"...Throw it!"
With all of his strength, Victor's arm flung upward toward the sky. When his hand reached its full height, a plastic bottle filled with water flew meters away from the rooftop where he and Olive stood.
The bottle spun persistently as it soared higher and higher up the sky. But the more it soared, its speed lessened. And then, it stopped.
Just when the gravity was about to pull it down, though, a radiant, white blade plunged itself into the plastic bottle with its sharp and deadly tip, leaving the bottle hanging a few seconds in the air.
Then, another bottle flew passed it.
For a brief moment, the blade floated perfectly still. But not a while later, it moved and aimed for the second bottle that had flown past it. Inevitably, it plunged through it, just like the others...
Olive, who was smiling gleefully, retrieved the blade back from the sky's domain and pulled out the two plastic bottles from the blade.
He looked at it with a clear pride in his eyes, his smirk failing to hide his satisfaction from Victor, who was walking toward him, empty-handed unlike before.
Beaming, he smiled at Olive and said with excitement.
"That's the tenth time you hit it without a miss! What a streak! Come on, I'll throw one more, and that'll be the eleventh."
He lowered his knees and heaved a plastic bottle in his hand up and down to launch it up to the sky again. However, before he could throw it, Olive interrupted him from doing so.
"No, that's okay. Let's try other thing. A simpler one. I'm starting to grow tired from just throwing it to the sky. Ooh... how about we just stack them up on a table..."
He pointed at the plastic bottles in Victor's hand.
"...and aim the blade there instead?"
Victor, whose face was beaming with excitement earlier, slumped his shoulders a bit, looking rather disappointed.
"So... like those games at carnivals? Where you just need to throw the ball at it and make it fall?"
Olive nodded.
With a sigh, Victor's shoulders slumped deeper.
"Fine... Though I don't know why you would prefer that, I think aiming it while it is in the sky would be better."
Still, even as he said that, he still walked toward the table and stacked the bottles up.
Olive knew that, of course, the part where aiming the bottles when it was in the sky. But he just doesn't have the strength to do it.
It was surprising... Olive didn't know that doing something like this would consume a whole lot of energy. Especially when the blade in question doesn't need a finger for it to be moved; each time he commanded the blade to soar, his energy would diminish.
But that was not the only problem he found out during his trial earlier. There were more.
Firstly, controlling the blade for it to properly follow his command was a chore. Tiresome, in fact. That was because every time he carved a path for it to aim at the bottles, the blade would run off course from the path where it was supposed to follow most of the time. The blade was really hard to tame!
The second thing he found out was that he needed to always be in full control of the blade if he wanted it to hit the target properly. Meaning that each time he carved a path to the target, he was obliged to guide the blade toward its target.
Sounds easy enough, right? But no, because carving a path was like drawing a line, a line that the blade moved in. In any circumstances, the blade can not slip away from the line. Because if so, the blade would lose control and miss the target by a great degree. And who was its guide?
Olive, of course.
This reason being was why Olive wanted to change the game to a simpler one, controlling it to soar was already straining his mental abilities greatly, and added to the targeting part? It was a miracle that Olive was able to stand!
A few meters away, Victor had done stacking up the bottles. He moved away from it and shouted.
"It's done! Do your part!"
Sighing, Olive aimed the blade's tip at the stacked bottles and concentrated on it... his goal needed to be precise. He can't just simply order the blade to move — well, actually, he can do that, but that action would result in a failure and cause it to miss, which in this case was to be avoided if he didn't want to see a hole in Victor's body — no... he needed to guide it.
It was similar to how a senior guides their junior staff to do their job properly. They can't just order them around and expect them to do their job perfectly. No, the senior staff have to teach them how to do it if they want the junior staff to do a great job. They needed to be specific; at what temperature the fryer has to be for the patty to cook faster, what to say if the customer were to ask this, etc.
Meaning, he can't just order the blade to launch at the bottles and tell it what speed it needs to move. He has to control the speed. Without his control, the blade would launch itself at an unpredictable speed.
Trust him, he tried it himself...
Taking a deep breath, Olive put all his willpower into his mentality, willing it to hold after his few, tiring trials, and launched it to the stacked bottles with great control and precision.
...The blade flew with a speed of a car, spinning itself as the concept of inertia tried to hold it back into place. A small gust of wind fluttered the few plants in a pot.
And then, it reached the bottles. Water splashed out of a bottle, looking like an explosion. When it was done spilling, its target was once more visible to Olive and Victor.
He had torn a one... bottle.
Just one.
'Well, that was anti-climactic.'
Who could've thought that one bottle of water was able to cause that much of a splash?
But still, that one bottle was a few of the bottles that held the structure apart. Therefore, not long after the blade cut through the bottle, all of the other bottles fell.
Olive looked at Victor with a hysterical grin.
"Not bad, huh?"
Victor nodded repeatedly.
"It is... definitely better than I had anticipated. But still, it's only one bottle. I want to see all of them explode at the same time! That's what makes it fun! Try spinning the blade while you're launching it!"
'You do it yourself!'
Though Olive's mind was cursing him nonstop, Olive tried not to let the curse words slip from his mouth from the outside. Instead, he just refused it normally.
"Pass. Too exhausting..."
Victor's face fell again.
"Aw... come on! You're so boring!"
But Olive didn't want to hear his nagging, and instead walked away from him and took a seat on a bench.
He had exhausted his energy tenfold already, so taking a rest here won't hurt anyone, right? Give him a break, for God's sake! He didn't force Victor to run another mile with him in P.E. when he saw him exhausted! So by any means, he shouldn't too!
"Hey, Vic... you don't have a snack by any chance do you?"
Victor stared at him, bemused. Shaking his head, he walked to the door and answered.
"Yeah, I think I have a chocolate chip cookie somewhere in the kitchen. Wait here, I'll grab it."
He closed the door, leaving Olive alone on the rooftop.
Before sitting on the bench, Olive was wide awake. But it was now that he realized just how heavy his eyelids were. Now that his body was able to rest, the feeling of drowsiness was growing attractive on the silent rooftop. The more seconds passed, the harder it was to keep himself awake from slumber.
Olive's eyes were millimeters away from closing when he heard a sudden commotion below, jolting his eyes to suddenly open wide.
With a groan, Olive walked up to the edge and leaned his head down to peer at the source that had stirred his tranquil peace.
Down below in the alleyway barely shone with light, five figures could be seen. Two of them were huddling near the wall while the others were facing them.
Olive squinted his eyes.
The two people huddling over the walls were shivering, their horrified faces were easily imagined by their body language. The other three, meanwhile, were the complete opposite. Their straight posture and their hands on the hips were shining confidence even in the alleyway.
Olive took one glance at them and immediately recognized the scenario.
'I swear to God, they just kept multiplying!'
What Olive was witnessing down below was two people either getting bullied or robbed. Either way, Olive doubted that any of them were going to walk out of the alleyway uninjured, if the victim put up a fight with the two robbers, at least
Hell, even from up above, Olive heard the haughty voice coming out from one of the bullies' mouths. Irritating unsurprisingly.
"Come on, Will. Don't be like that. Man up. We'll pay you back."
Then, Olive shifted his gaze to the victim.
It was vague, but huddling over the walls, Olive saw a kid, narrowly touched by maturity, bowing his head down to avoid looking at the three people in front of him. Next to him, was a little girl hiding behind his figure, her hand grasping his clothes tightly. Her face, too, bore a look of horror...
The same bullies kept persuading.
"Oi! Are you deaf or something? How many times do I need to ask?!"
At this point, tears started streaming down the little girl's eyes. But he couldn't care less about what the little girl was doing. He kept persuading, harsher than before.
Suddenly, one of the guys interrupted him.
"Hurry up won't you? You're taking too long."
"I get it! Shut up, will you?!"
The guy said nothing. Instead, he stared at his friend with no amusement whatsoever. Then, he shook his head and let out a sigh. He turned and exited the alleyway.
"I'm getting out of here. You do your own thing. Just don't get me involved in this."
As he said that, another of the three stood up and followed him.
"Me too. Sorry, Ren."
And so he walked. Exiting the alleyway completely.
'Would you look at that. Turns out it was just a bully all along. My bad for assuming they were a bully too.'
A sound of a clicked tongue escaped from the bully's lips.
"...fine."
With that, he continued to focus on the boy...
Olive frowned.
'Now what should I do? Can't just make my way downstairs, that'll take too long. And definitely shouldn't shout at him from up here, that'll be too boring.'
A moment later, Olive's eyes landed on the ivory longsword after his few tries to think of a better way to deal with the situation. Olive smirked.
It was unquestionably, not a better way to deal with this situation, but it will do. In fact, it might as well be perfect...
The little girl's face was filled with nothing but tears, looking at how the bully — who was older than the boy — tried to fish out cash out of him. But of course, that was not the only reason. Because the bully had gone to persuading him for money, to the point of willing to lay a punch on him for it.
The boy was frail — not out of starvation, but rather, it was just how he looked like. He was skinny and weak. Hence, after receiving a punch, his eyes were starting to grow vague.
Just as she had thought that there was no hope to escape, he, the bully, suddenly looked right pass both the boy and the girl.
There was a pause. The bully, stared behind the little girl weirdly, as if there was something he couldn't believe. Suddenly, his face grew pale. His pupil shrank to the point that only the white part of his eyes were visible.
Curious, or maybe a little terrified, she followed his gaze, not knowing what to expect. Just like the bully, her eyes widened, instantly.
Behind her, a radiant blade was casually hovering left and right, facing upward. Its surface was smooth, almost blinding, shining the dark alleyway with its white and ethereal glow.
The little girl stared at it with a mixture of awe and wonder in her eyes. If she didn't know any better, she would have thought of it as a ghost. After all, what kind of ghost would take form of a blade? However, she was just a little girl, and a little girl did not know any better... most of them.
As she was looking at the ghostly blade, the bully took a step back with a stifled yelp, thus breaking her reverie. That gesture of his did not go unnoticed by her.
A glimpse of hope sparkled in her eyes.
Maybe... maybe there was a chance to escape the bully after all.
Suddenly, out of the blue, the blade moved toward the bully.
Shaking, the bully turned back and ran as fast as he could with an embarrassing wail.
"Aaaahhhhh!"
Just as his wail receded, a heavy silence settled over the alleyway.
The boy, who had endured the bully's punch, stared at his silhouette, dumbstruck, with many questions in his mind from the look of it. As a matter of fact, his face gave off the 'did I miss something' look.
Finally, he broke the silence with a stammer.
"Wait... W–wha– what?"
Unbeknownst to him, the little girl behind her glanced from the bully's silhouette to where the ghostly blade was last, expecting to see a radiant blade floating above. Except, the blade was no more. It was gone... vanished. Like a mirage.
"A hero's ghost!"
Startled, the boy turned to the girl.
"What?"
A blinding smile plastered on her face. She almost looked like she would explode with excitement. Looking at the boy, the girl said with enthusiasm.
"The hero's ghost! It saved us! I saw it big brother! We've been saved by a spirit of a ghost!"