The sun is setting, casting a soft golden glow across the street. Ren is slowly pedaling his bicycle back to the restaurant, the breeze cool against his skin. His mind is lazy, replaying the looks on Eva's face from earlier.
He is going slow, enjoying the view of calmness around him, thinking about the usual stuff.
Then, a distant, loud honk cuts through his thoughts. The honking is distant, continuous, and disruptive.
But the honking is closing in on him as if coming after him. Frustrated, Ren looks back over his shoulder. A black luxury car is speeding toward him from behind, swerving slightly as if the driver has lost control.
In a split second, the car is nearly upon him, and Ren hurriedly jerks his bike to the side, narrowly avoiding being hit head-on. The car clips his rear wheel, sending his bike skidding across the road and tumbling to the ground. The car keeps going ahead, swerving.
Ren stands up, brushing the dirt from his clothes and staring after the car. His bike is a twisted wreck, the back wheel mangled from the impact.
"Great," he mutters under his breath. "Just fucking great. Who the hell is driving that?" He yells, angry looking at his broken bike on the ground.
But before he can let his anger boil over, the car veers off the road entirely and crashes with a deafening impact just up ahead. The screech of metal colliding with concrete reverberates down the street, and Ren feels a flash of curiosity.
"I gotta see who the fuck just destroyed my bike?"
He steps toward the wreckage, annoyance driving him forward. But as he gets closer, the sight before him changes everything.
The car is a crumpled mess, the front smashed in, the hood buckled, and smoke already beginning to rise from the engine. Through the cracked windshield, Ren sees three figures inside an old man, an elderly driver, and a small child, no more than six years old, bleeding from a nasty gash on her forehead.
Ren's anger drains away at the sight of the child, her pale face streaked with blood. The other two are badly injured as well, both unconscious. For a moment, Ren stands there, weighing his options. His first instinct is to just walk away.
"I don't need to help them," he thinks, his eyes flicking back to his wrecked bike. "I'm not some hero. People die like this all the time. Why should I get involved?"
But just as he's about to turn and leave, the car's engine catches fire, the flames licking at the edges of the hood. The heat radiates outwards, and in the growing blaze, Ren's eyes land on the child again.
A frustrated sigh escapes his lips. "Fuck, I know I'm gonna regret this later. I'll just bring them out, or it'll leave a bad taste in my mouth."
Without another thought, Ren extends his hand toward the car, focusing his telekinetic energy. With a sharp burst of force, the car door flies off its hinges, clattering to the ground a few feet away. The heat from the fire grows more intense, but Ren ignores it, his focus shifting to the passengers.
Using telekinesis, he lifts the child carefully from the wreckage, her small body floating gently through the air as he guides her away from the burning car. He sets her down a safe distance from the flames, then repeats the process with the elderly man and the driver, laying them beside her.
When all three are safely out of danger, Ren straightens up, his eyes now fixed on the little girl. Her breathing is shallow; her head wound is bleeding rapidly.
"Ahh, kid, you've got some good luck," Ren mutters, crouching down beside her. "I don't usually go around saving people, but you're too pitiful—dying in a car crash at your age? And not even your fault."
He chuckles softly to himself, even though the girl is unconscious. "You're lucky you ran into me, haha."
Ren extends his hand over her small, fragile body. Concentrating, he channels a faint green light from his palm. The energy pulses softly, shimmering in the air as it moves toward the child's injury. The light touches her, and slowly, her injuries begin to heal. The gash on her forehead begins to knit together, and her breathing steadies, the tension in her small frame easing.
Ren doesn't heal her completely, just enough to stop the bleeding and stabilize her.
"There, that should do it," he says, pulling his hand back.
Without hesitation, he moves to the elderly man and the driver, repeating the process. He doesn't put much effort into healing them—just enough to make sure they won't die before help arrives.
As he finishes with the last one, the car before him explodes, the force of the blast sending a wave of heat and sound rolling over him.
Ren watchthe flames shoot into the sky, lighting up the darkened evening. "Wow," he murmurs, genuinely impressed. "That's some good fireworks."
He glances down at the unconscious trio at his feet. "You guys are lucky you had this kid with you," he says, shaking his head. "If not for her, you'd all be on the news tomorrow, in pieces."
He pulls out his phone and dials for an ambulance. As the line rings, Ren tells them the situation. Before leaving, Ren casts one last look at the child. "Well, I did my part," he says quietly, his voice tinged with amusement. "Ambulance will be here soon. I should leave now."
With that, Ren turns on his heel and walks away, not waiting for a response from the emergency operator. As the sounds of sirens begin to echo faintly in the distance, Ren slips into the shadows of the street, disappearing just as quickly as he'd arrived.
The wail of ambulance sirens fades as Ren casually walks away from the scene of the crash, indifferent to the lives he's just saved. The thought of being a hero never crosses his mind. It was simply something to rid himself of—a small nuisance that would otherwise have left a bad taste if ignored.
But what Ren didn't realize was that not everyone in the car was fully unconscious.
The elderly man who was seated in the back, hadn't completely succumbed to the darkness. His vision was clouded, and his body screamed with pain, but he wasn't completely unconscious.
Through the haze, the old man managed to see glimpses of the man standing near the wreckage—the man with the bandaged hand who, without touching the car, tore the door off as if it weighed nothing.
The old man's breath was shallow, every heartbeat thudding painfully in his ears, but through the chaos, he heard Ren's voice.
Except, what the elderly man heard wasn't exactly what Ren had said.
"The child is lucky," the old man heard through the fog. "I don't save people for no reason... But this one's too pitiful, dying like this. You're fortunate."
In his weakened state, the man couldn't fully understand, but it sounded as though Ren had only helped because of some stroke of luck. The man's tone wasn't full of concern—it seemed detached, as if saving them was a passing decision, something he could have easily ignored.
The elderly man blinked, his vision fading in and out, but he caught the faint green glow emanating from Ren's hands as the man healed the child. The warmth of the energy seemed miraculous, yet the way Ren handled it felt casual, unremarkable to him.
The child's breathing steadied, and the blood stopped flowing, her body healed before his eyes. The old man watched in disbelief as Ren moved on to them, healing them just enough to ensure they survived, but not fully. It was efficient, quick, and impersonal.
To the elderly man, Ren was not just a savior, but some hidden, powerful figure—someone far beyond the understanding of normal people. He wasn't there because he cared; he was there because of circumstance. The child, it seemed, was lucky to have crossed paths with this mysterious figure. Otherwise, none of them would have survived.
Through his fractured thoughts, the old man pieced together a distorted version of what had actually occurred. Ren wasn't some benevolent hero. He was a force moving in the shadows—someone who had saved them simply because the child had "luck" on her side.
The elderly man's thoughts were jumbled, confused by his fading consciousness, but one thing stood out. Ren wasn't one of them—not an ordinary person. He was something more, someone with abilities far beyond comprehension. But why was he here? What reason could such a person have to save them? Was it truly luck?
Before the man could contemplate further, the car exploded, the shock of the blast jolting him fully awake for a moment, only to send him spiraling into darkness moments later. His last fleeting vision was of Ren's face, the man's indifferent expression burned into his mind.
Ren, oblivious to the fact that someone saw him, walks away from the scene with his usual smirk. To him, the incident is already forgotten, nothing more than a passing distraction. He's already thinking about what to do about the wrecked bike. How will he make the deliveries now?
"No one will know," he thinks, confident. "No one ever does."
But what Ren doesn't realize is that he has been noticed. The elderly man, though barely conscious, had witnessed everything: Ren's strange powers, his casual handling of the situation, and the cryptic words that made it seem as though they were saved purely by chance.
From the old man's perspective, Ren was not a savior but a powerful, hidden figure who moved through the world without anyone knowing—someone who had appeared and saved them because of the child's supposed luck, not out of any real concern.
As Ren turns the corner, leaving the wreckage and the half-conscious memories of the elderly man behind, he remains unaware that his secret may not stay hidden for long. One witness had seen far more than he should.