I narrowed my eyes at the screen, ignoring the clamour coming from around me as people were busy trying to buy their groceries in the market.
I was the designated bag carrier thanks to my enhanced strength so I had no role in picking out what the best choices of vegetables, fish, fruits or meat to buy so I was just mindlessly following behind my family and just taking whatever they handed me.
That gave me time to scroll through my phone to look up the laws for vigilantes in Singapore and, to be honest, I should have seen this coming.
Vigilantism is against the law here and if you're caught, it's a jail sentence and a fine.
If you want to be a hero, you'll need to register with the hero association affiliated with this country as a professional superhero or you would be treated no better than a criminal.
For me, there was no way I was going to register myself as one of those guys.
Sure, it might sound good on paper where you are basically a sanctioned superhero and you get both monetary support and also some political backing from the government… But then you get really limited in what you can do.
Like even if you were to get news that someone is being attacked out on the street, you might not be able to get permission to deal with it if some higher up believes that you should be stationed elsewhere.
And even if you do… You'll also probably be stuck doing paperwork to report on your activities instead of actually focusing on doing heroic stuff.
It's basically just glorified police work except you also have to worry about your own PR since you are a single entity instead of a collective.
The good thing is… Everyone pretty much knows that this law is stupid so while it may still be enforced, as long as people don't do something crazy like destroy an entire building just to catch a shoplifter, most people would turn a blind eye to your activities.
So there's actually still a few vigilantes in our city and most people are just glad that there are people out there doing good instead of bad even with powers.
I guess if I want to go that route, I would probably need a more concrete way to hide my identity than just a windbreaker and face mask.
Hmm… I wonder if I message Olivia about the mask she used to hide my Mortal God identity, would she able to prepare another one for me?
That's assuming that her department is still intact after what happened at MAM yesterday…
And as though I manifested that thought into existence, one of the middle aged aunties started talking to the grocer while my mother was picking out cabbages beside her.
"Eh, you got see the news this morning or not?"
"Got! Scary leh. How can this happen here? What the 'gahment' doing?"
"You think he got die or not? The entire building came down leh."
"Confirm die already. If he never die, why they never show him? They scared we know that god guy die underneath their own building."
I noticed my sister looking in my direction with a smug grin on her face.
Yeah… She definitely figured it out… As long as she keeps silent about it for now I guess…
"Eh, Ah Qing, hold this also," My mother ordered, handing me over another bag of vegetables.
I took it and passed it over to my other hand that I was using to carry all twenty bags of groceries that were already there, their weight barely a problem to me with my enhanced strength.
As we moved to the next stall, I realised that the people over there were also talking about the news of the assassination attempt yesterday. Seems like it's a hot topic already and most people seemed to be guessing that I was definitely dead.
I ignored their comments and instead, typed a message out to send to Olivia.
'How is everything? What's happening now?'
I was honestly not expecting her to see the message or even reply to it until later in the day but not even a few seconds after I sent the message, I saw the icon pop up to show that she was already typing a reply.
'Everything is in chaos right now. We do not yet know who we can trust. Keep a low profile for now, my Lord. I will contact you as soon as things have settled down.'
I typed back a reply to that as well, my thumb flying across the phone screen quickly, 'How long will that take?'
'It should be done by tomorrow, my Lord. I'm afraid that you might have to meet some ministers because of this.'
'That is to be expected I guess. What would they want?'
'To make sure where you stand on this, my Lord. You were attacked while under their protection and almost lost your life. It would be reasonable to expect you to be furious and may even decide not to live here anymore. They fear that you might even choose to move to another country instead.'
I have to admit that the thought didn't even cross my mind.
I won't say that I'm some blindly nationalistic flag waver that would die for my country and never question its leadership… But I will admit that I believe living here is better than anywhere else in the world.
That could just be my bias speaking because I have friends and family here and I'm already used to living in this country to begin with anyway. If I moved somewhere else, I would need to basically restart my life in a foreign place and then deal with all the problems that come with it.
So these guys are fortunate because I definitely wouldn't plan to leave this country for another unless they force me through circumstances like endangering my family or something.
Obviously, I wasn't going to tell them that though.
I typed out another message, 'Understood. What about you? How are you holding up? Did they punish you or something?'
'Of course, my Lord. Even if you may have forgiven me, it is still a fact that this happened while under my watch. But I understand why they did it since they needed a scapegoat to blame for this incident instead of staying silent about it.'
'Do you need any help in that case?'
She didn't answer my question right away which made me believe that she had taken a moment to pause and consider it before she started typing again.
'My Lord, you are too kind. There is no need for that.'
I figured she would say something like that.
'In that case, keep me posted, alright? Let me know if there are any changes to the situation.' I requested.
'I will, my Lord. If you run into any problems, please do not hesitate to contact me as well.'
I ended the conversation with a thumbs up emoji before returning my attention back to my surroundings, only to find my sister looking up at me with narrowed eyes.
"Girl ah?" She asked, probably questioning if I was messaging someone of the opposite gender.
I raised my eyebrow at her, "Why do you want to know?"
"Because I need to know if there is going to be someone I will need to call sister soon, duh."
I rolled my eyes and chose not to answer her, opting instead to open up my other messenger app that I use primarily for talking to my gaming friends.
I've noticed that Bas has gone offline after our little talk and I was expecting him to contact me soon with details about his travel plans since he mentioned coming over to find me.
The last message I sent to him was also left unread so I was a little worried about him but there wasn't much I could do seeing that I didn't have his real life contact details.
All I could do was hope that they come back online eventually and see my messages somehow.
As I was thinking about whether I should just send another message to them, I got another notification, this time from Dan.
Swiping my thumb across the screen, I opened up the other messaging app to see what he had sent me.
'Yo. Free later? Wife's bringing the kids out and I got the place to myself. Wanna come over and hang later?'
Since he already went out of his way to invite me…
'Sure. I'll bring some snacks too.'
'Nice. Get us some good stuff. They're staying over at her parents for the weekend.'
'Did you do something wrong to piss her off or something? Why would she give you an entire weekend to yourself?'
'Fuck off. It's her cousin's birthday and the party is just for the kids and the women so I'm left out.'
'Yeah, I guess you are too ugly to be invited anyway.'
He sent a middle finger emoji and I chuckled before putting my phone away.
It's nice that there's still some semblance of normality in my life.