After breakfast, Sue drives her car to drop Sakura at school—not that she is actually in her first year of school, but it’s more like a preparation for the first year, so that children learn the right way to behave in a class. Lee is in the front passenger seat just looking out the side window, and once in a while, he recognises the landmarks and his body reacts to the songs on the radio and he starts to sing along.

  Then his body tenses up; Sue, noticing this, looks at him then back at the road.

  “What is the matter, Lee?” Sue enquires.

  Lee starts to look around, searching. “Something is wrong;” he says.

  Sue gives out a nervous chuckle. “What makes you say that?”

  Lee then turns in his seat and looks through the back window. His eyes widen. “Mum,” Lee calls out in a soft but warning tone, almost like when someone would when facing a beast and calling out someone else’s attention. He then swallows hard. “Drive faster.”

  Sue looks at him and sees that all colour has drained from his face; then, looking behind their car, she sees it. Up in the sky, something is falling, fast and ablaze, straight in their direction. Sue slams her foot on the accelerator. The car starts to drive faster, then it slows again. “I can’t go faster, the car's safety…”

  “Then go on that road,” Lee says, facing forward and pointing to a side road. “Drive a bit and stop.”

  Sue hesitates for a second, then looks at Lee and, taking a leap of faith, makes a sharp left turn; Lee was prepared and, paying attention, braces himself. Sakura at the back lets out a scream and starts crying as she hits her head on the side glass due to the jerk of the car.

  “Stop here!” Lee shouts and Sue hits the brakes; just as the car stops, Lee is out of the car and jumps into the back seat, removes Sakura’s seatbelt and lays her flat on the back seat, laying over her, only to feel a weight on top of his body as he turns his head around to find Sue is leaning over him and Sakura.

  Then it happens: the flash of light, the extreme sound of passing wind shortly followed by the crushing sound, and the whole neighbourhood shakes. Once the shaking stops, Sue lifts her head and examines Lee and Sakura.

  All this happened in a span of three minutes, but to Sue and Lee, it felt like an hour had gone by.

  “I’m okay Mum, check Saki!” says Lee, stepping out of the car, his breathing coming out fast due to the adrenaline. He looks over his shoulder to see Sue examining Sakura and calming her down, then he walks to the end of the street from where they came from.

  As he gets near the corner, he starts to hear the sound of people screaming, dogs barking; far away, he can hear sirens blaring. Then he sees it as he turns the corner: a cylindrical object attached to a metal plate; the whole object is the size of a family car.

  All around is destruction. Then a unique sound stands out; as he follows the sound, he finds a little boy getting out of a dented car, screaming for his mother.

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  Lee runs to the boy. “Where is your mum?” The boy, sobbing, points to the object in the middle of the road. Through the flames, Lee sees people on the other side of the object by the shops; some buildings have damaged walls, and cracked windows.

  Lee grabs the kid's hand and drags him away from the car and the object that fell from the sky. “My mum, I want my mum!” the kid cries out.

  “It’s okay, come with me, it’s not safe here!” Lee says, holding tighter to the kid's wrist, but the kid is in a panic and tries to get away. Lee turns around and slaps the kid's face so hard that a crisp, sharp sound is heard over the shouts of the adults. Using the kid's momentary freeze from the shock of being slapped, Lee drags him away from the ablaze cylindrical object.

  A buzzing sound is heard overhead; people around Lee, including him, look up to see the firefighters, military and a news helicopter hovering overhead.

  Then the military helicopter hovers over one of the most stable buildings and a few soldiers jump out and rush to the crash scene and start to move civilians away, making a safety perimeter. Then the firefighters' helicopter drops something that explodes over the flames that are coming from the object, and a gel foam is formed and lands on the cylindrical object. At first nothing happens, then the fire starts to subside. Everyone starts to cheer, but Lee sees that the flames went inside.

  Something inside Lee starts to panic and he notices that the object is turning red. So before he can think, he hears himself shout, “Hit the ground! It’s going to explode!” Then he kicks the legs of the kid he's dragging and forces him to lay on the ground.

  “The kid is right, everyone get down!” he hears an amplified commanding voice; then in seconds, a huge explosion is heard and the sound wave felt. The windows and glass around explode.

  Lee lifts his head, ears ringing; he looks around still laying on the floor and sees one man with a twisted leg; he runs to the man and is relieved; the man is only a mannequin. He looks back to the kid and finds a woman leaning over him and they are hugging; then as he approaches, he feels a heavy hand land on his shoulder; as he follows the hand, he finds a bulky military soldier.

  The soldier is talking to him but Lee can’t hear him; in fact, Lee realises that he is unable to hear anything but the ringing in his ears.

  “Sorry but I can’t hear you,” Lee says as he points to his own ears. Then Lee takes a deep breath and, holding his nose, he makes his eardrums pop by pushing air out into his closed nose.

  “Can you hear me now?” Lee nods and smiles, so the soldier asks, “I was asking if you know where your mother is.”

  Lee nods then freezes. “Mum!” Before the soldier can react, Lee is running back to the side road where his mother stopped the car; as he turns the corner, he runs into Sue, who immediately hugs him. “Mum, are you and Saki okay?”

  “Yes son, we are,” Sue says and holds Lee at arm's length to examine him. “What about you? What was that noise?”

  “I’m fine mum, just my ears are ringing,” says Lee.

  “Kid, you sure can run fast,” says the soldier, getting near Lee and Sue. “Good morning ma’am, is this your son?”

  Sue looks at the soldier. “Yes, he is, sir; his name is Lee.”

  The soldier smiles as he looks at Lee, then looking back at Sue, he says, “You have a very courageous and smart son.”

  “Why? What did he do?” Sue asks, holding Lee closer.

  The soldier shakes his head. “He pulled a child that was in danger, all by himself; then as the firefighters tried to put out the flames, the fuel in the tank reacted with the chemical of the foam bomb.” The soldier points at Lee. “He was the first to notice that it was going to explode. If he hadn’t, people would have died; there are some casualties from the explosion, but no one died from it.”