Bread, Blood, and a Strategic Compromise
Was this a silver lining in the midst of all this misfortune? At least I'd run into someone who knew the original owner of this body. If I played my cards right, maybe I could score a bite of that blunt instrument... I mean, that precious little crumb of bread.
Hmm-hmm.
Gulp.
Ah, no. Of course, I was the spineless bystander who’d just been lurking in the corner watching this kid get pummeled like a neighborhood punching bag. Did my conscience sting?
Pfft, come on! What kind of ridiculous nonsense is that?
Even if I had committed the crime of standing by and doing nothing, when my stomach was literally about to fuse with my spine, who the hell had the luxury to worry about ethics?!
Besides, this body was still in the middle of a massive growth spurt—a tiny little girl who needed to shoot up like a weed. In this barbaric world where children’s rights could go fuck themselves, wasn’t it only natural that I look out for myself?
If there was such a thing as human decency, no one should just ignore a frail child collapsing from malnutrition.
As an intellectual raised in a 21st-century civilized nation, someone who had diligently studied morals and ethics, I simply could not stand by and watch this pitiful, beautiful girl—my current flesh—starve to death.
“Uh, um… well, that is…”
I kept stealing glances, unable to tear my eyes away from the bread clutched in the boy’s arms.
But seriously, what the hell was I supposed to say to get even one bite of that precious food?
Should I just go full shameless?
‘Hey, I’ve actually been watching you get beaten up for a while now. Can I have a bite of bread?’
Fuck no. If I said that, my skull would probably get split in half by that rock-hard loaf.
While I was busy rolling my eyes around and hesitating, unable to spit out anything brazen, the boy—who had been gasping for breath—leaned against the filthy dirt wall and staggered to his feet.
“Ugh, that fucking hurts. Still, at least I got the food… haa… By the way, Vita. It’s been forever since we last saw each other, hasn’t it? You disappeared for a while, so I figured you’d kicked the bucket in some back alley or something.”
Kicked the bucket?
Wasn’t that a bit too grim for a greeting to an old acquaintance?
“Kicked the bucket? What do you mean by that?”
“What do you mean, what do I mean? You used to lie face-down on the street begging every day, then suddenly you vanished. Of course I thought you’d frozen to death or starved in some dark corner.”
Ah…….
The boy’s completely casual answer left me momentarily solemn.
It seemed the original owner of this tiny body—this kid named Vita—had lived a far more hardcore life than I’d imagined.
Wait a second. In this shithole of a neighborhood, was it just normal daily life to assume someone was dead if they suddenly stopped showing up? My eyes were stinging with tears, and I wasn’t even joking.
“So, what the hell happened to you all this time?”
The boy asked as he roughly brushed the blood-mixed dirt off his clothes.
‘Oh, I just went to visit some relatives for a bit.’
Nope. Rejected.
Looking at his state, he was clearly a dirt-poor orphan down to the bone. What relatives?
‘Uh, I went to do some work for a while.’
Also rejected.
With this toothpick body that looked like it would blow away in a stiff breeze, what kind of part-time job could I have possibly done? Even the evil factory owners of the 19th-century Industrial Revolution would’ve turned this frail thing away, calling it child abuse.
Sigh. What the hell should I say to make it sound natural?
Should I claim I went begging in the next neighborhood? Or that I’d been kidnapped and only just escaped? Nothing plausible came to mind. Uuuugh…
After running my brain at full throttle weighing ten thousand different excuses, I finally squeezed out the safest, most pathetic one in a timid little voice.
“I… I got lost. I only just made it back.”
“I see.”
……Huh?
The response that came back was so lukewarm it might as well have been commenting on the weather. There wasn’t a single gram of interest in me.
No frantic questions like ‘Where did you get lost?!’ or ‘Our precious little Vita didn’t get hurt, did she?!’ Not even one.
Damn it. All that agonizing was a complete waste…!
“Oh, I already told Prin you were dead. Come with me and show your face so she knows you’re alive. If you do, I’ll… give you a little piece of this bread.”
With his face still caked in dried blood, the boy offered an incredibly generous deal.
Follow him? Where the hell to?
Even if I looked like the kind of gullible kid who’d follow any uncle offering candy, I was absolutely not that easy to fool!
If he thought he could tempt a proud intellectual who had survived 21st-century South Korea with nothing but a lump of carbohydrates—and one that looked more like a murder weapon than bread—he was making a huge mistake!
…Or so I wanted to boldly declare, but my stomach had already reached its limit.
Who the hell cared who Prin or Pudding was? The only thing echoing in my ears like a sacred gospel was the promise of a little piece of bread.
I cleared my throat, trying not to look too desperate, and asked with feigned seriousness.
“R-really? You’ll really give me some bread? Um, where are we going?”
“Where else? Our house.”
I pretended to seriously ponder it for about half a second before immediately nodding.
To be honest, this pathetic kid who had just been used as a sandbag by some ordinary adults didn’t seem capable of posing any serious threat to me. Objectively speaking, we were both at the very bottom of the food chain.
Even if he was stronger than me, it’d only be by about ten or eleven times…
Heh. Decision made.
Of course, that wasn’t the only reason. Wandering around this unfamiliar slum alone was far more dangerous than following someone I already knew to their base.
Besides, maybe I could dig up some useful information if I went along.
Yes. This was a highly strategic decision for survival, part of my brilliant master plan.
It was absolutely, positively not because I had been bought off by a few crumbs of that concrete-textured bread and was trotting after him like a little dog. Definitely not.
And the hideout we arrived at was… Ah, just as I expected. It didn’t miss my expectations by even a millimeter.
It was exactly the same level of shithole as the dirt hut I’d been in earlier. The only thing missing was a skeleton roommate. Even a condemned building turned garbage dump would probably feel more comfortable than this place. Looked like every corner of this neighborhood was the same.
“Prin, I’m back.”
The moment the boy opened the creaking door and stepped inside, a frail voice drifted out from the dark interior.
“B-brother… what happened to your face…? Did you… did you push yourself again because of me…?”
“No, no. Absolutely not. More importantly, Prin, do you want to see who I brought today?”
“Mmm…? Who…?”
The boy jerked his chin toward me as I peeked in from outside. I timidly poked my head into the trash heap… I mean, the room.
“Eh…? Vi… Vita? You’re not dead?”
The girl who spotted me jolted upright in surprise.
“Don’t get up, Prin. Just stay lying down.”
Aha.
Standing there, I instantly understood the entire situation.
A sickly girl, small and gaunt as my current body, lying under a tattered rag. And a boy with a bloodstained face tenderly caring for his little sister.
A high-definition human drama automatically played in my head, perfectly completing the narrative.
The reason he had clung so desperately to that concrete-textured baguette even while getting beaten like an animal by those thugs on the street—it was all to feed his starving, sick little sister…!
Hup! What a heartbreaking, tear-jerking display of sibling love!
In the middle of this tragic, stinking slum, such desperate familial affection had bloomed. My vision blurred as tears welled up.
…Of course, not a single actual tear came out.
But inside, I was sobbing loudly and giving a standing ovation. To suddenly be dropped right into the middle of one of those cliché, tear-soaked melodramas I used to read as text in my room—it was so moving I thought I might lose my mind.
“Vi, Vita. Hehe. Long time no see. How’s the begging going lately? Making good money? Everything going well?”
“Uh, yeah. It’s… going okay, I guess.”
“Really? Wow, I’m so jealous. I want to get better soon so I can go out begging with you, Vita…”
……?
Was this girl insane?!
What the hell did I just hear? Jealous? She wanted to get better quickly so she could go begging together?!
This was the same tone people used to casually ask a coworker how their interview for a major company went!
Please stop treating street begging like it’s a regular job with four major insurances!
Watching this sickly girl smile so brightly while talking about begging like it was her future dream(?), I felt my 21st-century civilized common sense crumbling apart. Just what kind of early education did they give kids in this neighborhood?
I couldn’t bring myself to argue and forcibly lifted the corners of my twitching mouth into a smile. For now, I decided to probe a little.
“Prin… how have you been feeling lately? Are you very sick?”
As I spoke, I quickly scanned the state of the house. It didn’t seem like she had been a frail, sickly beautiful girl from birth.
My detective-in-another-world eyes had caught several clues.
First, the tiny pair of straw sandals in the corner by the threshold—clearly Prin’s. The soles were worn pitch black and on the verge of developing holes.
Second, the dirt wall opposite where Prin was lying. At about the height of a small child, there were tons of clumsy stick-figure doodles drawn in charcoal.
If she had been bedridden since birth, barely able to breathe, there was no way she would have worn out the soles of her shoes running around the neighborhood, nor would she have left drawings on the wall while standing up.
In other words, she used to be a lively kid who followed her brother around making noise, but recently she had caught some illness or gotten injured and suddenly taken to bed.
Considering how insanely unsanitary this dirt house was, it wouldn’t be strange for even a mild cold or stomach bug to put her at death’s door.
“Mmm… I do have a bit of a fever, but it’s bearable. Especially since Brother brings me delicious food like this every day!”
Prin beamed as she looked at the terrifying concrete bread in the boy’s arms.
I was inwardly wondering how the hell anyone was supposed to eat that.
Were they going to smash it with a hammer and eat the powder? Or maybe soak it in clean well water and cook it into porridge? As a civilized person, I was running simulations of reasonable cooking methods in my head.
That was when the boy, who had stepped outside, came back into the room.
“Here, Prin. I made it nice and soft for you to eat.”
What the boy proudly held out was indeed the same bread from before—only now it had evolved from a hard weapon into a soggy, damp sponge.
The problem was the identity of the liquid it had been soaked in.
That yellowish, cloudy fluid dripping down the bread’s surface. Anyone could tell it was the essence of Mother Nature—the puddle water that had been stagnating on the street I had walked across earlier, teeming with all kinds of unidentified microorganisms and dirt.
Yes. It was muddy water.
And it even included the perfect cholera-and-dysentery-free-pass edition, thoroughly brewed with the black grime from under the boy’s fingernails like rich broth.
I stared blankly at that horrifying biochemical weapon.
If she ate that, she wouldn’t get better—she’d probably throw an acute gastroenteritis party in her intestines and take the express train to the afterlife.
Watching Prin happily accept that thing with a bright smile as if it were a proper meal, I could literally hear my sense of hygiene shattering in real time.
The desperate drool that had been filling my throat just moments ago dried up completely.
Fuck.