"Damn. This grilled charbird with beer is such a good combo!" my dad looks ecstatic.
"You're right, papa." My mom looks blissful. They're both clearly drunk
They both look at me.
"Hmmm…why's our son always looking at us like that?" my dad asks.
"Maybe…just hear me out…maybe he just needs some beer."
Mother, do NOT give children with developing brains alcohol.
"I don't think that's a good idea mama." My dad says.
We sit in silence and enjoy the view. We're facing the opposite side of the place where we went to get me checked up.
We're on the first floor balcony of our house. The place is only lit by moonlight coming through the clouds. We're near the edge, so there are only a couple of smaller houses that I can see. I can see thick clouds about 300 metres above us, us being in a mountain and all. Beyond the mountain, I can see a couple of smaller mountains, and one giant...thing?
It looks like a rectangular slab, too smooth to be considered natural-made. It stretches up and disappears among the clouds, and stretches sideways, so far that I can't see where it ends . It almost looks like-
"A wall." My mom notices me staring.
"That's the first wall of Ciudad. It's about 140 kilometers tall and 600 kilometers long. You can't see where it ends because we're right in the middle of the longer wall of the rectangle."
"One of the three mega-cities." My dad interjects. "This is the City of Trade. I've always wanted to go inside. People who have went inside say it beats living in the mountains, to say the least."
"Me too." My mom says. "I gave up hope, after everything I went through to try and get inside. Let's hope our son also wants to see what's inside."
They both look at me lovingly and stay silent.
"What an eventful day, huh?" My mom finally breaks the silence.
My dad starts laughing "That's one way to put it."
"First, we see a monster kid with four Inclinations, then Rosa's child gets the whole of wind magic without it being exclusive to one of the four types of wind, then we find out that our child is the biggest monster in this tribe, possibly compared to many other tribes. And then there were those tattooed weirdos."
"What did they say? That our son can understand us speak. Hahaha!" My dad looks at me. I pretend to not understand and look somewhere else.
"Oi, son, look here!" my dad says. I don't look.
"Hahaha. Of course he won't look. He doesn't even know the language yet, dumbass." My mom, for some reason thinks that was the funniest shit to happen.
My dad suddenly becomes serious. "I'm gonna take him with me for a bit."
"What for?" my mom asks, curious.
My dad wobbles to his feet. "Manly man talk. No girls allowed."
"Pfft." My mom laughs. "Go ahead."
He picks me up, and thanks to him almost being drunk, falls down.
My mom's laughing so hard that she's holding her stomach now. Watching my dad stumble seems to keep her entertained.
"Careful, son! Your dad cries a lot when he's drunk." My mom shouts as my dad leaves with me.
My dad looks at me and smiles. But he seems to be a little bit sad. I'm on edge. Does he suspect that I can understand what he's saying?
He takes me through the first bedroom into the second bedroom and plops me down on the bed. The windows are only thing providing a source of light.
"Maybe after those weirdos mentioned that you could understand what I said, I might be getting a bit optimistic, but I need someone to talk to, and your mom isn't the right person."
I act like I can't understand him. I act like I'm interested in the pillows and crawl towards them.
"I know that I'm a failure." My dad says.
"Your mom is the one who's responsible for 80% of this family's income. I can barely find work, you know? There are plenty of builders better than I am.
I know I can try harder, but I never could try hard for a long time. I disappointed my family a lot. After a point, they started despising me. Called me an idiot, said I'm a parasite, said I was born just to suck their money out and shortly after kicked me out of the house. I don't blame them, though. I was wasting their hard-earned money. I thought that maybe by being homeless for a bit, I could at least learn to be stronger, but no. I couldn't. People started pitying me, even the homeless."
He laughs. "Imagine! Imagine homeless people pitying you!"
"One of the homeless women became friends with me and single handedly pulled me out of poverty. That's your mom. She's a saint. I promised her that I would be better."
"I couldn't. No matter how hard I tried. Trust me, I've tried really hard. But then I realized that my family is right. I'm just a leech. Sucking money up from everyone and not giving anything back. I don't even deserve pity, but yet here I am, hoping that you might store what I'm saying somewhere in your mind and maybe forgive me in the future when I inevitably fuck things up. Because I somehow manage to fuck everything up."
He starts crying.
"Forgive me. There's no way a failure like me would ever be of any benefit to you. I should probably kill myself and avoid ruining your life. But stupidly enough, I want to try and help you."
"Every time in the future when you think that I'm a loser and are embarrassed to be my son, I just want you to know that I'm trying my very best. No matter what, I'll keep trying my best to become a good dad."
I could only hear sniffling.
"Son?"
I pretend like I'm asleep.
He caresses my head, puts a blanket over my body and leaves.