12 - Helping at Home

When my punch hit his face, I felt my right hand burn slightly, making me think that gloves in these moments might be good.

But seeing him fall to the ground, instead of waiting for him to get up to take revenge on me, I just got closer and put my foot on his chest and supported my weight, making him look at me with wide eyes as the air came out. from his chest.

"I told you to leave me alone, you piece of shit, you think I'm going to keep listening to you talk shit to me while I stay quiet? To me you're nothing more than an insect that I could crush at any moment." I said, as he tried to use his hands to get my foot off him, but my weight of 139 kg was no joke, no matter how hard he tried, I just needed to put a little more force down and I could continue. keeping my foot on his chest.

"Please let me go…" He said with what little air he had left, while looking at me with a desperate expression.

Knowing he was about to break, I lifted my foot slightly from his chest, making him finally able to breathe, until I moved my foot to his stomach and stepped down hard, pushing all the air he had managed to inhale in that time out. , even causing the remaining food he had in his belly to threaten to leak out.

With a shocked expression, he looked at me without knowing what to think, just feeling the lack of oxygen in his head, to the point where he almost passed out.

Looking at him, I didn't say anything else and just turned to leave.

When I arrived at the children, I imagined seeing them both with scared expressions, but to my surprise, both Ethan and his little friend were looking at me with eyes as bright as two pairs of headlights!

"Woah, Noah, that was amazing!" Ethan said excitedly as he ran up to me and imitated the punch I threw at that piece of shit. "Where did you learn to fight like that?!"

Even his little friend, although a little shy, was looking at me with bright eyes while clenching her little fists.

"I learned it on the internet." I said as I rubbed Ethan's head and walked away.

If we were in an isolated place, I would have no problem breaking one of that kid's limbs, but since we were on a busy street, I would be arrested if I did something like that.

Looking around to see if people were watching was a habit I picked up in my previous life, since at that time I was very used to fighting in the street, breaking someone's legs wasn't something that happened very often, but I already I had done it once or twice.

"You can teach me?" He asked expectantly.

"Do you need to fight?" I asked while raising an eyebrow.

With my question, Ethan was a little shy and didn't know what to answer, until his little friend answered.

"Yes, there is a boy at our school who every now and then tries to fight Ethan." She said, making Ethan look at her shocked, as he turned to look at me worriedly.

-------- Ethan's Commentary --------

On the sofa, Ethan was scared as he looked at the camera.

"Shit, now that Isabella told Noah this, will he be disappointed in me?" He said a little sadly.

"The way he fought with that bully looked so cool! I imagined myself punching Tony like that when he fought me at school… it would be really cool to punch Tony like that!" He said excitedly, but soon became worried again, thinking about how Noah would react to what Isabella said.

-------- Commentary End --------

Seeing Ethan's concern, I laughed. "Don't worry Buddy, if you want I can teach you how to fight, so this boy will never bother you at school again."

If my mother knew what I was trying to teach Ethan, she would probably freak out, as the mere thought of one of her children fighting at school was abhorrent, but I knew that knowing how to fight was something that would do more good than harm. for Ethan's future, so I would think of a way to deal with it in the future.

Returning home with the excited children pretending they were fighting imaginary enemies, I couldn't handle my anxiety and took out my cell phone to see how many views my song currently had.

Just like YouTube in my previous world, MeTube also had an Analytics application, where the channel owner could see the channel's more technical statistics and graphs.

Opening my Analytics app, I saw that my video already had 1,083 views, which was a great number, but the graph in front of me showed that the views the song was getting per minute was decreasing.

Looking for the reason, I saw that all the people who came to listen to the song came directly through the link I shared on Tweep, or the girl who posted it on InstaBram, none of the Views had come from MeTube recommendations, as the site hadn't released it yet. the music.

Instead of being disappointed by this, I was actually very excited, as MeTube hadn't released the song yet, so when the site released it it would probably gain even more views, finally with the possibility of it going viral!

Reading the comments, a smile appeared on my face.

[Listening to this song was like reliving a nightmare. It reminded me of the constant fights between my parents and the fear I felt every day at home. But at the same time, it gave me a sense of relief to know that other people have gone through similar situations and managed to move on.]

[Crap... I can't stop crying... every lyric in this song is like a knife cutting through my eyelids and making me see things that I didn't see that my girlfriend did to me...]

[Although it's a sad lyric, I feel a little bad about being happy to see that my family is very good to me and that I've never suffered anything like that, my condolences to those who suffer from this.]

[How come no one is commenting on this singer's voice? Wow, what a beautiful voice! @BlackVelvet, what's your InstaBram? My dog ​​wants to know…]

Everything was going well, even the last comment, which made my self-esteem rise a little, I was still excited to see everything going up.

The song was currently at 97% retention, meaning at least 1,000 people listened to the full song, or fewer people listened to the full song and some listened to the song more than once, which was a great sign!

Of the almost 1,100 people who listened to the song, 198 had already subscribed to the channel, which was a very high number considering that no one was used to subscribing to a channel where they only saw a single video.

The only slightly disappointing thing was that as the song was 3 minutes long and MeTube needed 4,000 hours watched to monetize the channel, I would need just over 80,000 views on the song to be able to make money from it.

So I would still need to keep drawing Furry art to make money.

But since the arts were doing so well, this wasn't a problem.

When we arrived at the place where the other kids were, Ethan and his little friend, Isabella, didn't want to try to interact with the other children and went to play in the backyard of our house, just the two of them.

I said goodbye to them and went inside the house, as it was almost time to go out with my father.

"Hey Champ, let's go get some workout equipment?" My father asked excitedly.

"Let's go!" I responded a little more excitedly.

"Be careful, don't go too fast Jonathan." My mother said worriedly, to which my father just nodded and grabbed the car keys.

The family car was a Toyota Camry, which surprised me the first time I saw it, as it was a car brand I knew, but due to the family's financial conditions, the car was a 2010 model, already being a car with more than 10 years of use.

"This friend of mine said that his wife was fighting with him every week to get rid of this equipment, as he hasn't used it for over a year, so the price he will ask will probably be very low." My father explained, proud of being able to help me. "He said there was a lot of equipment and that he spent more than $500 when he bought it, but since we work together, I think I can buy it from him in two installments of $150."

Hearing this I felt a little bad, since despite the family's circumstances, my father was still willing to spend $300 to buy me workout equipment, even if he couldn't pay the $300 outright, he would split that amount in two. installments to be able to pay.

So I decided to tell him about my arts.

"Dad, I don't think you'll need to pay for me…" I started to explain, until he interrupted me.

"Noah, don't worry about it son, your father can afford this little money." He said trying to stand his ground. "You can save the money from the sales of your comics in case you want to buy something else."

"No dad, I don't think I ever told you, but I always had the hobby of drawing characters from the comics I read, and recently I posted a drawing on the internet. Someone came and asked me to draw her character and paid me for That's it. Since then I've been receiving drawing requests every day and I even have a queue of people wanting drawings." I explained, leaving my father shocked.

"You mean you're making money by drawing characters for other people on the computer?" He asked in disbelief.

"Yes. I just started this week, but a lot of people are enjoying the drawings." I explained with a bit of pride.

Taking the puppet art I made for the cover of the song Numb on my cell phone, I showed it to my father and he was shocked by the quality of it.

"Woah, that's amazing Noah! But still, don't worry, save that money you're earning to buy something you want." He tried to stay firm in buying the equipment for me.

Shaking my head, I knew this would be a matter of pride for him, so I didn't press further, but I knew he still didn't understand how much money I was making, so I thought of something.

"Okay dad, but I want to help with the household bills too. How about I choose some bills to pay? Drawings make me good money."

Surprised, my father was a little distracted from the traffic as he looked at me with a mixture of surprise and pride.

"Okay Noah, in the glove compartment of the car there are some bills that I'm going to pay tomorrow, choose one, it could be the gas bill, which is the lowest." He said with a big smile on his face.

Surprised, I opened the glove compartment and saw several papers with bills to pay.

Leafing through the papers, I saw that there was a bill for $130 and I decided to pay that bill.

When my father saw that I chose this account, he was surprised and asked. "Noah, this bill is very expensive, choose a cheaper one, it's okay."

Laughing, I replied. "Dad, now I get $100 for every art I make, and I can do 1 or 2 art pieces in a day, so there's no need to worry, I'd like to pay more bills, but I still don't have that much money on me right now." which I only started this week."

I currently only had $463 on me, so I couldn't afford more than that, but considering if I did one craft a day Monday through Friday, that would be $2,000 a month, and if I did two crafts a day that would go up to $4,000 every month.

Setting aside 20% of this to help with household expenses would not be a sacrifice for me, but it would be a great help for my parents, and consequently for my siblings as well.

And by the amazed and emotional expression my father had on his face, I saw that this would all be worth it.