A Long-Standing Grudge (8)

It had already been several months since I began working as both the manager and a part-timer at a certain grocery store in District 49.

(Though I called myself a part-timer, I was effectively a full-time employee.)

And the passage of time inevitably wears everything down.

Just like old gears eventually stop meshing with each other.

At some point, I stopped panicking even when I encountered a gigantic, 30-centimeter radroach on the street, and I became the sort of dull, indifferent person who could merely click my tongue and walk past calmly even after seeing homeless people sucking on electronic drugs or synthetic steroids.

I had grown accustomed to the scenery of the bottommost city.

No matter how lightly narcotic products were treated in Risk City—like energy drinks in modern society, for the sake of comparison—the change in me was truly astonishing.

However, even I, who had completed a dark evolution to survive in District 49’s ecosystem, still had many things I could never grow accustomed to….

One of them was guns.

I really couldn’t get used to devices that fired lead bullets with gunpowder...