Chapter 62
Chapter 62
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Translator: Ebonarch
Chapter Title: A Familiar Shadow
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The center is paradise.
Love is eternal, friendship never betrayed, trust is unshakable.
A place where you can live humanely. Like a person should.
That was the common perception among the slum dwellers.
So the poor of the slums always dreamed of escaping the district for the center. They believed without a doubt that their unfortunate lives would end the moment they reached it.
But the boy, Daniel Georgiola, was a little different. Unlike the others, Daniel never mocked himself for living an unhappy life.
Why? Because his world was so small.
The world young Daniel could envision was limited to the rundown brothel. Just a single 2-pyeong room inside that building.
Yet Daniel never felt it was cramped. Others might see it as suffocating and confined, but to a mere five-year-old child, it was like a vast playground.
Even stretching his tiny fern-like hands as far as he could in every direction, there were places he couldn't reach. To Daniel, that 2-pyeong room was an endlessly wide world.
In the evenings, his mother welcomed guests into the room. At first, he thought they were his father, but the men who visited each time were all different.
"Daniel. Get in the closet. Don't make a sound, and don't come out no matter what."
The closet was soft inside, lined with blankets his mother had spread out. Lying on those plush blankets, clutching a pillow, inhaling the faint woody incense wafting through the wooden confines—that was Daniel's simple joy.
Daniel thought this was normal. He believed everyone in the world lived this way.
That everyone didn't know their father like he did, and lived with their mother in a vast 2-pyeong room.
Waking at dawn. Come sunset, curling up in the cozy closet, plugging his ears against the mingled cries of ecstasy from men and women.
He thought it normal to drift off to sleep by the dim light seeping through the door crack, which never quite closed due to its age and creaks.
That was Daniel's world.
"You... I never should have given birth to something like you."
The year he turned seven.
On Daniel's birthday, those were the words from his drunken mother.
As if lonely with no one to share her drinks, she clinked glasses with the sharp blades spilling from her lips.
"Even without money, I should have aborted you."
Sharp words.
"Or thrown myself down the stairs to get rid of you."
And booze.
"No, abandoned you right after birth."
One phrase per sip.
One and a half bottles of liquor. The amount it took for her to unleash every blade and pass out.
Even an innocent child cries out when stabbed by blades. Sitting on the floor playing with his hands, the boy didn't grasp every word his mother spewed, but tears still fell.
Time flows, and children grow fast. Her drunken episodes grew more frequent by the day, and it wasn't long before she turned her hands on Daniel.
The day he suffered his first beating, the vast room he shared with his mother felt suffocating for the first time.
"Daniel... Mommy's sorry... Ah, Lord..."
But he didn't consider himself unfortunate. His mother hugged him tight and apologized, after all.
Everyone in the world must live like this, not just him.
The abuse repeated. Drunken beatings and verbal assaults, followed by tearful apologies—it all became routine.
After hitting him, his mother always prayed to God with a tormented expression. Staring blankly at the blood drops pattering to the floor, Daniel thought.
'When they're in pain, they pray to something called God.'
Not unfortunate, but he hated the pain. So in the now slightly cramped closet, Daniel clasped his hands and prayed to whatever this God was.
He had no idea if it was a person or a thing, but he prayed anyway. Just like his mother.
What Daniel prayed for with folded hands wasn't anything grand.
Just... someone help me.
I want this vast room to be fun again.
That was all.
As Daniel grew older, his mother began giving him simple errands and chores.
At eight, cleaning the room and the brothel grounds.
At eleven, fetching booze and smokes.
At fourteen, drug runs at last.
As Daniel matured, his mother fell further into ruin. And the scars on Daniel's body multiplied.
Stepping out of the once-cozy closet, venturing beyond the vast room, Daniel realized he was unfortunate.
The closet, now reeking of rot and creaking ominously, was no longer cozy. The 2-pyeong room felt suffocatingly tight.
The wider world beyond taught him plenty.
"I regret ever giving birth to you."
No love here.
"That kid's always coming back beat up."
"Kekeke. Retard."
No friendship either.
"Hit him harder. This one's a walking ATM—money pops out every beating. His mom sends him on drug runs daily. Pocket's always lined."
"If nothing comes out, keep going till it does."
Puck!Thud!
"See? Out it comes. Reliable as ever."
"Coins are your tip. Do good next time."
Money-backed trust was rock-solid.
He was alone. An isolated island nobody cared about.
The world taught Daniel he was an unfortunate outcast—and how to hurl crude curses and attitudes in self-defense.
Would the center be different? Could it have been?
Love eternal, friendship unbetrayed, trust unshakable—the utopia every slum dweller dreamed of.
Could he live like a person there too?
Slumped against the cold alley wall, Daniel sneered. Even if it was different, then what? Powerless and limp as he was, could he even reach the center?
Even if he did, he'd probably just vanish.
Contempt coiling around his throat, mockery gnawing at his wrists.
Just flow away and disappear.
These black welts.
'...At least those bastards didn't take the drugs.'
Today, he'd take fewer beatings.
His mother was always fiercer without drugs than with.
He sneered again at himself for such thoughts. Sitting on the damp dirt.
And then a voice.
"Hey, kid. What're you doing here? If you stay..."
"Ah, fuck off, you bitches!"
"...So?"
A voice from across. The black-haired woman seated opposite, chin propped on her hand, stared at him wide-eyed and expressionless.
"But, so what?"
Ice-cold words.
"I get why you had the drugs. 'Backstory,' huh? A real detailed one. But—"
Her fine lips parted.
"Long. Too damn long. What I want to know is who sold them to you. I don't give a shit about your pitiful life or how tough it was."
She spat the sentence.
"Even worse, it's cliche. So cliche I nearly lost my mind from boredom. Only surprise was thinking you were maybe twelve tops with that height—turns out fourteen?"
The sentence flew like a razor blade.
"Cliche. Pure cliche. Overused tropes straight out of third-rate trash novels, steeped bitter like some stingy mother-in-law's teabag. No fun, just nasty."
It lodged in his throat.
"Anis!"
"That's too much!"
Her companions tried to stop her. But she pressed on, unperturbed.
"Fine, take back 'no fun.' It is funny. Comedy gold. Pile up all these heavy, tragic bits, and boom—comedy. Paradox of it: stack enough cheap tragedies, and it flips to farce. Tragic from afar, hilarious up close."
She said it and chuckled. Daniel laughed unwittingly too.
The blade plunged deeper, twisting in his throat, but oddly, he agreed with her.
Lots of big words—he caught maybe half—but it just felt right.
"Unpleasant. Funny, sure, but unpleasant. So repulsive I don't want to sit across from you one more second."
The blade wrenched free from his throat. Black, murky fluid oozed from the dark pupil-void.
"......So I need to hand down your punishment ASAP. Sure, I got no real authority, and it's all my whim for criteria—but you don't argue, you shut up and obey. Got it, DJ?"
"...Anis?"
"Drugs confiscated first. Even if not yours, carrying coke or heroin—useless poison—this armband won't forgive that crap."
The blade pulled from his throat now trailed down his arm.
"Your mom's name and looks. Who you dealt with, where. Spill everything, no holding back. And finally—"
The blade scraping down his arm now gnawed at his wrist.
"Our DJ here's committed a truly heinous crime, so you're getting shipped to the center. Till we nail down the spot, confined here—cleaning leftover sides and dishes daily. Terrifying punishment. And—"
It scratched, peeling skin.
"In the center, live happily."
From the flayed skin, black murk flowed.
"Go make some friends."
Flowed. The welts.
"Get some help from someone."
Black welts.
"Lend a hand too. Hear some thanks."
Faded. The contempt throttling his neck.
"Make something precious. Ah, but don't lose it right away. Make it? Guard it to the end."
The mockery eating his arm.
"Anyway. Live like that."
Flowed.
Even the sharp self-defense always sheathing his body rippled and drained away.
"Principal. Can you find him a decent spot?"
"Hohoho. You know central real estate prices?"
"You make bank."
"Eheheh. One cozy, spacious house? Easy."
Their talk drifted past, and the boy dropped his gaze to his arm.
Sharp blade, yes. But not one to harm.
A blade to lance the swollen, festering lumps. To burst them.
To sever the contempt choking his neck. Slice the mockery gnawing his arm.
It all drained away. Scars would linger, but it drained all the same.
"Hey. You get it? No veto."
Something unknown welled up, choking his throat. He opened his mouth to reply, then shut it.
"Answer."
"......Yeah."
He forced it out. His voice trembled, echoing through the vast room.
"That's informal."
"......Yes."
Tears streamed from the boy's eyes too.
And Anis stared at the weeping boy.
Stared hard.
Hard.
Piercingly.
'Unpleasant.'
Everything about it repulsed her.
Third-rate movie or novel fodder—brutally predictable tragic cliches. Her own laughable life, cooked up from those lie-drenched tropes.
And.
Bit by bit. Details differed in places,
but the frame? A dead ringer for her past, copy-pasted.
So it was funny. But... unpleasant.
No. Honestly? Way past "a bit." Goosebumps.
Not even human. Not alive.
A novel, for fuck's sake.
Ink on a page.
Pretending to live. To be her.
Playing human――.
Uncanny valley.
She felt the uncanny valley staring at that mirror of her past.
Like some grotesque, otherworldly thing clumsily aping her form, insisting it was human.
So eerily alike, yet off in subtle ways.
Deeply repulsive. Horrifying chills.
Didn't want to face it even a second longer. Dead serious.
So why?
Why suppress the gooseflesh crawling her skin, the revulsion, to offer it salvation?
Why fix her gaze on that tear-choked, weeping thing—staring so intently?
Why?