"Dear Tulip, how old are you?" Alvin asked while chewing on a biscuit.
The child thought for a few minutes. How old was he? He didn't know… Tulip didn't know how old he was. He shook his head and shrugged his shoulders, and the others understood that he didn't know the answer.
"I think you're in your thirties, maybe 33 years old," Elena said quietly. Next to her, Alvin took the opportunity to head to the store to buy something. He loved that—buying products and trying them out. Among hundreds of items on display, he purchased a small, semi-circular device with a camera in the middle.
"Hold still," he said to the child, then pressed a button on the top of the device.
"What's that?" Meryl asked in surprise as she approached Alvin, just as Tulip did.
"It's supposed to show people's real age," he replied calmly.
— "How so? It just looks like a camera."
— "I connected it to the system."
Alvin quickly tapped a few buttons on his digital screen, excited to test the device's effectiveness, and to find out Tulip's age. To him, Tulip looked somewhere between 20 and 30. If the device gave a different result, it would mean it was useless.
"Hmm... it says here that you're 27 years old, approximately," Alvin said with a wide smile. That means his previous guess was correct.
[He's 38 years old.]
Alvin's smile faded when he read the message. 38 years old? Tulip looks much younger than that, he barely reaches a meter in height!
[He looks small due to malnutrition, along with his psychological issues.]
[If he is well-nourished and treated kindly, his body will grow healthily.]
Malnutrition... When Alvin first found him, Tulip was dragging the body of a dead woman into the tent and eating it. For a child under 30, it would be hard to accept the sight of a dead body, let alone drag it to another place and consume it.
[Tulip has vitiligo. And you, Alvin, know better than anyone in this empire, what happens to those afflicted by this condition.]
Mr. Pie was right—Alvin knew very well what kind of treatment vitiligo patients received because of the rumor that they were cursed by the gods. It wasn't just that he had heard people talking… no, Alvin had seen it with his own eyes. Behind some white walls, he had witnessed how someone with this disease was treated.
But how had no word reached the emperor about a child with vitiligo living in the Noxara Desert? Could it be that the gypsies decided to deal with Tulip themselves instead of reporting it to the government?
It was a possible scenario—especially since the emperor hated Noxara and everything related to it. Surely, the gypsies realized the emperor would have ordered them all imprisoned under the pretense that they might have been infected.
How did Tulip survive among the gypsies for 38 years? Why didn't they kill him when they saw his skin? Or was it that… Alvin remembered reading something about this in the city of Serinthia. Apart from the "vitiligo curse" and linking the disease to the people of Eldoria, the books stated that it was an acquired disease and begins to appear after the age of twenty.
"He seems older than that," Elena said in a doubtful tone.
"How does he seem older?" Meryl asked with curiosity.
"Tulip has a small body, but his reactions to situations show intellectual maturity. I think he's over thirty," she replied calmly.
"He's 38 years old," Alvin answered in a quiet voice. He stood up, leaving everything behind in silence, and left the house.
"What happened?" Meryl asked, surprised by his behavior.
Tulip stared at the closed door for a moment, and something inside him told him that Alvin's mood had changed because of him. He stood up quietly and walked toward the window overlooking the garden. He pulled the chair that was by the wall and climbed onto it to see Alvin sitting near the white wooden fence, leaning his back against it.
"He's sad for Tulip," Elena sent a private message to Meryl so that Tulip wouldn't hear them. Looking at Tulip's body, she could understand the reason for Alvin's sorrow. Tulip had vitiligo, and patients with this disease were dragged to the public execution platform after years of torture.
Tulip was still very young. He wasn't in prison, but the gypsies had surely hurt him a lot in the past. "Alvin has a sensitive heart behind the cruelty he shows."
A sensitive heart? Elena wasn't sure of that, even after more than seventy years at his side. Alvin had a volatile temper—sometimes kind, and at other times cold and ready to shed blood. No one could know the truth hidden behind his mask… except him.
__________
"Are you saying all your main ability stats are at zero?" Alvin asked in shock, and Tulip nodded while chewing a piece of meat.
"We need to raise them before the locations of the crystals are announced."
"What are the crystals?" Tulip asked in confusion.
"Looks like that giant digital screen didn't appear in the desert," Meryl said as she cut up meat for the child.
"I just remembered—weren't you supposed to have explained to him what happened to the world?" she directed her words to Alvin, who quickly replied, "I skipped that part to save time."
"A big digital screen? Yeah, it showed up, but I didn't understand a thing," Tulip answered.
"I'll explain it to you." Alvin took it upon himself to explain everything to the boy.
Meanwhile, Elena was reviewing the list of planets that had applied to have someone represent them. She leaned slightly toward Meryl and whispered,
"Meryl, the planets are using aliases. Can you ask your master if he can identify their real identities if we tell him the aliases?"
Meryl nodded with a gentle smile, then quickly wrote to her master to inquire…
"He says they use aliases so their real identities won't be exposed. He only knows the nicknames of his close allies."
They use fake names so they can say and do whatever they want without being judged by other planets.
It also prevents the hunter from knowing whether a planet is weak or strong when choosing one of them.
Regardless of that, strong planets would never choose weak people to represent them in this world. The biggest proof of that is Meryl. She may often appear fragile, but she's a brave girl who never hesitates to fight to protect others or to provide healing to those in need.
That's exactly what the healing ability requires—a kind and compassionate heart, but also someone brave and unafraid.
In contrast, when Elena looks at herself, she wonders: What qualities do I have?
She's hesitant most of the time, constantly overthinking, and speaks very little... What else?
She doesn't know. She finds nothing when she searches her mind… Maybe courage?
Elena looked at Alvin, who was smiling and joking with Tulip... No, she's not courageous.
She only stands and fights without fear because she knows Alvin is by her side,
knows that he'll step in when she needs help.
Every time she fights, Elena sees how many planets are watching. Sometimes the viewers reach three thousand.
Alvin is a swordsman, Meryl is a healer, Tulip is a poisonous flower, and Elena… what is Elena?
What does she have that made a powerful planet choose her?... Nothing.
Outside, the sky was as dark as always, scattered with shining stars. As the hours passed, the darkness slowly faded and light spread gradually until the sun rose in the sky.
"What are we going to do there?" Meryl asked curiously while brushing her teeth in the bathroom.
"To kill!" Alvin replied with a wicked smile!