- Kaiser's Past -

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Floating Island

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Since Charlotte was not comfortable with the height of the floating island with the ground, she chose not to sit on the edge.

The floating island was covered with the blanket of silence. For several moments, none of them breath a word. Khun was wrapping his arm with the bandage while Xia Xia was busy with her lighthouse. Bam was looking at the view and looked quite distracted while Charlotte, she was looking at the scenery.

'If only there was a camera.....'

If only she remembered to carry camera with her all the time, she would have taken lots of pictures. There were lots of things she wanted to take pictures of yet she kept forgetting to get the camera. At the end, she could only rely on her memories to recall the past things.

Khun was the first to start the conversation as he noticed Bam who seemed to be thinking seriously over something.

"What are you thinking so hard about, Bam?"

".....Khun.......I was just.......thinking about Endorsi. Wondering if I was being too harsh....." he answered.

"From Endorsi's perspective, she would have wanted me to give up everything to help her. Her life is on the line.....and it's more important than anything else....but I have to go and meet Rachel. I have to find out about the power that I have. I need to know where I came from and what I'm supposed to do here.

I can't help anyone.....thoughtlessly anymore....since it could end up harming somebody somewhere else. There must be a reason why this power came to me....so..........if I was meant to be someone like God who could make everyone happy....how wonderful it would be if I could make everyone's dream come true....? That's what I was thinking."

The wind blows softly.

"...what?"

"Well...I don't completely understand you, but it doesn't look very much fun being a God who lives just for everyone else's sake. You're a human being anyway, Bam" Khun explained his thoughts straightforwardly and crossed his arms. "So what's wrong with saving someone you want to save? That's , Bam. So you have to decide how to use it yourself."

"Khun isn't wrong about it" Charlotte added. "The power that you have belonged to you, not anyone else. You could think of trying to make everyone satisfied, but if you keep forsaking yourself for the sake of others, you might lose more than you thought."

He wanted to make everyone happy, but in her eyes, all mortals beings were born in order to pay their debts from the former lives. There was no way for everyone's dreams to come true, for there were times someone will feel disappointment and failure.

Charlotte didn't want her brother to abandon his desires and greed just for the others. She didn't want him to end up suffering for the sake of the others, helping a million people but failed to save himself. She didn't want that to happen.

"Brother, you are who you are. You are just Bam. It is just that simple" she added again.

Bam heard what the two of them said and understood what they meant. They told him that he was simply a human being and he was who he was. He wasn't obligated to save everyone else and forsake himself. But there were times where he hoped that he was a God who could grant everyone's wishes....so that the world might be a little bit peaceful.

"Oh, right, where is your fan, Charlotte?" Bam asked.

For what he knew, wherever Charlotte goes, mostly she would have her fan with her. She always carried her fan with her not only prepare herself just in case there will be a fight, but to fan herself and to smack those who messed with her with it.

"I lost a bet, lend it to Estrella" she answered lightly.

She lost a bet and gave the fan to Estrella, though she felt a little bit regret since she wanted to fan herself right not. It had become a habit for her to fan herself wherever or whenever she was.

"What bet?" Bam asked, raised one of his eyebrows curiously. Charlotte would actually lend her fan to the clumsy Estrella? Was she not afraid that Estrella might blow the whole building up with her fan?

"It's actually like this" she stood up and approached Bam. "Hatz and Khun had a fight earlier so Estrella challenged me for a bet. Since she bet on Khun first, I had no choice but to bet on Khun."

"What!? You actually bet for that swordsman!?"

Charlotte turned her head around to look at Khun who seemed to be displeased. She innocently nodded her head as if there was nothing wrong with it.

"Yeah."

"I thought you said that you could read the future. How could you possibly not be able to tell that I'm the winner?" He asked again, sounded as if he was protesting or complaining.

"I know that you will win" said Charlotte.

"Then why do you support that Mr. Kamikaze?"

"First, because Estrella really wants to have a bet with me, so I pretend to be stupid for once and let this slide. And second, it is because I have supported you many times that I thought I should be supporting Hatz once" she explained.

Charlotte thought that he would understand about it and let it slide. After all, he had always been a rational person. She believed that he won't make fuss of it which turned out to be wrong.

"Ah, I see" he said with the expression as if he had realized something. "You like Hatz, don't you?"

There was a moment of pause.

"........what?"

"Right, how could I possibly forget about it? You always have the interest for handsome men."

Charlotte felt that every word that Khun said came out from his mouth because he was irritated not gaining her support on his fight against Hatz. She had a strong feeling that it was the reason why he was now currently talking nonsense.

"Is that so, Charlotte?" Bam asked innocently.

He was just simply curious whether his sister was indeed someone like that or not. He meant no harm. But for Charlotte who felt invisible arrows stabbing her whenever Khun mentioned about it started to panic and misunderstood her brother's intention as he was questioning her whether she was that kind of person and will feel disappointed if she agrees with it.

"What nonsense are you spouting? I was never that kind of person."

"No, no, no, you are actually that ."

"I not. Where is your proof then if you are so sure?"

"Charlotte, do you ever realize that most of the characters that you chose in game are good-looking one? Otherwise, you wouldn't want to use them if they don't look cool enough. And back then before the Workshop Battle, didn't you always volunteer getting grocery because you will always get a chance seeing a handsome guy? I saw everything."

"That guy isn't even eighteen yet for heaven's sake!"

"You even knew about his age?"

"We just had a simple conversation and he mentioned to me. And besides, I volunteered to buy groceries at the time because you won't allow me buying more novels! You said that I don't take care of my novels!"

"It's because you rarely put your stuffs back to its place after you use it. The last time I entered your room, your room was messy because of those books. And is that confession I just heard?"

"What confession? I don't commit a single crime!"

"Lying is considered as a crime!"

"Tormenting someone by forbidding her buying more novels is also a wrong thing to do! Come to think of it, it's my right to buy myself some novels right?"

Bam and Xia Xia sweated dropped.

"But back again to the topic....which part of Hatz is better than me?" Khun asked her with the look of curiosity.

'We talked this and that, argued this and that and at the end we are back again to this topic.'

"He is a lot nicer than you" she answered irritably.

"Nice? Am I not nice enough towards you?"

'How could you possibly ask such an obvious question with a naive expression?'

"If you don't bully me, I'm already grateful enough" Charlotte responded.

"When have I bullied you?"

"Plenty of times. Even right now you are bullying me. Can't you see it?"

"Bullying? I thought that we are having a discussion."

Charlotte surpressed the urge of face palming herself.

"...if this continues, I think I'm going to lose my sanity" she said, glaring at Khun with her big golden eyes. "You are always rational, why are you making a fuss over trivial things like this?"

Being someone who was taller than her, he easily patted Charlotte's head and responded with a smirk, "That will depend on your performance."

Charlotte pouted when she heard that and ran towards Bam, hiding behind him while glaring at Khun.

Bam wasn't surprised even the slightest. He was already used with Charlotte running and hiding behind him whenever she felt irritated or annoyed, or when she was trying to use the pity card to get herself escaping from the punishment. He just smiled and patted his younger sister's head.

"Eh, why are you running over there?" He innocently asked. "Am I that terrifying?"

"As if you need to ask that" she responded. "That's a rhetorical question, isn't it?"

"What do you think?"

She puffed her cheeks, stuck out her tongue and said one word, "Insincere." After that, she turned and looked at Bam with a smile and asked, "Brother, do you want to know about Kaiser?"

"What do you know about Kaiser?"

"I know a lot" she answered. "More than what he knew. I know about her past and her two special abilities that allows her defeating Endorsi once."

"Really?"

"En" she nodded and hummed with her bright and childish smile like the usual.

No matter how many times Bam heard that Charlotte knew about something, he still found himself surprised at the end. Bam was sure not even Khun knew about Kaiser's past and abilities.

Khun scoffed, "What a stalker."

There her mood was being disturbed again.

"How is it called as stalker, huh? I gathered this information while following brother, I clearly have no time to stalk someone else."

"Why don't you tell us about her past first?" Bam asked, trying to avoid these two from arguing again. "What do you know about her past?"

"Ah, about her past....I'll try to summarize it up" she said.

Charlotte then began to tell them about Kaiser's past. Who she really was and the reason why she became a ruler in this station when she had the talent to reach the top of the tower, she explained it to the three of them.

Kaiser wasn't any ordinary regular. She was actually a descendant from the Lo Po Bia Family, one of the ten families that produced talented and skilled Animas. Animas was the name of the position for those who could control shinheuh and animals in the tower. It wasn't a skill that anyone could casually learn, but rather a talent. The Lo Po Bia Family was divided into several branches and Kaiser came from the Grey Wolf Branch.

Kaiser was known as a talented person since she was young. With the special abilities that she had, she was able to earn the right to be one of the Zahard Princess Candidates. Hearing that Kaiser was almost chosen as a Zahard Princess made the three of them surprised.

"T- then since she was about to be chosen as a Zahard Princess, why is she here right now?" Xia Xia asked in disbelief.

Charlotte let out a sigh and shook her head, "What else could that be? She failed the test.

Under a special circumstance, the young Kaiser met a boy and fell in love with him. Before the day where she'll be an official Zahard Princess, she chose to ran away with that boy and surprisingly, that boy was the test prepared by those elders to see whether Kaiser will be able to fulfill the requirements on being a Zahard Princess. And as we all know, a Zahard Princess should ....fall in love with anyone. She failed and she became a disgrace within one night.

Her punishment was to stay in this Station Name Hunt to pay the debt that her family owned. Therefore, Kaiser was then chosen as a regular, climbed the tower and stayed in this station for one thousand years just to clean her debt."

"But it's already around one thousand years" said Bam. "Shouldn't she be free now?"

"If her family members are that merciful and forgiving with her, she would have been free long ago. The amount of money that Kaiser earned for her family isn't small and one thousand years are more than enough to clear it. , her family members were blinded by greed and choose to use those money for a life of luxury.

Rather than having their daughter who had fallen from grace and disappointed them greatly back, wouldn't it be better to keep her in this station and let her work hard and gain money for them?"

Bam was taken back when he heard that.

"How could they be so cruel to their own kin....?"

"Well, this isn't the first time we witness this kind of betrayal. We have witnessed it again and again right? How cruel a person could be....it's not like we have never seen it" Charlotte said to him. She paused for a moment and looked at the sky on her right.

Her golden eyes looked at the view without making any particular expression. She simply let the wind blows her long brown hair and then added, "We clearly are mortals beings, all of us were created by Gods. No one is higher than another or mightier than another. Yet we live by killing each other, isn't that right?"

But then again, I don't actually have the right to talk about it, right? Alas, I also killed lots of people to make my way here. I guess we aren't better than those brutes, huh?"

"..."

Ignoring the quietness coming from the trio, Charlotte turned her head around and looked at them, continuing her story.

"Kaiser had long realized that her family never had the intention to break this shackle for her. Since she thought that she was the one who disgraced her family first and caused her family members to suffer, she was willing to stay here and shoulder the burden. This place is a shackle for her, the reason why she stayed in this station for a thousand years and changed her personality a .

But do you know what makes me sad the most? It's not that she failed on becoming a Zahard Princess or trapped in this station for thousand of years. But it's because that even though she had stolen numerous of names and build this small kingdom, she can't remember her name anymore.

The name of the proud grey wolf dancing above the others has disappeared from her memories."