The Wall That Divides Humanity
Under the warm sunlight pouring over the city, every face of the people walking the streets shone so brightly it almost hurt to look at them. They were relaxed, overflowing with confidence.
Even the pedestrians who looked like they were struggling financially wore proper, well-made clothing—at least by my standards. Not torn rags or straw-wrapped tatters, but real fabric with actual stitching. Real clothes.
What caught my eye most of all was their flawlessly clean, spotless skin.
Wait a second. This is supposed to be a medieval fantasy world—why does everyone’s skin look like it’s glowing?
According to the historical knowledge I remembered, the streets should be overflowing with filth, riddled with traces of infectious diseases and skin conditions. Wasn’t that the norm?
Ah, maybe this was the blessing of magic.
When I compared those radiant, dazzling people with my own filthy state—unwashed for days, with grime streaking down my skin—an indescribable wave of misery and shame crashed over me.
Adult-sized leather shoes that dragged at my toes, a ragged skirt with its hem torn to shreds, and black hair clumped together with dirt and dust. In this perfect, shining city, my very existence felt like a hideous visual pollutant, a stain that needed to be erased.
Clack. Clack.
Every time the sound of footsteps echoed from afar, I instinctively darted like a cockroach into the deep shadows of an alley or behind a trash bin.
And from within that darkness, I began to observe the street.
The first and most jarring thing I noticed was the riot of colors on the people. It was so unnecessarily vibrant it made my eyes ache.
The hair colors of those strolling the streets were a complete rainbow. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple… It wasn’t a walking 12-color crayon set, but the streets were packed with heads so flashy that even idol group members would have to bow out.
And it wasn’t just the hair. Their eye colors sparkled in every hue imaginable, like someone had dumped out a jewelry box.
At the same time, a sense of unease flickered through my mind.
Only when placed in such an extreme contrast did it finally become clear.
Think about it.
Inside that absurdly tall wall, the slum dwellers who crawled around like insects all had hair that was uniformly, oppressively black—as if someone had forcibly standardized it.
Moreover, among this dazzling crowd, not a single person with the red eyes I occasionally saw in the slums existed.
…Wait a minute.
This grotesque ecological divide based on hair and eye color. It wasn’t simply about rounding up the poor, incompetent, and moneyless and isolating them.
The true purpose of the wall.
Was it to separate them—no, us—from the rest of the world?
I felt like I should hide my appearance even more.
I was apparently being discriminated against.
First, I moved as inconspicuously as possible, sticking to the shadows of the alleys.
Then, in the distance, I spotted a crowd gathered in a circle around a lavish, enormous fountain carved from marble.
What was this? Was there a beggar here too?
I let out a bitter laugh inside. Whether inside or outside the wall, it seemed people’s ways of living weren’t all that different.
I wondered what kind of outlandish concept these luxury beggars would use to milk sympathy. Fake blindness like us? Or amputee cosplay?
Feeling a strange sense of kinship and curiosity, I hid behind a building pillar and slipped into full spectator mode.
But the moment I got closer to the fountain, my expectations were spectacularly shattered.
What was happening beneath that romantic backdrop of clear water cascading from the grand statue wasn’t the pathetic begging I knew.
A dancer stepping lightly and gracefully performing, accompanied by a musician skillfully playing an unfamiliar instrument to heighten the mood.
Ah. It wasn’t begging—it was a performance.
The people here didn’t pretend to be disabled or terminally ill to beg pathetically like we did.
They proudly displayed their talents and art, earning applause and money as their rightful compensation.
Of course, they might have been a poor traveling troupe kicked out of their homes, or people barely scraping by day to day.
But… still, it was completely different.
Those who begged for pity, and those who sold their art and received cheers.
As I stared blankly at that brilliant street performance, I keenly felt the invisible wall between me and them—its unbearable thickness.
When the dazzling show ended, the audience’s thunderous cheers rang out, accompanied by the clinking sound of coins pouring into the hat at the musician’s feet.
Clink! Clink-clink!
An unbelievable sight unfolded before my eyes. What poured into that hat like a downpour were the very coins that kids in the slums had bragged about like sacred relics—enough to buy two loaves of bread.
A massive sum of money that we could never even dream of earning no matter how long we groveled on the ground and performed desperately all day.
They had swept up that fortune in an instant with just a few songs and a single dance.
Could I… do something like that too?
Not groveling on the ground, pathetically clinging to people’s pant legs. But standing tall on my own two feet like them, looking the audience in the eye, proudly and confidently claiming a fair price.
Wasn’t that what making a living truly meant?
Almost entranced, I began to carefully tail the group as they packed up and left.
Their steps led them away from the dazzling main square with its fountain, gradually heading toward the city’s outskirts.
It was only natural. No matter how glamorous the streets were, a traveling troupe living hand-to-mouth wouldn’t stay at a luxury hotel in the heart of the downtown area.
They headed to a back alley a few blocks from the main commercial district, where somewhat shabby but decent inns for common folk were clustered.
The farther they moved from the prime commercial area, the noticeably thinner the crowds became, and the noise that had assaulted my ears gradually faded. Eventually, when the shadows of passing pedestrians grew sparse…
The group stopped in front of a modest but fairly respectable inn with a creaking wooden sign hanging from it.
Just as the musician, clutching his heavy coin pouch, reached for the inn’s door handle—
There was no more time to hesitate, no room to read the atmosphere. With the desperate thought that losing them now would be the end, I took a sharp breath and cautiously emerged from the thick shadows of the alley.
“U-um, hello! My name is Vita. Could I possibly have a moment of your time?”
It was the most polite and courteous greeting I could muster, my tone raised as sweetly as possible.
But the faces that turned at my voice began to twist in a completely unexpected, grotesque way.
It was an expression mixing extreme shock and visceral disgust, as if they had discovered a cockroach speaking from the floor.
What? Was there some hideous monster standing behind me?
Flustered, I glanced back, but it was just an empty alley.
Why were they looking at me… why were they staring at me with those eyes?
While I stood frozen, a scream tore through the silence of the inn’s back alley.
“Th-that…?” “Kyaaaah!! An Asirian! There’s an escaped Asirian here!!”
Asirian? Me? So that’s what they called us.
But there was no time to savor the realization. The man carrying the instrument shouted with a face drained of all color.
“This—this disgusting thing! Where did it crawl out from? Catch it immediately!”
The once nearly empty, quiet alley. But the dancer’s piercing scream echoed loudly through the silent outer streets.
The very quietness amplified its reach. The few scattered pedestrians all turned their gazes toward me at once, and the closed windows of nearby inns rattled open.
Only five or six people blocking both ends of the alley. But in this narrow, secluded path, the hostile killing intent and encirclement pouring toward me tightened around me until I could barely breathe.
“Hiiik…!”
With my legs trembling uncontrollably, I slowly backed away before whipping around and breaking into a mad sprint.
I pumped my pathetically short legs with everything I had, running like a lunatic. Whether my shoes flew off or my lungs tore apart, I hurled myself deeper into the alley, toward the shadows.
Behind me, the footsteps of those trying to catch me closed in fast. My mind went completely white.
Why? Why the hell?!
I had only said one word! Why were they chasing me like they wanted to kill me?!
I twisted through the narrow back alleys like a madwoman, turning corner after corner. By the time my vision started flickering from the pain of my bursting lungs, I spotted a pile of enormous wooden barrels as tall as a person stacked like a mountain in what seemed to be the backyard of a tavern.
Without a second thought, I found an empty barrel with its lid half-open and crammed my body inside like a bug. The inside reeked of thick, sweet fruit wine that stung my nose.
The alley outside the barrel remained silent. But that very silence made the footsteps of the two or three pursuers echo through the entire alley and hammer against my ears.
Their panting breaths, ringing between the narrow walls with no one else around, were so vividly clear it felt like they were right behind my neck—chilling me to the bone.
“Haa, damn it! Where the hell did that thing hide?”
“Call the guards right now! It couldn’t have gotten far from here yet.”
“We need to find it and deal with it before the neighborhood kids wake up and see that horrible thing!”
Huk, huuuk…
I clamped both hands over my mouth and nose to keep my breathing from leaking out, leaning my back against the wooden barrel wall and shivering violently.
Deal with it? Did he just say “deal with it”?
They were casually discussing exterminating a child who looked no older than ten—not disciplining or isolating, but squashing it like a bug that had invaded the house.
How could those words come out so easily, without even blinking, when I clearly had the form of a human being?
Aaah. I see.
In their eyes, an Asirian wasn’t even considered part of the same human category to begin with.
Inside the suffocatingly dark and sticky wooden barrel, where the sweet scent of fruit wine stung my nose, all I could do was tremble, praying that the footsteps of those hunters would move far, far away.
The only desperate struggle I could manage right now was hoping that the sound of my heartbeat wouldn’t leak outside.