Family (2)

She was essentially done with getting ready, and was coming out to receive her food. But Axel had not prepared anything!

"Lily, would you go and pack up your back first? Your brother needs a little more time to make breakfast. 3 minutes should be enough"

"Sure" Lily simply turned around and walked back into her room completely unaffected. Since this did not happen too often, Lily did not complain like she usually did for any mistake Axel made.

His body was currently pathetically weak, skinny to the point where some of his ribs were even visible, and with his current strength, he could not even lift up Lily off the ground. This sort of strength was incredibly pathetic, especially for someone who was

However, in exchange, he had a few skills he could rely on; namely cooking, cleaning, and studying. Of course, that was his past self. His new memories brought along a tonne of experience in various aspects of life, including a few romantic experiences as well. But they all ended in failure in the end due to him being a failure of a human.

While relying on his muscle memory to make Lily and himself some toast and eggs, Axel began going through these new 'memories' he had magically acquired.

After going through them once more in his mind, he picked up on a few key incidents that changed his life drastically. One of the largest ones was his parents returning. As it turned out, Axel's parents had not run away with the money, but instead had gone to do a little bit of 'shady' business for the federation!

Although the federation had united the world under one flag after the third world war, the various nations still preferred to live separately, which therefore led to the creation of zones. Essentially, the situation returned to the way it was before the war, however, the United Nations council had been replaced with an authority called the federation, which possessed infinitely greater power than the symbolic gesture that was the UN.

The Federation had an elected president and a council, both of which held the same amount of power and influence. The council consisting of the representatives of the various zones, similar to the UN of the past, would make decisions, and only after the president authorized them would they be passed.

Naturally, most of the time, the president would reject these reforms.

To prevent either of the two from gaining too much power, abusing their power, or trying to take over each other's positions, a third unbiased party had been brought into the picture. This party was the Sentient Programmed Artificially Reflected Klark. The lead programmer involved in its creation decided to name it so, since they had to scan the brain of a human, who had passed away in this process to gain enough sentience for the AI, and that human's name was Klark.

This was the same Spark that Axel used as a time setter, and in fact, that was mostly all it could do. He was currently too poor to buy anything that Spark could utilise to help him like things AI-controlled lights, curtains, and cleaners. All of these things were too expensive, with the cheapest ones starting at nearly 3000 credits.

For reference, Uncle Lee, who was Axel's paternal uncle, not only gave them a place to stay, but also a monthly allowance of 400 credits per person, since neither of the two children had a method to earn money for themselves.

However, from these 400 credits, 300 was spent on food, travelling and other miscellaneous expenses, while they needed to save up on 50 credits per month to be able to pay for their school fees.

Yes, the annual school fees for Axel was 600 credits, and it was 400 credits for Lily.

This was because they went to a public school established by the federation, which would naturally be incredibly cheap compared to private schools.

"Brother, is breakfast ready yet?" Lily questioned with her short dark brown hair neatly combed into two little ponytails.

"Yes it is, sit down first." Axel was brought out of his reminiscing of the past as he served the scrambled eggs and toast, splitting a glass of orange juice between himself and Lily.

Currently, Orange juice, in fact, most fruits had risen in value since the supply of such things dwindles, while the price for meat, eggs, and grains had fallen far below that of fruits and fruit juice.

That was why, Axel could not afford too much orange juice, and therefore could only split it between himself and his sister. Of course, he gave her a lot more, nearly 3/4, and before she could see how much he had, Axel already drank it all.

…

After breakfast, Axel took Lily and the two began walking towards Lily's elementary school, which was 3 blocks from the apartment Uncle Lee had given to them.

"Brother?" Lily asked nervously.

"Yes?" Axel replied subconsciously.

"I want to go out with my friends today after school."

"Hmm? And where are you going?" Instantly, Axel's full attention was diverted to Lily.

"My friend's house," Lily replied, not wanted to make eye contact with her brother.

Seeing how nervous Lily was acting, Axel hesitated but still continued questioning.

"How many of you are going there? And how many of them are guys, and how many are girls?"

"5 of us, and all of us are girls," Lily replied confidentially.

"Whose house is it?" Axel asked, his eyes had already turned into slits. He had a bad feeling about this.

"Cate's"

"Ah!" suddenly, he recalled an incident that had occurred with Lily in a sleepover with some of her friends.