To Live Again, For the First Time!

"Did you get the signal?" Theodore asked, holding his phone between his ear and his shoulder, tilting his head to hold it in place.

He quickly stopped what he was doing to get some wireless earphones before continuing.

​​

"Of course I did. I was in the middle of a class you know?" Nathan guffawed.

"But still, you should really consider changing something in this device. I don\'t know if I\'ll be able to handle it if it just goes off like that again."

"Do you know just what kind of excuse I had to make?" Nathen asked. 

He nearly burst into laughter just thinking about how silly it was.

"What was it?" Theodore was truly curious about what his \'model student\' brother could come up with.

"Haha. I said that it was my wake-up alarm that I forgot to turn off. Now you can just imagine how the others must think I sleep till 2 PM on days off. One day, I might really just get a heart attack from this alarm, and if my fellow students go along with me, they might say this was all premeditated." Nathan continued, in an incredibly serious tone, hiding is smiling voice.

"Mm, I\'ll take note of your request." Theo casually mumbled, but he definitely took that advice to heart since he was thinking the same thing.

"But god. You couldn\'t have come up with anything better?" Theodore asked.

"Hey, give me a break! I never thought I would have to. This was already me using my improv skills to the max! It\'s fine, they all bought it and those who didn\'t, well what other choice did they have but to buy it?" Nathen leaned back on his chair from his side.

"Then let\'s get to business. What has my genius little brother found so far?" Nathan teased.

He sounded like he was joking, but Theo knew better than anyone else how serious Nathan was right now.

"Just from a surface search, there hasn\'t been much activity in the Hemafuji Mountain Range area in E Continent. But Emi activated the second level alarm so she\'s saying that there is something to be wary of or something is off, after all, if there was nothing, there\'s just no way in hell she would tell us in this way." Theodore explained.

"If it\'s something just to be wary of, then chances are, it\'s people. Emi wouldn\'t activate this for everything and nothing, so clearly there are some suspicious people there, but if they could escape from my preliminary search, then they won\'t be your average Joe." Theodore spoke rather softly.

Maybe it was to hide the worry seeping from his voice.

"Mm, you\'re more familiar with the people you\'re working with. Though I might have one or two people I could ask, I doubt any of them would be glad to help. As for you guys..." Nathan\'s voice trailed of before he finished his sentence.

"I\'m sure you have people lining up for the job."

"Mm," Theodore agreed while looking into the locations of the people in his list.

"Just find a trustworthy one. It was about time you guys did this anyways." Nathan continued.

"I guess so. I\'ll take care of it so you don\'t have to worry Big Bro."

"I\'m sure she\'ll be fine," Nathan reasured, but it was unknown if he was reassuring his little brother Theo here, or himself.

"Mm, rest assured, I\'ll drop the call and send you messages to keep you up to date."

"Then I\'ll be hanging up."

"Wait. About the alarm thing, I\'ll change it within the week and send you an update to install. You can look forward to it." Theodore smirked at the thought.

"It seems like you already have something in mind?" Nathan felt somewhat skeptical. 

It wasn\'t the first time the alarm went off, though normally it wasn\'t for these reasons, but rather hacking incidents. 

So far, Theo had never opted for changing the system though Nathen couldn\'t understand why.

"Yeah. Ok I\'ve got work to do! Love you, bye."

"Mm, good work. Love you too, keep me up to date."

*Beep* *Beep*

"Gosh, sorry for listening in, not that I had a choice, but I don\'t think I\'ve seen another family as high level loving as yours." Kayden couldn\'t help but comment on what he heard while munching on some sun flower seeds that he took from Theodore\'s snack pile.

Even if those two were brothers, it felt like premium dog food was shoved down his throat.

"If it were a call with my siblings, we would be lucky if we didn\'t try cutting eachother\'s thoats with words already." Kayden continued.

"I thought you didn\'t have siblings?"

"Cousins, same difference. We pretty much grew up together." Kayden replied as Theodore nodded.

"You know, my cousins would always rush to my place when we were young, want to know why?" Kayden kept up his chatterbox ways and though Theodore would normally find it annoying to talk to someone who spoke so much, he didn\'t seem to mind it too much this time.

"No, not really, but I\'m sure you\'ll tell me why anyways." Theodore didn\'t let this conversation distract him from his screen and what was really important right now.

"Well I can\'t let our big god Theodore here be wrong right? I guess I\'ll just have to reluctantly tell you." Kayden didn\'t mind the way Theodore spoke and even chuckled, knowing that Theodore didn\'t actually hold any malice towards him.

  "They were some really unlucky bastards! They didn\'t even have wifi at their place. The best they could scrounge up was their neighbor\'s wifi! And they live in a mansion surrounded by a garden so they would have to go all the way to the edges of their garden to get any signal, and even then, it would be pretty bad." Kayden went on to story telling mode.

He was much more relaxed with his language when he spoke about these cousins of his.

"Gosh it was so sad."

\'Which part? The garden, mansion or wifi part\' Theodore thought. 

"They stole one of my phones since they didn\'t have one back in freshman year of highschool, but they weren\'t even able to use it. It was only in their softmore year, when I went to their place that we found out that their house did have wifi, it was just a hidden server. After all, their parents clearly had work to do even at home at times, so it just didn\'t make sense for there to be no signal."

Theodore suddenly seriously didn\'t want to listen anymore. This was some serious first world problem bullshit.

He didn\'t even want to comment, after all, it\'s not like he could complain.

"He\'s the one," Theodore mumbled, concentrating on his screen.

He seemed to have quickly learned a skill that took Kayden\'s other friends many years to master.

The skill of ignoring everything unimportant Kayden said, in other words, around 99.9999998999999% of everything that came out of his mouth.

He put his attention on getting someone in E continent that was free, close, and most importantly, trustworthy, to help Emilin before finally stoping at one name on his map.

"I choose you," Theodore said with a grin.

***

Emilin on the other hand, didn\'t know that his brothers had already called for someone a few days ago.

\'Is this the life of a pig?\'

All Emilin did these days was sleep, eat, sleep, sleep and did I mention sleep? Oh and eat. To hell with low rations.

All or nothing right?

\'It\'s not too bad\' she laughed.

\'I like it.\'

Rolling around in her sleeping bag wasn\'t too bad at all.

While she did all this, the rain outside was still at it non stop. 

\'When was the last time I slept this much?\'

She had slept and rested so well these last few days that she nearly forgot the reason why she was plagued by insomnia.

And just like that, she fell into dream land once again, tired from rolling around.

***

Emilin was mistaken when she thought that no one would come to this area in this rainstorm as just a couple of trees from the cave she was staying at, a group of men, composed of 4 muscular, burly men along with one lean one were hidden on the trees, behind the thin branches.

"She can\'t be a spy sent here right?" The one of the far-right side asked.

They had already been observing this little lass in the rain for hours, but none of them showed any signs of weakness nor fatigue.

"Where can you find such lazy spies, tell me if you find some place that hires them, I\'ll quit here and go there. All this girl has been doing this past day is dazing off and doozing off." The one hiding himself behind the tree next to the first man commented.

"Calim is right. Who would hire such lazy people. Plus, she looks like a twig." The burly man, standing on top of the tree Calim was hiding behind added.

It was a truly strange sight as this massive man stood there, on top of a thin branch without even letting a leave rustle due to himself.

"Hey who knows, maybe that\'s why she\'d make a good spy." The last of the muscular men gave his opinion before silence fell on them all.