place no matter how hard it was.

She knew that there was a fight in this place, but she didn’t know that the consequences were this big. Her eyes looked towards the street as she wondered what kind of fight happened before. With how heavy the things were broken, she suspected the clans were actually raiding this place rather than fighting here.

When she was still standing, the Old Man walked out from the broken store. He looked towards the absentminded girl as he shook his head.

"What are you doing, standing in front of the store like a fool?" the Old Man peered outside.

"Old Man, what happened here?" Kanae looked towards the broken tools. She could guess, but she chose to just ask this again. It seemed that only the glass was broken since the rest of them were not that bad.

"There are fights here, and this poor store gets caught up in the middle of the brawl. It seemed that I can’t fulfill my promise to give you a job during this hard time, little girl."

Because of the clan’s battle, many of the stores didn’t dare to stay open. They would prefer to close down their business and waited for the condition to stabilize before opening the store again and started their business. In fact, the one who dared to stay open were all only the big stores.

They didn’t dare to open their business in fear of getting destroyed by the clans because of the fight between clans. It would be really vexing to have their business involved into a fight and lost a lot of money in the process.

Still, some of them were open because they have more money to hire guards. Those big companies also couldn’t afford to close down their business because the amount of money they would lose might reach an unimaginable amount.

Some of the concrete pieces of evidence were the malls. Most of them were open, despite the occasional fight inside or outside the mall. Sometimes, the guards were just not enough to keep them away and many of the guards give in because of their lack of power.

The Old Man wanted to keep his business going for at least the next few weeks. Unfortunately, he couldn’t do that.

Now that the fight has escalated to this point, not even the Old Man could keep the business going and it was a sure thing that he would close down the business. Rather than opening right now, he better wait for the time to chill out and earned more money at that time.

"It’s fine Old Man. I will think of a different job," Kanae answered. She was going to lose the job in a few weeks, making it faster by several weeks wouldn’t make much difference anymore.

The Old Man nodded his head. "I’ll clean up the store and return this place to the previous owner."

He only rented this place to make use of the place to open the store. With the fight on the street right now, it would be a miracle to find a store on the street still dared to stay open. Even if he returned the place right now, he would be able to rent it back if he wanted to open the store again in the future.

"Let me help out, Old Man," Kanae offered.

The Old Man shook his head. "What are you saying? You should just stay back and return to your daily life. I can take care of this old store by myself."

"I want to help!" Kanae insisted.

The Old man smiled wryly. "Fine, you can help me clean up the glass pieces. Remember, you have to be careful to not let them hit your feet or finger when you pick them."

"I understand, Old Man."

"I’ll move the other items back to the storage room," the Old Man said as he walked to the back.

Looking towards the mess in front of her, Kanae took a deep breath. If she had to leave this place, at least she would clean it up first.