Chapter 60
Life in Scrap Yard was monotonous.
In the morning, I was forced to wake up early because an alarm I didn't set went off.
[Laborists are trying to overthrow the city!]
[Report! Only reporting can save the city!]
The sound of loudspeakers set up by the police blared every day, as if they never got tired of it, threatening to tear my ears apart.
I went out shopping, clutching my throbbing head.
"The workers' paradise will come!! You dogs of the factory owners!!"
"Arrest this bastard!!"
More precisely, I had to go shopping while avoiding the police chasing a young laborist distributing flyers in the market. If I wasn’t careful, I might spill all the food I bought that day.
After eating a simple meal at home, I opened the newspaper.
Hoping to find news about black mages or demon followers somewhere.
Of course, there was no such news to be seen.
[Whereabouts of laborist ringleader Karl Renaro still unknown!]
[Let's root out labor ideology that's eating away at society!!]
[Diligent reporting creates a healthy society!]
The only news visible in the newspaper was all about laborists.
How extremely wicked their claims were.
There were only stories denouncing how badly they affect the factories and the entire city of Scrap Yard.
It was irritating to read.
This wasn't a newspaper, it was close to propaganda.
After cooking and eating roughly like that, I shut myself in the house, refraining from going out as much as possible.
The cold bed with no one there.
Memories of happily rolling around skin to skin with Erpha, Iomene, and Almene keep coming to mind.
I got unnecessarily depressed.
Maybe because I was depressed, I couldn't sleep properly.
"Laborists are the evil of society!! They are villains threatening the existence of Scrap Yard!! They must be arrested!! Absolutely!! Diligent reporting creates a healthy society!!"
I couldn't sleep even more because of those police broadcasts shouting outside.
In the end, I could only fall asleep after intentionally paralyzing my hearing with body modification.
After falling asleep, I had nightmares.
Dreams of going to hell.
Dreams of becoming a demon king and destroying the world.
Dreams of the women I love being ruined because of me.
Because of that, I often couldn't sleep long and would wake up.
I cried often, kept getting depressed, and because of that my appetite disappeared, and at some point I stopped going shopping often.
I wish news about black mages would appear in the newspaper soon.
Or, like before, I wish I could see scenes in my dreams of black mages or demon followers trying to destroy the world.
I only thought about wanting to be cursed and die quickly.
After spending nearly a month like that depressingly.
One day.
"Are you there? I'm the person living next door."
Someone from next door came looking for me.
When I opened the door, a skinny woman was looking up at me.
"For over a month, I've been hearing crying sounds and loud sleep talking every dawn. What kind of screams are you making? Are you having nightmares?"
At the expressionless woman's words, I had to smile bitterly.
The walls of this lodging were quite thin.
So all kinds of sounds could be heard.
I must have screamed a little while having nightmares.
"I'm sorry. I'll be quiet."
As I apologized and tried to close the door, the woman blocked it with her foot.
"You. You've been fired, haven't you?"
"What?"
"I understand. I heard even technicians get fired often. Here."
The woman hands me a basket.
Looking inside, there were a few black breads.
"I wasn't going to give you any. Our situation is tight too, how could we afford to look after others? But my husband insisted we should give you some. Eat and cheer up. Don't worry about the money."
I had a blank expression at those words.
Is she showing me kindness right now?
Thinking I'm a fired technician?
I looked at the woman closely.
From her appearance and clothes.
She was definitely not in a position to share bread.
The breads in my hand, considering the woman's situation, were no different from sharing life itself.
Tears welled up for a moment.
My heart warmed up quite a bit as there was someone who comforted me when I needed comfort.
I nodded, unable to hide the tears that had already flowed out.
"Thank you. I'll eat it well."
The woman smiled at my appearance.
"I'm Anna living next door. My husband, Peter, is also a technician. Let's cheer up as fellow technicians. No matter how hard it is, we have to live on. Right?"
After saying that, Anna waved her hand and returned to her house.
Even after she disappeared, I had to cry for a long time holding the bread basket.
It wasn't much comfort, but it gave me quite a bit of strength.
Yeah.
It's hard, but my choice now is right.
I'm a person who needs to disappear for everyone's sake.
I put the black bread Anna gave me in my mouth.
The taste was bland, and the texture was very hard, but the taste wasn't important.
I felt like the heart contained in it was healing my tired body and mind a little.
***
After that day. Peter and Anna's family became acquaintances who would greet each other when we met on the street.
"Are you going out again today?"
"Yes."
Peter and Anna always looked tired.
They left for work at a time that should be called dawn rather than morning, and returned close to midnight.
Every time I met Anna, it was visible that her weight was decreasing in real time, and Peter also visibly looked like a person gradually breaking down.
Moreover, when I laid down to go to bed late at night, their family's conversations could be heard through the wall.
It was unwanted eavesdropping that happened because the walls of this lodging were shockingly thin.
"Jim, Amy. How was today?"
"I only did chimney cleaning for 9 hours today. They even gave us food at the factory."
"That's great. You have to take care of your little sister. You know that, right?"
"Yeah. I know."
These were conversations I had just thought of as noise and passed over before I knew them, but after becoming acquainted with them, various stories entered my ears for no reason.
Peter's family, like most workers here, was not in a good situation.
"Your cough has been bad lately."
"It's still better than the other women in the factory. Don't worry, Peter."
His wife, Anna, said she started coughing frequently while working at the textile factory, even though she didn't have a cough before.
She said many of the other female workers in the factory even cough up blood.
"The factory owner announced he's going to cut technicians' wages. He said he'll reduce the wage to 90 leon."
"How are we supposed to live on that…!?"
"He said if we refuse or go on strike, we'll be immediately fired and reported as laborists and sent to prison. If you go into the camp, your body comes out all broken. We can't do that. What can we do? We have to accept it."
"Damn those factory owners…!"
"Don't say such things carelessly, Anna. If the police hear, they'll arrest you. As a laborist."
"Jim and Amy, who are 3 and 5 years old, are already working as chimney sweeps. But why aren't things getting better..."
"I'll try to work harder. What else can we do?"
Peter's eyesight was getting worse and worse, and Anna's cough wouldn't stop.
And 3-year-old Jim and 5-year-old Amy were already working as chimney sweeps at that age.
The meaning of the black bread they gave me was once again remembered.
In such circumstances, instead of getting angry at me, who was crying while suffering from nightmares every night, they handed me bread?
Suddenly, the gold well stored in a corner of my room came to mind.
I thought about sharing some money with them.
But soon I shook off the thought.
This money was what I received to live while meeting people as little as possible, not money obtained to save people.
Considering the danger of the power in my soul, I couldn't spend money recklessly.
They helped me, but I was in a position where I couldn't help them.
I had to feel the guilt growing inside me as I listened to the stories of Peter and Anna's family.
Even in such a situation, time was flowing terribly surely.
In the meantime, I did my best within my means to search for demon followers or black mages.
I tried to sleep as much as possible.
Hoping that my prophecy ability might show me the future about demon followers or black mages in the form of dreams again.
And when I woke up from sleep, I wandered around gloomy back alleys looking for demon followers or black mages.
Of course, most of it was in vain.
Instead of demon followers or black mages, I met a lot of gangsters.
"Do you know anything about black mages or demon followers?"
"No."
And they didn't know anything about demon followers either.
"Forget that you met me. It's an order."
Days of erasing gangsters' memories and dejectedly leaving the back alleys repeated.
And that day too.
It was one of the ordinary days when I came out of the back alley after striking out without anything special.
Only after returning to the lodging, washing up briefly, and lying down on the bed and covering myself with the blanket could I feel that something was strange.
There was no sound from the next room.
Normally, the sounds of Jim and Amy, and Peter and Anna talking in various ways and living noises should be heard, but the next room was as quiet as a mouse.
For the first two days, I thought it was just how it was.
Everyone has their own circumstances, don't they?
They might have gone somewhere else for a while, or they might not have been able to return for a few days because work was busy.
But on the third day.
"Empty this lodging. All the furniture inside is ours, so take it. Clean it out thoroughly!!"
That day too, as I was returning after striking out in the back alley, I realized something was wrong when I saw the lodging manager who came to collect money every month forcibly opening Peter and Anna's lodging and forcibly removing the belongings inside.
"Wait a moment! Why are you suddenly doing this?"
At my question, the manager gruffly pointed to Peter and Anna's house with his chin.
"They didn't pay the rent, so according to the contract, we're disposing of all the things in the house. We have to make up for the unpaid rent somehow."
They didn't pay the rent? Peter was a factory technician, and Anna and the children were a hardworking family, weren't they?
"Where did the tenants go?"
"If I knew that, would I be taking out the things in the house? They disappeared somewhere. I can't see them! That's why I'm doing this!!"
At the irritated voice, I quickly ran to my room, took out money, and headed towards the manager.
"I'll pay this month's rent, so don't touch the house."
"Well, that's convenient for me. Are you sure?"
"It's fine."
After paying the rent to the manager instead, I rushed out of the lodging.
Something must have gone wrong.
Peter. Anna. And Jim and Amy.
Where did they go?
What happened?
Before I knew it, I was running around Scrap Yard.
"Peter! Anna!! Jim!! Amy!!"
Calling out the family's names, I frantically ran around the city.
"Where are you!? Where are you!?"
Please let nothing be wrong.
Let it be that they just had a lot of factory work and stayed for meals for about 3 days and came back.
Let it be that they just forgot to pay the rent somehow.
After running around the city like a madman for nearly half a day while praying like that inside.
When the sun set and cold air and terrible darkness settled on the city.
Good news and bad news found me.
The good news was that I found the family.
The bad news was...
"Mom, I'm cold. I don't want to go in here."
"We have to go in, Jim. If we go in just a little more, you won't be in pain anymore."
"If we walk in here, you won't be in pain anymore, Amy. Jim."
The four family members were trying to walk into a terribly cold river.
And the moment I saw their appearance.
I could immediately understand why the whole family was doing that.
Peter's right arm had been cut off.
Jim and Amy had their eyes covered with bandages.
Anna was not just haggard, but bleeding from her mouth.
These were symptoms that could be easily seen if one lived in Scrap Yard for just a week.
They were injuries commonly sustained by workers who suffered industrial accidents.