Changing The Future

CHAPTER IX

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Asher gets out of Alice her car waving her goodbye before she drives off. Asher walks to the front door and gets his keys out and unlocks the door and goes inside. "Hey Asher, how was your day?" His father asks, sitting on the couch. "It was fun." Asher closes and locks the door. The Tv is on but his father isn't paying attention to whatever is showing on the screen instead he's reading the newspaper. "Where's mom?" "I think she's in the kitchen. Why?" "I need to talk to you both about something." Mr. King turns off the tv and puts the newspaper away. "Honey, Asher wants to talk to both of us." Mr. King yells towards the kitchen. "Okay, I'm coming!" They can hear her footsteps coming from the kitchen. "I'm here." Mrs. King's now standing next to her husband. Asher takes a deep breath. "I received the exam results while I was at Alice's house." Mrs. King squeals. "And?" They both ask nervously. "I passed and got accepted into the strongest class." Asher says happy and proud. "I'm so proud of you." Mrs. King embraces her son with tears coming out of her eyes. "I knew you could do it." His father says proudly. The school works with a ranking system. It has four ranks. S, A, B, C, and D. S being the highest rank and D being the lowest. There are only three people allowed to be in the S rank. They are the three strongest in the school. It doesn't matter in which year you are. You can become part of the S rank. Asher got accepted in the A rank. The Strongest class consists of only A rank students and maybe an S ranker. Asher slips out of his mother's embrace. 'I'm going to sleep. It's pretty late.' His parents nod in understanding. Asher walks upstairs to his room. "Goodnight!" His father yells when Asher was out of sight. Everything is quiet again. You could only hear the sniffs coming from Mrs. King. "Why didn't you tell him?" Mr. King asks his wife in a serious tone. "Well, he wanted to sleep and-" "And you couldn't do it." Mr. King pinches the bridge of his nose and goes back to sitting on the couch. His wife sighs. "I'll do it tomorrow." "Tomorrow, not longer than that." Mrs. King sits down next to her husband. He holds her for comfort and she leans her head against him. They can see and feel that their son is getting weaker. After the exams, he became stronger so they can stay longer than they thought they would stay. They're happy that he at least has Alice. They are both sad knowing they will have to say goodbye soon.

The next day the King family is having dinner. Asher thought this was going to be a normal family dinner but unknown to him, Mrs. King finally decided that today she is going to tell Asher everything. "Asher, your father and I have to tell you something." They all immediately stop eating. "Yes mother, you can tell me." Mrs. King looks at her husband and he gives her a reassuring smile before she looks at her son again. "Where should I start?" Mrs. King mumbles to herself. Her husband decides to help her out. "We'll start from the beginning." Mr. King holds Mrs. King's hand for comfort. "Asher, we're not human." Asher spits out his drink. "What?! What do you mean not human?! Are you aliens? Wait if you're an alien am I also an alien. Or wait! Am I adopted? Is that what's happening?!" His mother rolls her eyes and his father shakes his head in amusement. "That's definitely your son." His mother says to his father facepalming herself. "Hey! Why is he MY son when he does things like this?" Mrs. King clears her throat. 'We're getting off track.' Mr. King nods and they both look at their son again. "We are chess pieces brought to life." Mrs. King says continuing. "I don't understand." Asher says not understanding what they are trying to tell him. "Years ago, your "grandparents" were famous chess rivals in China." "Wait, are they even my real grandparents?" "Not exactly." Mrs. King explains. "The family bloodline begins and starts with us." She says firmly. "Anyway, your grandparents were already quite old and had no children or grandchildren. They wanted to be entertained and normal chess got boring after playing it for so many years. They searched a long time for an ancient spellbook that could bring us to life.' 'It was the first time those four worked together." Mr. King mutters "They found it and brought us to life. Your father and I were supposed to be enemies." "Your mother is the black queen and I'm the white king." It's starting to make sense now and that is weird. "That explains the hair and the clothes, but how did you two end up together?" "Well, we fell for each other's personalities." They both speak at the same time. "I fell for your mother because she was cold and merciless but she was actually a big softie towards me." Asher looks at his father with a confused look. "Weird reason but okay. Moving on." "I fell for your father because he was never serious and always made cringy pick-up lines. He showed me mercy when I almost killed him and that awoke something inside of me." Asher looks at his parents with a concerned look. Are they okay? Are they sure that they didn't escape a mental hospital? Should he call the police? "Don't look at us like that." His mother says. "That is one weird love story." Asher says, shaking his head. "Anyway, we fell in love, got married, and got you. When I was pregnant the other chess pieces slowly started disappearing one after another. We went to the doctor and he told us it could be their disappearance could be because of your ability and the only reason we are still here is because we are your parents. He didn't know for sure because that had never happened before. But we're slowly draining energy from you. So, we have to leave and go to the dimension where the other chess pieces are now. If we stay too long, you'll die." "What about me? Where will I stay?" Asher asks, getting frantic. "We don't know yet." "But we are not letting you stay with "your grandparents" that's for sure." Mr. King looks at Mrs. King and nods. She looks at him and nods back. "One of the reasons your "grandparents" are banned from our house is because they tried to kill you?" "KILL ME?!" "Yes, because you are the reason the chess pieces started to disappear and your death would bring them back or if you summoned them but you were too young back then to summon them. First, they wanted me to get an abortion but I refused, and then when you were born, they tried to kill you, so we ran away and started a new life." Asher stands up. "This is too much information at once. I need some time to think." Asher runs to his room. "Asher, wait!" Mrs. King was just about to run after Asher when her husband grabs her arm to stop her. "He needs some time alone."

After a few hours, Mrs. King decides to check on her son. She knocks on his door. "Asher, can I come in?" No answer. "Alright, can you at least say something?" Still no answer. "Okay you don't have to talk but please just listen then. I know we shouldn't have kept this from you. And we're sorry, I'm sorry." Mrs. King leans her head against the door. It's quiet, too quiet. "Asher?" She opens his door. He's nowhere to be seen. His window is open. "Sh*t! No no no no nooo." Mrs. King falls to her knees and tears begin to form in her eyes. "SNOW!" She can hear his footsteps while he runs upstairs. "ASHER! Asher!" "What's wrong?!" He asks running into the room. "Asher..." Mr. King goes on his knees and embraces his wife. "Asher..." "What happened?" "Asher ran away." She says while crying in his arms. Suddenly something snapped in Mrs. King. She removes her husband's hands from her and stands up. "I'm getting him back." She says looking emotionless. "I'll help." Mr. King is worried that his wife is back to how she was before. Cold and merciless. His wife runs to their bedroom and her husband runs after her. She opens their closet. "Is this necessary?" He asks carefully not wanting to get on her bad side while she is like this. "Yes, I'm getting him back." She shoves the clothes on the hangers to the side. There's a door behind the clothes. She takes out a key and puts it in the keyhole. "I wanted to say a proper goodbye and that's what I'm going to do. I also can't risk his grandparents finding him first." The door opens and there is a secret room revealed. They both step inside the room and the door closes again.

Asher is running through thestreets and in an alleyway with a backpack hanging on his shoulder. He'srunning and running hoping he would not get lost but luck wasn't on his side.He got lost and ended up in a sketchy part of the city with thugs, criminals,and villains. They are all looking at him. This is definitely not a place forsomeone like him to be at night. He grabs his phone and calls the number of theonly person he has besides his parents, hoping they'll help him. "Hello?" Hehears them say from the other side of the phone line. "Alice, I need your help,I'm somewhere in the bad part of the city. I need you to get me. I'm fine rightnow but I don't know how long that will be when they decide to try something."He whispers looking at the people around him. "Okay just stay where you are.I'll come and get you." Asher ends the call and not a second later Alice appearsin front of him. "Let's go." Alice narrows her eyes at the people around themand they all back away. In a blink of an eye, Alice disappears with Asher.