Chapter 160 - 155. Calamity Profiteering
[...A line of mourners has formed on the site of the memorial event to remember the sacrifice of the fallen espers and the unfortunate victims of the simultaneous outbreak happening last Saturday, October 25th. The citizens and the sentinel community have gathered to cherish the memory of those who had passed as...]
The voice on the television accompanied the scene of a memorial plaque surrounded by flowers and candles. Some photographs of the victims could be seen lining up the periphery, as the mourners prayed for their beloved. The camera panned out and then split to show simultaneous events happening in the places where the outbreaks happened last week.
Except for Althrea and one other town, all of the places that experienced the instantaneous outbreak suffered casualties. It couldn’t be helped since they happened on the weekends, and most of them occurred either in the middle of a crowd or in a residential area. Most of the victims came from those who were unfortunately present when the outbreak first happened, and although it was only a yellow dungeon at most, civilians and 1-star rookie patrols could do nothing against the beasts.
Althrea had no memorial event since there was no casualty, and Zein watched the procession from the big screen of the executive lounge with Han Shin and Radia.
"That’s awful..." Han Shin sighed at the scene shown on the television. While it was also under the dramatic effect of sad background music, it was indeed heartbreaking to see someone mourn for their loved ones.
Zein, on the other hand, felt his heart growing numb. Rather than feeling sad or sympathetic, those scenes were just reminding him of the daily life in the red-zone; espers died after coming out of the dungeons, and civilians died from starvation or miasma poisoning.
No one would ever say ’that’s awful’. Something like ’oh, another one?’ was more common. Unless it was their own family members, people wouldn’t waste their time and heart feeling sad. Otherwise, they would have to mope every day when orphan number twelve died, or the homeless man on the corner of the fourth street finally stopped breathing.
Zein almost wanted to chuckle. It was funny; not only happiness, but even sadness became the privilege of the fortunates.
While he did feel awful when he first saw the site of outbreaks in those other cities, he grew desensitized to it fast. For Zein, it didn’t matter even if they were to cry and whine now. It didn’t matter unless they did something to the source of the plague.
"Was there really no policy they made regarding the Deathzone?" Zein asked after the mourning montage ended. He might be numb, but he still could wait for the others to express their sadness in peace first. "You’re not making them give up on Deathzone just so we could manipulate the project, right?"
"Have you no faith in me, Luzein?" Radia tilted his head with a forlorn face.