Chapter 47 - 46. The Gate of Security
The first time I saw him, he was being kicked and beaten by a man beside the fence of the residential area. He was small, I didn’t think he was any older than eight. I couldn’t see his face, just his curled-up body; dirty clothes, dirty black hair. The man was barking viciously, ’why haven’t you awakened yet’ or something like that.
When the man stopped and walked away with curses, he didn’t get up for a while. I had thought he died or something. It wasn’t uncommon here—people drop dead every day, only to be replaced by other exiles and runaways. Espers died in dungeons like flies, and guides dropped dead, exhausted after being used. But at least people cared when they did. Civilians and children were no more than fodders, no one gave a shit when they died.
I got curious after a while and wanted to check, but the boy twitched when I just managed to come out of my hiding place. He got up slowly, and when his face lifted, our eyes met.
Even with bruises, with dirt and caked blood, he was pretty. The blue eyes shimmered like a mystical lake, before he brought them down, out of sight.
I didn’t see him again until a few weeks after. He was within the groups of children enthusiastically rummaging through the junk pile for any meagerly useful thing. My family’s mercenary group collected recycled stuff from the higher zone and brought them to the red-zone residential area for the civilians to scavenge. This particular pile was filled with children’s stuff; toys, books, clothes, and useless trinkets the rich threw away after they got bored. Well, it was useless for them, but it was a treasure for these kids.
The boy was pretty but fierce in the war; the blue eyes glint sharply to snatch the one with the best quality—those that haven’t got damaged too badly. The bruises had gone from his body, and he looked as healthy as ever. He walked away cautiously after his hand was full, and I had this curious urge of following him. That was how I found out where he lived.
And perhaps, if I stayed to watch him that day, he wouldn’t emerge looking like a sandbag the next day. I saw the clothes he took yesterday on another child’s body, and the toy on another kid’s hands. I found him crouching down on the site of the pile yesterday, looking at the flat ground with nonexistent junk. The blue eyes had no shimmer on them.
When I asked my sister about him, she just said not to bother. As I thought, he was not even eight at that time, and his condition was complicated. The man beating him at that time was his father, which meant he wasn’t an orphan. He wouldn’t be able to ask for protection from the agency, and we couldn’t take him under our wing unless his father gave consent—that was the community’s rule. It was actually hilarious that we bothered with things like rules while living in this lawless land.
I saw him several times since then, or rather, my eyes were always drawn to him. Perhaps because of his situation, he rarely joined other kids’ groups. I usually saw him beneath the fence of the residential area, on my way back from training with my father and sister. There was a big boulder on the north side of the border, a few meters away from a narrow cliff. Sometimes I saw him reading tattered books, sometimes I saw him sleeping against the boulder. Sometimes, I saw him looking down from the cliff, and I would dryly think I might not see him again.
One day though, I saw him crouching down with his fist curled up. Familiar bruises across his scrawny build. He was eight at that time.
’Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. You can’t cry.’