8 Every cloud has a silver lining

Wu approached Ray this time without a smile to be seen. Instead, a cruel twisted face contorted with anger could be seen plastered on the normally handsome Wu's face.

"You have sincerely pissed off yours truly! Prepare for an ass whooping of your life!"

Ray launched off the ground with all his might. Scraping the ground with his shoes leaving behind rubber marks.

At the very last second, Wu grabbed onto Ray's head and jumped up into Ray with a flying knee to the head!

The knee hits Ray right on his chin with both the weight of Ray and Wu.

As Ray fell forward onto the ground and blacked out he heard a familiar voice shouting out in the distance.

...

Huh? Where am I?

Ray looked around and saw that he had woken up in an unfamiliar room on a bed.

A girl strolling on her was sitting by the bedside.

"Ah, you're finally awake. Ray Sung was it? I'm Quan li."

Ray sat up and stared at her.

She appears to be your average high school girl of Asian descent with long hair black hair wearing dark blue jeans, a light green t-shirt with the word "simple" in black fonts, and a blue denim jacket on top.

What's up with this dude? The way he is staring at me is creepy.

"Yo, stop staring at me it's creepy."

Ray looked away slightly embarrassed.

"So where am I? Did you bring me here?"

"Well yes and no. Right now you're in my apartment, but I didn't do this out of a random act of kindness. A certain person told me to bring you here, but they told me to omit their name for now."

"Wait a sec. Aren't you the bubble tea girl talking behind my back?"

Silence

"Huh? So you noticed that. So why didn't you do anything about it Mr. Ghost freak?"

Ray:...

"I am leaving now. Thank you for bringing me here."

"Huh?"

Ray started getting off the bed.

"You should take a day off from school and just rest here."

Quan pushed him back down onto the bed.

"You should stay down until tomorrow. Right now it's around 4:30. You were knocked out at around 3:50. You gotta rest for longer."

Ray laid still.

"Good. I am going to reheat some of my food prep. I tell you when to come out to eat."

Quan turned and walked out of the room.

Ray:...

Did I just get overpowered by a girl?

…

"Shit. Where's Ray? Did I shut down when Ray was knocked out? We really need to get him to be able to handle the system integration."

Slippy then looked around with his smouldering eyes. His mighty chin dropped open in surprise.

"What the heck happened while I was shut down?"

Multiple patches of dried blood could be seen across the floor and nearby there were numerous toppled over shelves with cans and glass lying about the ground.

It seems that I must find Ray as soon as possible! There appears to be more than one gang around here Slippy thought to himself.

…

6:32 pm

That was around the time Quan called out for Ray to come out to eat. Or at least according to the digital clock in the hallway

Ray pushed open the white-painted door to see what was awaiting him outside.

The view that rushed to Ray's eyes was a western-style apartment with light gray drywalls.

He walked out to see that he was standing in the hallway leading from the entrance to the kitchen and living room on the left.

In front of him, there were two other white painted doors.

"Quan! Which door is the door to the washroom?"

Ray called out.

"It's the one closest to the entrance!"

Ray opened the door on the right revealing a bedroom.

"Whoops, wrong room."

Ray closed the door and walked towards the entrance and found another door on the right of the guest room.

He opened it and found the bathroom.

The shower seemed to be moist as if it were used recently, but Ray didn't give it little notice and just washed his hands.

Ray walked into the living room and saw that Quan was sitting by a long rectangle table and was eating out of a glass container.

Set in front of her were two other glass containers with chopsticks on top of them. One of which Ray presumed to be his.

Ray sat down and took the lid off. He was greeted by the sight of roast beef, mashed potato, chickpeas, and lentil covered with gravy all over it.

Ray, hungry from today's fight, picked up his chopsticks with a watering mouth. He started to dig in when a familiar face voice sounded.

"You guys are digging in without me?"

Ray turned his head and saw Gun wheeling his way towards them.

So that's who the third glass container was for thought Ray.

"Yo Ray are you okay from earlier?"

"Huh, oh I feel a bit off-center but otherwise I am fine."

"That's good to hear. When we found you earlier I thought that you may have suffered some serious or permanent damage. It seems that we were overthinking things."

Ray nodded his head slowly as he remembered how his ass got "whooped" by Wu.

"Do you know who Wu is and why did he attack me with his gang?"

"Oh, An Wu! I know him. He is part of a gang known as the black menace gang as that is their leader's nickname. Wu is the tactician of the gang if I recall correctly. He keeps track of the lower-ranked members and is kind of the gatekeeper or watchdog of the gang. He probably went after you to avenge Guy's loss to you and to maintain the gang street rep."

Ray stared and blinked blankly at Gun.

"Street rep? Doesn't that only exist in shows and movies along with gangs? I thought after that The Great Reform such things were demolished?"

Gun looked at Ray.

"Oh yeah, I forgot that you are new here."

Gun moved up to the table and opened his dinner.

"Well this is the Bellatrix region and recently the Formation Foundation started allowing gangs to be founded around here and fights are now allowed in public, that said there are rumours that whenever someone uses a weapon they will be dragged off by people in white vans to never to be seen again."

Ray looked at Gun curiously.

People in white vans? Dragged off? Gangs are allowed?

"How come we don't hear about it in the Betelgeuse region?"

Gun turned and looked at Ray seriously.

"I honestly don't know. It's as if they wanted to involve separation between the regions. Go ask some conspiracists. I don't know that much."

Gun then proceeded to dig into his meal as Ray looked out at the setting sun.

"I forgot about Miley!"

…

While both Ray and Slippy are panicking.

Miley is also panicking.

"Where could Ray be? He always tells me where he is going before he leaves or at least writes a note!"

Thus chaos ensues.