26. Shonda

The news of his awakening was in all the media all day long, the excitement of the people was as releasing the breath they were holding since the Protector fell asleep. But the next day, that enthusiasm was about to blow up even more.

When his trainers went to see the protector, after his mother’s calling, he told them about something that was needed to be announced along with his recovery, however they decided that it was best if he said it in the press conference they had already planned for the moment he woke up. So he was prepared by all the people incredulity.

“Good luck, dear” said his mother, giving him a kiss in the cheek when he was about to leave their house, she probably knew how nervous he usually was before any conference he had to attend, so she always told him “you can do it”, which was as useless as the “good luck” but now that she changed it, he was made to remember how sharp she was lately. This time he wasn’t nervous, neither excited.

People wanted to see him after two weeks without him, so the press conference was for that. In the past events, because he never finished a battle without appearing in front in the cameras to tell people that everything was fine while smiling with that confident and trustworthy smile of his, only then the people called it a past battle.

 

This time, however, people couldn’t feel it was fine and celebrate when their beloved Protector was down after such a ferocious fight. Even so, they started to call him the Miracle Protector for all his strength and kindness, because he alone could take twelve ships without any damage dealt to the island. And that was most of what they talked about in the press conference and some descriptions of his fight.

“So, they told us you want to say something more and you keep it to the end,” said the woman presenter when the last question was answered.

“Yeah, I wanted to announce something,” he received a nod from her, so he turned to face the camera that would transmit his news to all the islanders. “The new protectors had born in the past week, they’re four and I’ll train them when the time comes, for now they’ll be growing as any one like you until they’re ready.”

It was almost as if the whole island went silent, as if all in there stopped, waiting for him to say he was joking, but it never happened, he hold on until the presenter reacted and started to make new questions for the people to know it was true.

Because of that, the press conference belayed for almost an hour until they let him go. Being Sunday, and the second day after waking up, they let him go back to his house to keep resting. A part of him wanted to go to the reunion place of the Etc. Lost group, however, he didn’t want to be too obvious returning the same time as the Protector did, and he still wasn’t sure of how it would be when he was still getting used to be so numb.

Therefore, he waited a complete week until he felt confident enough to face them again. In home, his family was finally stopping their worried stares or trying to make him talk after he asked them to. His trainers, in the other hand, were still a bit persistent, so he kept denying he had any kind of problems, waiting for them to get tired of the same.

Once in front of the door of the apartment, he stopped. He didn’t know if people of the group usually stop coming for weeks, as him, or if it would be as he never did; he was thinking that maybe they forgot about him already, although he knew it wasn’t the case for all the unread messages he had when he woke up. Just because of that, he knocked.

“Thesaurus!” Who opened the door was Shonda, the same girl that was a fan of The Protector, she was always smiling and laughing; in another times, he might have think she was like those noisy girls who wanted to have people’s attention, but Shonda was kind all the time, her smile even more real than his.

She took him by the arm and pulled him in the apartment, just to shout to everyone that he was finally there. Through the messages, he let the Awkward Boy know that he was busy and, in another city, and because of that he didn’t went to the reunion site, until that day. Which, apparently, made all of them extremely happy.