Thus Began My Astonishingly Miserable Days
And so my astonishingly brutal yet strangely ordinary days began.
Once I’d handled a meal, the next order of business was, of course, practicing my new power. Magic.
The moment I opened my eyes each morning I would hit the streets and secure a stall. After safely locking in that day’s calories, the next step was naturally training the one unknown lifeline I possessed.
In the beginning the pain was so bad it felt like my eyeballs would burst and blood would stream down my face, but humans really are creatures of adaptation.
By spending every single day clawing at invisible lines in the air, the horrific burning agony had dulled to the level of a tolerable migraine.
Whether I was simply getting better at it or this body was slowly adapting to the power called mana, I had no way of knowing.
Obviously I had zero intention of asking anyone how the hell this ability actually worked.
There was no neighborhood library, and I could hardly grab a random passerby and say, “So I steal things with my eyes, you see.”
In a neighborhood where people pulled knives over a single piece of bread, how could I trust anyone?
I’d be branded a thieving witch rat in less than half a day and sold off to some shady slave trader or a deranged dark mage’s dissection table.
The problem arose while I was strutting around as a rather comfortable professional thief, riding on the back of this secret magic.
The thief boy I occasionally ran into on the street—his name was Prin—his condition was growing more wretched by the day.
Unlike me, he had no miraculous magic to rely on.
With nothing but his legs and sheer stubborn grit, the boy who survived by committing petty crimes for a living was being broken down at an alarming rate.
Every time our paths crossed, the bruises on his face had darkened and his skeletal frame carried more fresh footprints and torn wounds than before.
That miserable sight kept pricking at a corner of my heart.
One day I tore off a small piece of the meat or bread crumbs I’d stolen fairly easily with magic and pressed it into his hand.
The boy looked at me like he’d been handed the whole world. He bowed and scraped so deeply I thought he might prostrate himself on the ground in gratitude. It seemed he had completely forgotten how I’d freaked out and run away from him before.
But… in this primitive, barbaric world, the fate awaiting a repeat offender with neither luck nor magic was horrific.
The day I finally saw him again after he’d been missing from the streets for several days, I froze on the spot.
His right sleeve fluttered pathetically in the wind, the end of it empty.
The wrist that had once reached out to steal was now wrapped in a grotesque, blunt lump of dirty, blood-caked bandages.
Yes. One of the boy’s wrists had been completely severed and taken from him.
“Your… your arm…”
“Ah, this? It’s nothing. No big deal. Anyway, Vita, I’m really hungry… If it bothers you, could you maybe tear off a little of that bread you’re holding?”
He lightly tapped his empty right sleeve and gave me a foolish grin, as if it truly didn’t matter. But he couldn’t hide the way his pale lips trembled or the spasms running through the stump.
Seeing him forcibly swallow his pain and beg like that, my previously light mood froze solid.
“……”
I couldn’t even speak. I simply pushed the entire piece of bread into his remaining hand, then turned and ran toward home, panting like a madwoman.
Clang!
I slammed the crumbling wooden door shut, locked it, and collapsed to the floor, gasping for breath like a lunatic.
It was terrifying. I was scared out of my mind.
The image of that blood-soaked bandage and the severed wrist clung to my brain and refused to leave.
Lately I had been arrogant.
With this incredible magic that no one else could see, I had grown convinced I would never get caught.
What had started with stealing rat meat or bread crumbs had gradually escalated. As I grew used to the ability, I moved on to larger, intact fruit and even the expensive cuts of meat that merchants treasured.
As if personally proving that crime also suffers from inflation, the scale and boldness of my theft rose vertically day after day.
But long tails eventually get stepped on.
If I got caught by some rotten luck, the price I would pay clearly wouldn’t end with something as minor as a severed wrist.
I was a vicious repeat offender among repeat offenders. The moment I was caught, they wouldn’t stop at my wrist—they’d take my neck and hang it in the middle of the market square, or shatter every bone in my body and toss me into the back alleys as dog food.
Prin’s horrific stump might very well be a preview of my own near future. No, something even more miserable and painful was surely waiting for me.
I pressed a hand to my sweat-drenched forehead and clenched my teeth.
No matter how hungry I got, this insane tightrope walk—betting my one and only life—had to end here.
Even if it was to survive, I needed to find another path.
Step. Step.
The daylight scenery of the slum while searching for work was exactly what you’d expect.
Skinny children lying flat on the ground, covered in dirt, begging. Adults carrying loads bigger than their own bodies, walking silently like ants. Thuggish delinquents gathered in shaded alleys, spitting and cackling. A dull market street buzzing with nothing but flies.
But once the sun set and true darkness fell, the real bottom of these streets revealed its ugly face.
At night, when the children had vanished, groups of prostitutes with heavy makeup and barely any clothes stood along the roads.
The most horrifying, shocking part was that among them were young girls who looked no older than the body I currently possessed, standing there as if it were perfectly normal.
The same delinquents who had been laughing during the day seemed to act as pimps, occasionally taking one of the women and disappearing.
They were probably heading to other districts to sell their bodies to richer clients.
This was supposed to be a medieval-level civilization, yet here was a systematic, deformed prostitution industry that belonged in a modern metropolis of tens of millions.
Maybe the existence of magic in this world had explosively increased agricultural output and population capacity, creating this abnormal overpopulation.
While thinking about such pointless nonsense, I became certain of my own miserable reality.
In this place, there was only one legal way for me to earn a meal: lie on the ground and beg for coins.
With this frail body I couldn’t manage manual labor or even carry a proper water bucket, and I had zero desire to sell myself like the kids in that alley.
No. It was absolutely impossible.
Just imagining it made bile rise in my throat.
To wake up one day trapped in the body of a young girl against my will, then spread my legs for strange men just to survive? Are you fucking insane?
Fuck. Could you actually do that?
Even if I starved to death, that kind of life would never be part of mine.
In the end, I decided on the most certain and “safe” survival method available.
First I smeared both hands with cold charcoal soot from the brazier and rubbed it mercilessly across my cheeks. Then I scooped up mud from the floor and caked it into my black hair.
“Ugh… it fucking stinks.”
But I wasn’t done. I kicked off the dragging leather shoes without hesitation.
Bare feet. That was the default setting for any self-respecting beggar, wasn’t it?
Finally I picked up the household’s only utensil and weapon—an iron pot—and cradled it carefully in one arm.
Perfect disguise, complete.
I took one deep breath, hugged the iron pot to my chest like a precious treasure, and stepped out into the midday market.
The midday market was pure pandemonium.
Senior beggars had already claimed their spots and were flaunting their ultimate techniques in a brutal war for customers.
The sight was so absurd and overflowing with personality that I immediately realized my crude disguise didn’t even qualify as competition.
Right across from me, at the corner of a narrow alley, a kid had set up shop.
His acting was Oscar-worthy.
“Good sir, please show mercy to this poor blind lamb…! Waaaah!”
With both eyes covered by cloth, the boy screamed in desperate agony every time a passerby approached, crawling across the ground like a worm.
But the even smaller kid sitting beside the blind boy had an even more impressive special move.
He had twisted one leg grotesquely and tucked it tightly beneath his backside, making it look as though he only had one leg. A true master of deception.
“Ughhh! I lost my leg in the mines! I can’t earn money with a body like this…! Please, please, at least give me money for my mother’s medicine…!”
That wasn’t all. Across the street were two sibling beggars. The older brother coughed violently as if he were dying of tuberculosis while the younger one wept and patted his back. They had formed a perfect sympathy team.
A bloody war of children fighting to open wallets in the name of pity.
My complacent plan of simply sitting with a pitiful expression and a wooden bowl was crushed before it even began.
In the end, there was only one choice left.
With my pathetic acting skills, I could never beat those kids’ tear-jerking performances.
Therefore, the most rational and certain survival strategy was obvious.
If I couldn’t raise my own specs immediately, I would physically bankrupt the competitors eating away at my share and monopolize the market.
Like a corrupt CEO aiming to dominate an industry, I curled my lips into a smirk and adjusted my grip on the iron pot.
My first target was the blind kid.
Step. Step.
I walked straight up to him until I stood right in front of his face.