A Debt Repaid
After wrapping up my successful first venture, I returned to the alley clearing in high spirits, both hands weighed down by heavy pots.
“Wow, Vita! What’s all this? You’ve been coming back with practically nothing lately—what’s with the haul today?”
“No kidding! You always struck out before, but our Vita’s finally pulling her weight. Or should I say, earning her keep!”
“Uh, um? Hang on, everyone…?”
In the blink of an eye the little kids had me surrounded, reaching out as if it were the most natural thing in the world and rummaging through my pots without a shred of hesitation.
What the hell was this scene of extremely natural robbery?
I hugged the pot tight and blinked stupidly. Come to think of it, these kids pooled whatever each of them had earned every single day and checked the total haul together.
I’d assumed it was some kind of bragging contest about who’d begged the most. But no way—that wasn’t a bragging contest at all…!
“Whoa, jackpot! Hey, is this real beef jerky? Vita, your teeth are still weak so you probably can’t chew this. I’ll take it!”
“Score! Big sis Vita, then I want this! I’m eating the white bread!”
“Hey, hey! Wait! That’s my jerky! My white bread…!”
They didn’t even give me time to stop them. The kids started dividing up my blood-earned spoils as casually as if they were pulling things from their own pockets, sharing them out amicably.
All I could do was watch the devastating scene with my mouth hanging open.
Crazy… Don’t tell me these little shits were bona fide mini-communists, red to the bone, practicing collective production and collective distribution?!
I stared down into the half-emptied pot in utter dismay.
Luckily they hadn’t mindlessly grabbed everything in sight. A few usable bread scraps and small items remained inside, and above all they hadn’t touched the coins lying at the very bottom.
“Sigh… Kids. Next time, could you at least say something before you snatch stuff?”
“Huh? Oh… If Vita says so… okay.”
“Sorry, sis. I’ll ask next time.”
Seeing their dejected little heads, I couldn’t stay angry. I let out a small sigh and readjusted my grip on the pot.
“Then I’ll be on my way. I have a few places I need to stop by.”
“Got it, Vita! Thanks so much for the jerky!”
““Thanks! We’ll enjoy it!!””
“Haa… Yeah. Make sure to chew thoroughly so you don’t upset your stomachs, okay?”
The children waved with bright smiles, their earlier gloom apparently a lie. I reluctantly waved back at them.
Leaving the kids behind, I turned my steps toward the house where Prin and France lived.
That guy Prin hadn’t shown his face on the streets once since his wrist was cut off. Things couldn’t possibly be good.
France was already groaning from her chronic illness, and now even Prin—who used to go out begging—had been crippled. Their household had to be in the worst possible crisis, the kind where it wouldn’t be strange if they starved to death any day.
If anyone asked why I was bothering to look after siblings who didn’t share a drop of blood with me, the answer was simple: it was because of the stupid kindness he had once shown me.
Those same little kids who had just taken food from me were probably normally quite close with the Prin and France siblings.
Yet none of them seemed to care deeply about Prin’s absence or thought to visit first. It was cold, but that was simply how things worked on these streets.
These day-to-day survivors who could barely feed themselves had neither the leisure nor the mercy to look after a disabled person and a sick child who could no longer contribute labor.
Therefore, in this entire world, I was probably the only one who could help the siblings now driven to the edge of a cliff.
The single piece of hard bread Prin had handed me back when I was starving to death.
It had been soaked in muddy water and hard enough to break teeth, but I understood. In this hell where every single day was a desperate fight for survival, how difficult and how great a sacrifice it was to give away even a scrap of your own food. That worthless piece of trash bread had been as precious to them as their own lives.
I wouldn’t feel satisfied until I paid back that favor with proper interest.
The small surplus I had earned today would become a massive lifeline for those siblings who were barely clinging to existence.
When I arrived in front of their house, the blood-red sunset cast long shadows across the shabby door.
But the atmosphere felt strangely wrong.
Normally you would hear France coughing from outside, or the rustle of Prin clearing away straw. Yet now an eerie silence wrapped both inside and outside the house—so quiet that even the sound of the wind felt ominous.
…No way something had already happened to them?
The worst possibilities sent a chill down my spine. Prin’s severed wrist left him completely exposed to excessive bleeding and infection, and France had been suffering from a terrible illness from the start. In this wretched slum, it wouldn’t be strange if either of them suddenly stopped breathing at any moment.
My heart sank. Without thinking, I rushed forward.
Bang—!
“Prin! France! Are you okay?! There’s nothing wrong in there, right?!”
I flung the old door open so hard it nearly broke and burst inside.
A cloud of acrid dust rose along with a musty smell and the thick stench of rotting blood. As I frantically scanned the dark, suffocating interior—
“U-uhh… This voice… Vita…? O-oppa… wake up… Vita’s here…”
At France’s touch, the lump curled up like a corpse beside her flinched and twisted painfully. It was Prin, the end of one wrist wrapped in cloth already hardened with dark bloodstains.
“Ah… aah… It’s you, Vita. Cough! What brings you… here…?”
Prin looked at me with unfocused, blurry eyes. His breathing was rough and raspy from a terrible fever, and his face was so pale and bloodless it wouldn’t have been odd to hold his funeral tomorrow.
“What do you mean, what? I got worried because you both looked so bad. Seeing your faces, it’s a good thing I came. Here—you haven’t eaten anything all day, right? Come eat this at least.”
“R-really? It’s okay for us to eat this, Vita?”
“Of course it is. So eat up quickly.”
“Th-thank you, Vita… Oppa, wake up. Vita brought food for us…”
France hurriedly tore off bread and pressed it to Prin’s pale lips.
“Mmm… Thank you, Vita… I’ll really enjoy it…”
Leaving the siblings filling their stomachs behind, I quickly surveyed the surroundings.
The sun had set; the house was already wrapped in darkness.
I needed to check Prin’s wrist first, but I couldn’t see anything. There was nothing I could do.
Fortunately, while rummaging through the odds and ends that had spilled into the pot earlier, I found a decent piece of flint. I gathered some dry straw and struck it hard.
Clang! Clang!
Sparks refused to catch. My technique was poor, but more than that, this pathetically weak body simply didn’t have the strength to generate them.
What now? It was getting darker by the second…
As I bit my lip in frustration, a good idea suddenly flashed through my mind.
I steadied my breathing and drew out the mana inside me. Cool shadows crept out and coiled around my left arm like a snake.
It felt as solid and reassuring as wearing a strength-enhancing exoskeleton suit!
This was my first attempt to apply the mana I had only ever used for manipulation to assist my physical strength.
The result? A resounding success!
When I raised my shadow-reinforced arm and struck the flint hard once more, a loud bang rang out as embers flew everywhere. Soon a small red spark bloomed atop the dry straw.
I had perfectly succeeded in starting the fire, but a new problem immediately erupted. Acrid smoke thick enough to sting the eyes began filling the entire house.
“Cough, cough!” Ah, fuck! I’m going to suffocate!
But this problem, too, was solved quite simply.
Because I had a candle tucked in my chest!
I hurriedly transferred the burning ember from the straw to the candlewick, then stomped out the smoking straw with my foot.
Crackle. Crackle.
With a pleasant burning sound, gentle candlelight rose.
That warm, steady red glow began illuminating every corner of the shack.
“Whoa, I feel alive again… Wow, Vita. Is that a real candle you just lit? Where on earth did you get something so bright and odorless? It must be expensive! Cough! Cough! You really are amazing—as expected of my friend!”
“It’s nothing. That’s just how I am. First things first, Prin. Come here. Let me see that arm wound.”
“Ugh, the wound…? What’s the point of looking… There’s nothing good about it. The flesh is all rotten and full of pus—it’s just disgusting…”
Prin’s previously bloodless pale face flushed a strange red.
Even though he could barely take care of himself, it seemed his adolescent pride had flared up. The peculiar shame and helplessness of not wanting to show me his ruined state trembled through his shoulders.
But I had no leisure to indulge such trivial emotions right now. I looked straight into Prin’s eyes and firmly held out my hand.
“Enough. Just give it here. I can already tell it’s rotting just from the smell.”
“O-okay… I really didn’t want to show you something this hideous…”
“It’s fine. Stay still. I’ll unwrap it myself.”
I swallowed hard and placed my hand on the dirty cloth wrapped tightly around Prin’s wrist. Blood and pus had hardened it until it felt like a rock.
Just how badly damaged was it…?
My fingertips trembled slightly as I carefully untied the knot. How many days had it been left without proper disinfection? I was afraid. What if, once the cloth was removed, the entire arm had already turned black with necrosis—something my pathetic abilities could never reverse?
Still, fear or not, I couldn’t just leave it like this.
I didn’t want to watch someone die meaninglessly in front of me. Especially not someone I knew—someone who had first handed me a piece of hard bread.
Riiip.
The last scrap of cloth, stuck to the flesh, tore away with a horrible sound. The terrible stench that washed over me made me frown involuntarily.
Under the candlelight, the cross-section of Prin’s wrist was truly horrific. Yellow pus filled the swollen, reddened flesh, and the blood vessels near the cut had turned a dark, dying purple.
But I immediately breathed a sigh of relief.
…It’s not too late yet.
It looked awful, but fortunately the necrosis hadn’t spread past the wrist. The blackened rotten flesh was clumped only at the end, while the living tissue inside was somehow holding out against the inflammation.
If I could just excise the rotten parts right now and completely drain the pooled blood and pus, I could prevent the worst—death by sepsis.
The problem was that I had neither disinfectant nor a scalpel.
In the end there was only one method available to me: using the thread of shadow mana that had once dug thinner than a hair into a wooden doll’s joints to scrape out the rotten pus and flesh inside the wound like a surgical procedure.
It was possible. If it was me, I could definitely… definitely do it.
But it meant digging into living flesh without a single drop of anesthetic. It was no different from torture. I gripped the cloth tightly, my face hardening.
“……Prin. Listen carefully.”