Chapter 225: Two Great Nobles [Part 1]
Although Cillin had visited several general hospitals at the city center, a lot of doctors couldn’t be bothered to answer his questions.
The first thing those people look at was Cillin’s attire. If you weren’t dressed in high-end clothing, they would claim that they were busy. If you weren’t dressed in high-end clothing and wasn’t a member of the city, they would outright pretend that you didn’t exist.
There were several times the doctors had steered out of Cillin’s way like he was the plague before he even managed to say a word. Even the nurses didn’t pay him any attention despite his youthful and handsome looks. There were countless other people in a general hospital who had both looks and money, and in their opinion they all deserved cherishment before him!
Although Chang Seven was too young to fully understand these emotions, he still vaguely sensed them a little. After all, children had an instinctive understanding of the meaning behind a grown up’s eyes. When Chang Seven saw those doctors and nurses’ gazes, his excitement and curiosity grew much cooler. He became a lot quieter than he was before.
After casting a glance at Chang Seven, Cillin stopped trying to ask for information from these people. Judging from their reactions, it would appear that Old Chang must’ve been snubbed quite a bit in the past too. That was why he stopped trying to get his information from a human being and went to a service robot directly as suggested by Old Chang. At the very least, their service was better.
Sometimes, it was easier for a human and a non-human to get acquainted than it was for two humans. Sometimes, the distance between the hearts of two humans was bigger than that of a human and a machine.
After asking his questions and getting the answers he needed roughly, Cillin estimated that the full treatment Chang Five were to receive would cost at least one hundred thousand, and this was the bare minimum necessary to treat his illness too. High quality setups would cost from three hundred thousand to four hundred thousand or more.
They still had a long way to go before they could gather this much money!
Chang Seven finally recovered after they left the hospital. He was still a kid, and he was able to temporarily toss the discomfort he felt to the back of his mind after seeing all kinds of new things in the city.
Cillin bought some items according to the list provided by Old Chang. The gray cat’s fish biscuits weren’t as easy to purchase, however. Cillin had checked out the pet biscuits of several pet stores, but their quality were all not up to par. Cillin knew the gray cat well enough to know that it was sure to hate these biscuits. That was why he had to go through a few large stores before he finally found a kind of biscuit that met his expectations. It wasn’t biscuit for pets, but biscuit for humans, so both the gray cat and the children could eat them together. It was also affordable for people of low income like them.
Cillin even went to a point of sale that happened to be doing an event and purchased a cheap and simple communicator. The soil beneath his feet didn’t belong to GAL, and the large quantity of GAL credits he possessed were completely useless here.
After the shopping, the first thing Old Chang did was to contact Old Chang. Right now Old Chang and Bel were awfully busy, so the person who took the call was Chang Six. Cillin wanted to know how the shop was doing and if they had anything else to buy. Bel knew that it was Cillin on the other side of the call, so he yelled loudly for him to return as soon as possible. The workload was too much for him alone to handle.
After he was done calling Old Chang’s shop, the next person he called was the portly shop owner of the parts market. The portly shop owner had looked very reluctant to let him go when Cillin announced his intentions to leave, and he had given him his a contact number. He demanded Cillin to call him after he purchased a communicator.
Cillin had to admit that the portly shop owner had thought quite highly of him. Moreover, he might need to purchase more parts in the future from the portly shop owner’s shop, not to mention that the latter had given him a 20% discount on his purchase and his contact number. Considering all the good will the portly shop owner had shown him, he couldn’t possibly spurn him like those doctors, could he? That would be tearing down connections for no good reason.
The portly shop owner sounded quite happy. He memorized his number and said that he would inform him once he was done making a flying car model.
While Cillin was shopping for goods, someone was investigating his activities until they knew everything, including the people he spoke with on the communicator.
“Say, Ichechi. Do you think that our prince is a doormat?”
“He has always been that way, hasn’t he?” Ichechi, the guy who played the good cop in front of the planetary government officials checked his subordinates’ report before a frown appeared on his face. He said, “Huh, I can’t believe it’s that fatty.”
“Which fatty?”
Musso moved closer to look at the report. He then exclaimed, “Oh, him. Did the Sizer family not kidnap him back to his home yet?”
Ichechi curled his lips. “This guy is almost as much of a freak as our prince is.” A pause later, Ichechi sighed. “This fellow’s gotten even fatter than before!”
Cillin took Chang Seven into a clothing store and bought some kiddie clothes for him. He also bought a set of clothes for himself. Although it wasn’t exactly high class stuff, it at least made him look like a person who belonged in the city. At least he wouldn’t be kicked out of certain places before he even spoke up.
Cillin sighed as he stared at the last of his money in his hands. The sighing words of the old men at Repair Street truly was right: the city was just too expensive a place to go in!
Both Cillin and Chang Seven changed into their new clothes. Although Chang Seven was normally mischievous, energetic, and cared little for his worn down clothes, he was particularly concerned about his new clothes and treated them with great care. Even sweets didn’t hold as much allure as they used to, although his little face still looked pretty excited.
Cillin took Chang Seven into a fast food shop, and since they had changed their clothes they didn’t particularly stand out among the rest of the people. Since they were no longer identifiable as an ‘outsider’ from their attire alone, they managed to enjoy a good meal without being rolled eyes at.
Sometimes, the people inside the fast food shop would talk about the sudden influx of commoners into the city. They all chatted about the matter with a sneering attitude, but Cillin could see that there was in fact little difference between a commoner and a city person. They were just deceiving themselves by believing that they were much higher up the status quo than they actually were.
Even Cillin couldn’t help but feel sad at the sight of Chang Seven gobbling down his food. Although there was gene-based discrimination in GAL too, not even the differential treatment there was nearly as bad as they were here. In fact, there were a lot of city people whose gene level were inferior to the commoners living outside the city, but because their IDs identified them as a city people, they were automatically a level higher than all of them.
Cillin shook his head and cast off the messy thoughts in his mind. After finishing the food before him and waiting until Chang Seven was done, Cillin and Chang Seven embarked on their return journey.
They spotted a long queue in front of the shop the moment they returned to Repair Street.
“Come over and help us quickly, Cillin! My arms are about to fall off my shoulders!” Done repairing a flying car, Bel was just about to thump his own back when he saw Cillin at the corner of his eyes. Excited, he immediately raised his hands and cried out as if he had seen his savior.
Chang Six and Chang Eight were passing parts over to Old Chang when they heard his cry. As a result, they immediately tossed down the parts and ran towards outside, causing Old Chang to shake his head.
“Eh? Those are new clothes!”
“I’ve seen them before, they’re brands from inside the city!”
“This brand is nothing inside the city. They’re cheap.”
“They’re still from the city even if they’re cheap!”
The people lining up at the queue talked amongst themselves when they saw this. These people who had never entered the city even once despite their age thought to themselves: once my car is done I’ll visit the city myself. It just costs a bit of money, that’s all! I’m going all out! Once I entered the city and gotten some experience I too will have the capital to boast about it for a lifetime. At the very least, I should feel superior to those people who never entered the city before!
Chang Six and Chang Eight heard that Cillin had bought some new clothes in the city. Under assault from their gazes, Old Chang was given no choice but to wave an arm while smiling wryly, “Go.”
“Thank you grandpa!”
The 2 little fellows immediately ran upstairs the second they accepted the clothing bag from Cillin. Cillin then passed over another shopping bag to Chang Five on the recliner, “This is yours. Go give it a look.”
The gray cat had already gone away to eat its fish biscuits. In reality, Chang Five wasn’t as excited as his brother and sister when he received the new clothes, but seeing that Chang Six, Chang Seven and Chang Eight had all gone upstairs, he too accepted the shopping bag with a thanks before going upstairs.
“Alright, let’s get started!” Cillin exercised his limbs a little before getting to work.
It was yet another busy but rewarding day.