Present Day
Victor sat on the bed of the small apartment and looked around the empty room. Plain white walls surrounded the studio apartment, with no decorations to speak of. Victor looked down at the two suitcases next to him that held within them everything he owned. Victor had never really had much to begin with; growing up in an orphanage had all but made sure of that.
Fortunately for him, growing up he'd always had what he needed. The orphanage he grew up in was a very upscale establishment that also doubled as a private academy for rich kids, the kind of place where you needed a sponsor to even be allowed into the front door. Victor never had a clue who his sponsor was, especially considering that his earliest memories were of awakening from a coma inside the Lionsong Academy at the age of six.
Over the years, he had tried many times to at least get a clue as to who they might be. Every attempt ended in failure, however, with him only getting minimal information. The only thing he knew was that the person who sponsored him all these years was a great friend of his deceased mother. This was of no help to him, as he had no memories of her and only knew that she had passed away before he awoke from his coma.
Shaking his head as if to banish the negative thoughts, Victor rose and headed out the door.
Stepping onto the street, Victor flipped his hood up and pulled it down slightly over his eyes. The midday sun was bearing down on him fiercely, making him very uncomfortable. "I probably shouldn't have worn this," he muttered to himself, suddenly cursing his choice of outfit. He was wearing a black hoodie with a white compression shirt underneath it. He was also wearing black pants and black sneakers.
He was only wearing the outfit out of habit; this was usually the time of day he went to the MMA gym near the academy. The last few weeks had been a hectic blur for Victor; getting accepted into his top choice college on a full ride scholarship was an amazing feeling. He was particularly surprised to receive the acceptance letter and scholarship, considering he had waited a little over a year and a half after graduating from the academy to even apply.
Victor had been given a massive stipend by his sponsor, apparently, when he turned 18. What was strange, however, is what he was required to agree to if he accepted it. About half of the massive sum of money had been used fulfilling those conditions. A lot of the conditions included visiting places all around the world and meeting people there awaiting his arrival. It was kind of like a pre-planned vacation where he needed to be at certain places, meeting certain people at certain times.
Victor only agreed to the conditions because of his massive inability to function if he didn't sate his own curiosity. He wasn't ashamed to admit that nothing in life had made him more curious than his mysterious sponsor. The list of conditions had him going all over the world for the past year or so. Victor didn't know what to expect when the journey started, but by the time it was over, he was so glad he had accepted the conditions.
Everywhere Victor went, he learned something new and fascinating. He learned survival tactics from a crazy woman in Brazil. He learned meditation from what he assumed was a drunk pretending to be a monk in Tibet. He learned business skills from the most eccentric billionaire he had ever seen in Dubai. He even learned some pretty interesting combat tactics from a former soldier living in Hokkaido, and he had a few more experiences that were just as memorable as all of those.
By the time it was all over, he had learned so much and learned a lot more about the world. Still though, he had learned nothing about who his sponsor was. Every time he brought it up to the people the itinerary led him to, they flat out refused to breathe a word about it. This just kicked Victor's curiosity into overdrive. Unfortunately for Victor, when he got back into town, his friends made sure that he didn't have time to think about it.
Victor, in his rush to sate his boundless curiosity, had forgotten to mention to his only two friends that he would be gone for so long. So here he was, going to yet another day of letting them drag him all over town as "punishment." Victor smiled to himself because although he complained about it, he loved the fact that his friends wanted to spend so much time with him.
Victor was so lost in his thoughts, he almost didn't notice that he had arrived at the place he was supposed to meet his friends. The cafe was very modest on the outside; in fact, many people in town gave it the nickname The Library. This was due to the fact that the outside of it, with its two white columns, plain white stone steps, and revolving door, was a very similar setup outwardly to all the city libraries nearby. Victor walked up the few stone steps to the plain red brick building.
Victor walked through the revolving door, pulling his hood down as he did so. The interior was vastly different in appearance than what the exterior of the building might suggest. Dark obsidian-covered tile covered the floor, shining and glossy like it had never been dirty since it was cut. High ceilings with kaleidoscopic abstract art painted on it and above high archways decorated the interior. The walls were painted a pale gold color, and on both sides of the walls, there were various statues of elegant looking people with various crests painted behind them in great detail, as if to form a backdrop for each statue. In the very center of the large space that made up the interior was a beautiful stone fountain seemingly carved out of obsidian. In the very center of the fountain was a statue of an incredibly muscular and handsome looking man looking down at a little girl with the gentlest look on his face Victor had ever seen.
There was a crest and an inscription on the fountain. The inscription read: "The founder and his treasure." Victor had always took this to mean that this was the artwork title, but what had really drew his attention the very first time he came to the cafe was the crest under the inscription. He had never really paid it any mind before simply because the crest was everywhere in the town that he lived in. Nearly every business and pretty much every local product had the crest, but he had noticed that this one had Latin written around it as part of the crest, unlike all the others he had seen. "Our might is for our family, our wrath is for our enemies, our mercy is for the innocent," is what it translated to.
Latin being one of the languages that Victor learned first, he had translated the inscription as soon as he could, and ever since, for some strange reason, the phrase had stuck in his mind. The reason he was curious once again, however, is because this Crest was on every official document shown to him related to his sponsor. This was the only clue he had to his sponsor: that they were likely somehow related to the Vesmierta Holdings, the most powerful company in the world. Yet what bothered Victor was the fact that there were two different crests. He could never really figure out why, especially with his quest to find out more than surface level information, the company yielding nothing. That left his only clue as to who his sponsor was at a dead end.
"Vic, are you okay?" Victor was startled out of his thoughts by a voice to his left. Standing behind a large, fancy looking bar table with her hands on the keyboard of a sleek looking computer was a young woman with dark black hair and chocolate colored eyes and flawless ebony skin. She wore the black and white barista uniform standard for this establishment, with a neat long sleeve white button-up shirt with a black vest and black dress pants. The gold earrings and red lipstick added to the beauty of face, and contrasted nicely against her bright smile.
Slightly embarrassed, Victor walked over to her to say hello and get a look at the menu posted on the giant television behind her.
"Hi Stella," Victor said, causing her smile to become even more radiant. "You look amazing in that outfit, as usual," Victor said, causing her to blush a little.
"You look pretty good yourself, even in workout clothes," she responded with a giggle.
Victor wasn't aware of it, but she wasn't wrong. Victor was an incredibly handsome individual, even though he himself never really spared his appearance any thought. Victor was 6'2 and 180 lb of lean, athletic muscle, with piercing green eyes, flawless skin, and sharp facial features, paired with what his friend Amir had once referred to jokingly as a Giga-Chad like jawline and short, neatly trimmed black hair.
Most people, upon first meeting Victor, assumed he would be a total jerk like most good-looking or rich people in town, and were shocked when he turned out to be so humble and polite. Victor was unaware of it, but he had a natural charisma that drew people to him. However, Victor tended to kind of march to the beat of his own drum, so to speak, often going wherever his curiosity took him and never really paying attention to any social norms or conventions that influenced the behavior of most of society, and having little to no filter between his thoughts and his words.
He also had a tendency to completely space out when absorbed in his own thoughts.
Victor and Stella chatted for a bit, with Stella mostly asking him constant questions about where he had been and what he had been up to the past year and few months. Victor patiently answered all her questions with a slight smile on his face, recounting some of the people he had met and the things he had seen.
It was as he was telling her about his time in Tibet, while she listened with pure fascination, that he heard a voice behind him.
"Flirting with the barista, I see? I'm proud of you, buddy. I was beginning to think you didn't know how," said the person behind him in a smooth, dignified voice with an Indian accent.
Also behind him came the sound of another voice, this one proud, clear, and unmistakably female. "I hope this doesn't mean I have to stop hanging out with you. My girlfriend is bi, after all." The female voice had an unmistakably teasing tone to it upon saying those words. Victor's face lit up into a radiant smile, warmth filling his entire body as he turned around because he knew his friends had finally arrived.