I bet my ancestors were disappointed in me. I didn’t do what they said. I defied it.

We are warriors, the ones in the front line of battle, we never give up, never cower away from danger. With our swords held high, we charge into the burning battle before us. We never, ever, turn away. We aren’t the cowards. I don’t know why we’re having a family meeting, and I don’t mean the way families normally talk at dinner. I meant my aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins coming for this one thing. Me, Cho might have evaded a fight. Or ‘backed out’ as they say. My stomach feels like a wobbly bowl of glass noodles. My eyes are like magnets to my numb hands. I can feel the stares of those eagles, they have found their prey. I hear my mother talk accusingly at me, for backing out from a fight. A mouse, she says. Does she not know that I do not like fights? That there are better ways to solve things? That I think my ancestors were angry, blind men? I keep quiet, my heart hammering, my ears numb to the swords of hate my mum aims at me. I don’t dare to look up. I’m scared. Cho. Fight with them tomorrow, or else, you are going to the training facility. ’That woke me up. Those last two words. Training. Facility. The tower of looming despair, asphalt and gloomy, a torturous place, they say. If I don’t fight, my hands now tied to my lap, will be tied to the crumbling bricks of the facility No more school. Friends. Fun. Emptiness, hunger, unhappiness. My world fades away to black and white, my eyes stare blankly as my head imagines me living in the tower of doom: a gargantuan, despicable wall of hatred and calamity, moss like snakes, slithering and strangling the vines that cover the asphalt. I whimper as my lip trembles. The black and white fade into flashes of green and blue as I sit on the train. I have disappointed my ancestors. I defied the fighting. "Cho". My favorite grandmother whispers to me, she was the only one who volunteered to take the ‘disgrace’ to the training facility. Her glistening, dolphin eyes sunken by the mass of wrinkled skin sitting on her plump face that stares at me, inquiring. Her face mirrored her personality: kind, loving. I was wakened from my thoughts by the sound of the train stopping. The humming of the motor stopped. So did my heart. My grandma holds my hand as we walk through the battle of Monday morning bustle. It feels like an eternity now, my feet are sore and as red as my sunburnt face. "Cho, over here, dear". I turn to see my grandmother pull open a rustic, creaking gate from the stone ages.

I look up.

And then I see.
 
Nothing.

No tower of doom. No training facilities. The hut was low, thatched with dried leaves, home to a jungle of bizarre animals. "Welcome to your new home, Choi," I smile back at my grandma, I look back at her house, this was no tower of doom, that was all my imagination. I remember my grandma teaching me a bit of Tai Chi when I was younger, laughing and smiling at me. I was taken from my happiness, my home, to the Big City. That, that, was the tower of doom. There was no fun, another illusion. Then I realize in a high state of euphoria that I’m back home. With my family. My true family. I'm happy.