Chương 47: Golden Eyes

June bent down to pick up a chocolate bar and kicked the robber in the knee, caving it in backwards with a disgusting squelch. Before the robber had a chance to hit the ground, June grabbed him by the collar and lifted him up. The robber let out a gut-wrenching scream. The gun hit the floor just as another robber fired their gun at June, hitting their groupie, who June used as a meat shield.

"That's one way to ask for an autograph." June tossed the man over the front-end racks that the store had used to funnel people into a line, knocking another robber off balance. June then kicked the rack, ripping the bolts that constrained it to the ground and sending the entire rack to crush his off-balance opponent. Another shot rang out, narrowly missing June.

"Poor aim, I didn't even dodge that one, dumbass." He had quickly turned to the direction where the bullet came from and pointed back with finger guns, but to his disappointment, the thug retreated into the aisle. He leisurely walked up the slanted rack that had fallen against the next rack and the two thugs. He then hopped off the rack and disappeared into the aisles of the small store. June walked back the way he entered the aisle and entered the next one, and a resounding slam and crunch were heard.

Then, away from the view of the hostages, another gunshot rang out, and a man screamed.

"They say they're calling this hotshot Golden Eyes; he's an up-and-coming model from the Snow Management company." A male newscaster spoke with a commercial voice.

"The mystery hero, with a bit of sass, took out four armed looters without even a scratch on him. Luckily, our boots-on-the-ground reporter, Jen, and her squad only had superficial injuries after the looting. Here are some testimonies from the hostages." A lower third box that said local resident and friend"Yeah, it was pretty cool. There were a lot of pictures of the guy circulating online recently, lotta memes… yeah, we asked the dude, and he didn't like know who the Golden eyes was… and I was like, you dude….

You dude" June turned his phone off; he couldn't watch anymore. He pressed his fingers on his temples and leaned back on the couch in the studio guest room. You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. As funny as it was to watch someone incredibly high give a testimony, June wasn't very happy being in the spotlight. It turns out Mini had a habit of posting private raw photos online, and June's bare-eyed picture was trending.

'Golden eyes' June kept his eyes closed the entire time to keep his eyes from showing, and he had tried so hard to hide them from the world. All that effort and for what?

'I could still dispute the legitimacy of the photo if needed, since it already looked like it had been through some post-processing.' Mini's reputation as a private photographer for hire was ruined; his socials had also taken a hit for posting a picture of June, both from the company and from his base that he built solely by posting raw photos before any editor could work their magic.

'I'm going to pluck his eyes when I see them.'

'Well, what's done is done.' June had to figure out what was next; his little stunt had propelled him from the short-lived meme space to the widely seen public network. June quietly hoped the fame would die down. On a somewhat more positive note, June was now an acclaimed mysterious hero who appeared during one of the worst storms in twenty years to save a couple of hostages and then disappeared into the storm once his work was over.

So he was getting a lot of offers when it came to ads and talk shows; even the bougie brands wanted this ghetto kid to model their clothes. June's been stuck at the studio for two mundane days, and the flood worsened since. As much as the world praises him as a hero, he really just fought the robbers because he wasn't in the mood to wait while the storm worsened; frankly, if he had chosen to play hostage, he probably would have fallen asleep due to the nice rain sounds and thunder.

Everyone has been stuck at home these days too, so the news has been playing his accomplishment again and again. The mundane world's news never played anything positive; it was always oil spill here, war crime here, slave trading here, horrible thing this and there, and the first time something good or cool comes on, it's June doing one-liners and fighting thugs.

He probably should have considered the possibility that the odd rectangular box and long pole could have been a boom mic and camera, but he just assumed that those were fallen items; echolocation wasn't exactly prone to sharing specifics, at least June's version did.

'I should really practice using it more often.' He knew echolocation could be used to get things like texture, but his version was more like funky shapes appearing in his head from residual noise.

'Maybe I should try clicking my tongue to echolocate.'

June and Lilia had made it a habit to meet up at the garden after their designated bedtimes. There wasn't much to do in the mundane world with the storm going on after all. Lilia had given June an item, too, another bracelet, and now he had three assimilated into his body.

Apparently, it let June and her be able to sense each other from a distance; it was basically a glorified life alert, but there was something romantic knowing that you could look at your hand at any time and know someone out there loves you and that they are safe. The leather bag June received from Mortimer, to give to Lilia, had now made its way back into June's hand after a couple of days, as had the note inside of it.

June was about to open it, wanting to know her response immediately, but he got it in a different way. Lilia, the rambunctious one, specifically grabbed June's hand like he did when she tried to peek at his letter, while the timid one continued lulling him with her voice, continuing to speak as if nothing had changed. This time, it was less of an accident. The two ended up holding hands all night before June regretfully nodded off beside her in the garden. He never let go.

June woke up feeling ecstatic. It took him a moment to realize the TV in the room and his phone were glaring alarms. A natural disaster was happening.