Life didn't get easier, even in another world.

After a few more minutes, the man finally lowered the paper and glanced at the boy that was sitting beside him with his head lowered, busy fidgeting with his fingers.

“You drew this today?”

The little boy slightly flinched and immediately sat up straight. He clasped his tiny hands and nodded his head without looking up at his older uncle’s face.

“It’s pretty.”

Aaron placed the drawing on Ariyan’s lap with that one sentence and leaned back on the sofa. His voice contained no particular emotions in it when he talked, he sounded neither annoyed nor angry, not even amused.

However, Ariyan didn’t dare look at his face. His older uncle didn’t have any changes in expression or behavior, but his older uncle would look scary in times like this. His eyes would freak out the little kid, so he didn’t dare to look at his hazel eyes and just kept his head low. Aaron never did anything violent in the house nor did he show his anger in front of Ariyan, but the kid still felt frightened whenever he sensed a change of mood in the man.

He wished for a chance to run back to his room.

Ding Ding Ding

.....

At that moment, the phone on the table rang and started to vibrate. Before Aaron could pick it up, Aaron bent and picked up the phone and handed it to his older uncle, receiving a pat on his head as a reward. The hand remained on his head and kept patting him, making the kid’s little plan of escape shatter immediately.

While talking on the phone, his hand gradually slowed down more and more until it eventually stopped patting Ariyan’s head. His face also turned grimmer and grimmer with his brows frowning deeply and his young, handsome face gaining some wrinkles in different parts of it. His voice also sank low and deep little by little, getting hoarse at some points. As he talked, Aaron moved a little bit closer in his seat little by little until the point that he was sitting at the edge of the sofa after a few minutes.

Ariyan didn’t understand what they were talking about, but he saw how his uncle seemed even angrier and scarier now, so he lowered his head and shrank in his seat even more. Aaron had moved his hand away from the kid’s head at some point, but Ariyan still sat there and didn’t run back to his room.

“We’ll talk about that tomorrow- I said tomorrow!”

Aaron shouted that last sentence, causing all of the residents of the house to jolt up from the shock. The voice of a man could be heard from the other side of the phone, saying something about interrogation, but Aaron didn’t continue the conversation and hang up the phone.

“Huuuu...”

Aaron didn’t move back to his previous comfortable position after the call ended. He took deep breaths a few times while still holding the phone in front of his face. His left hand was gripping the edge of the sofa hard and the right one was gradually lowering the phone, both of the hands slightly quivering.

A teenage girl was poking her head out of her room, her gaze swiping the area. Once she saw Aaron’s shadowed face, she quickly jumped back inside her room and vanished from sight. An old woman instead left the kitchen and approached the sofa with a glass of cold water. Without saying anything, the landlord placed the cup in front of Aaron, sent him a pained look, then left to where she came from.

Once again, Ariyan was left alone with his older uncle.

The two of them sat like that for a while. It was not known how many minutes passed until Aaron eventually took a deep breath and looked toward the little kid.

“When will your classes start?”

“Uh?”

Ariyan raised his head up first before tilting it.

“Your school. It will start in a few days.”

“Uh!” Ariyan nodded his head. “Uhhh... Granny told me that it’ll start once I’m done drawing all of the pages of my notebook, each page for a day!”

At that, Aaron made a slightly confused face.

“But you don’t draw on your notebook?”

“Un!”

Ariyan nodded his head once again. Aaron had the same slightly confused face for a few more seconds before he suddenly chuckled.

“School isn’t actually bad, it’s a nice place. You learn a lot of things, you find a lot of friends!”

“....”

“Once you start school, you’ll see how much you like it. You’ll have so much fun there... Sigh, I actually envy you.”

Aaron’s face and tone showed that he was definitely jealous of Ariyan, there were no lies in his words. Ariyan glanced at his older uncle’s face, which was just like how he was before the phone call, then looked down at his hands.

“I don’t like school...”

His lips were pursed and his cheeks flushed slightly. His messy hair, with mixed colors of gray and brown, wavered slightly in the slight breeze and fell on his face. The little kid hurriedly grabbed the few hair strands and pulled them back, moving them out of his sight.

“I’m sure everyone will like that!” Aaron pointed at the kid’s hair. “Because they are really beautiful.”

“No!”

Answering him back almost immediately, Ariyan folded his arms and pouted even more. There were some tear droplets dancing on the edges of his eyes.

“Sigh!”

As soon as he heard Aaron’s sigh, Ariyan felt his body moving up into the air. The next second, he was being held in the embrace of his uncle, who had stood up from his seat at some point and was now heading to the exit door.

Leaning on the firm chest of the man while clenching his shoulders, Ariyan asked in confusion.

“Where are we going?”

“There is still a little bit of time before the launch gets ready. Why not visit the part until then?”

“Park? We are going to the park?”

A slight glint of excitement flashed on the kid’s usually dull eyes.

“Yeah. We are going to go have some fun.”

Aaron mumbled, his voice sinking low when he was nearing the end of the sentence. There was a few seconds of silence when they left the house and stepped on the road to the park.

While still being held by a pair of strong hands, Ariyan looked at the buildings outside, wondering if he could persuade his uncle to buy him ice cream in the park. That was when he heard the man mumble something under his lips, in a tone as if he was thinking to himself.

“I wonder... If she was still alive... How would she find the school... Would she also hate it...”

The voice was mixed with different and deep emotions that were hard for the 6-year-old kid to understand. Ariyan blinked his round, gray eyes a few times, before hesitantly asking.

“Who?”

Aaron didn’t answer him immediately. He continued to walk his way in silence, but his grip around Ariyan’s body tightened a little bit after he asked that question. After a few minutes, when the kid was already getting disappointed in receiving an answer and his mind was now wandering between different kinds of games he could play in the park, he heard his uncle’s voice once again.

This time lower and quieter than before to the point that it was hard for Ariyan, who was actually hugging the man’s shoulder and his ear was inches away from Aaron’s mouth, to hear.

However, he barely managed to hear the two words that left Aaron’s lips.

“My daughter.”