A Lucky Day in the Hood
The wind bit deep on this so-called lucky day. The chill, damp air seeped into every pore of my body. Normally, air is one of the kinder essentials of life—unlike its finicky friends, water or fire. It doesn't demand much; it simply allows you to breathe without making a big deal out of it. But not here. A curse slipped out with my exhale like it belonged there.
No matter how shitty the Hood was, the air didn't have to be this fucking vile. The stuff was loaded with every pollutant imaginable, flaunting its presence in the most disgusting way possible. It reeked like someone had blended mold, chemicals, and rancid grease into some kind of cursed incense, and on top of that, it was cold and wet. Honestly, I didn't want to share a single second with it, but unless I found a way to escape, I was stuck living with the bastard. Like a kid cursed with a criminal for a father.
"Hey, Cain. Why the long face again today?"
While I was lost in those gloomy thoughts, a real criminal from down below called up to me with that annoyingly chummy tone. His gray skin and piss-yellow teeth made him look less like a person and more like some kind of ghoul. When he grinned, the creep factor doubled.
"Mind your own damn business, Schroed."
"Aw, come on. How can I do that? We're friends, aren't we?"
"I've never had a piece of shit like you for a friend."
Schroed Ken. Three-time convicted robber. Shockingly, in this neighborhood, a rap sheet like that put him in the "relatively decent neighbor" category. Most robberies around here came with a side of murder. If the guy only took your stuff and let you walk away alive, it meant he still had some scrap of humanity left. He was a little less of a piece of shit than he looked.
"Got a smoke?"
"Even if I did, I wouldn't. Quit the bullshit and pull out your own."
"Cheap bastard."
I slid down the mountain of trash along the path I'd optimized over time and fished out a crumpled pack. "Ah, it was a mast." I pulled out my lighter and lit up. Of course, a real lighter in this world was an absurdly expensive high-end magitech device. This was just a crude fake I'd cobbled together from scrap, flint, and flammable chemicals. Still, it beat having nothing.
As soon as the flame caught, Schroed shoved his head in greedily. I didn't want to look at his filthy face, so I waited a beat before lighting my own cigarette.
"Sssip..."
Naturally, the "cigarettes" in this shithole weren't real ones. They were just dried clumps of weeds that made the cheapest tobacco from my old world seem like luxury. But honestly? It tasted good. No, it tasted better than good. It was downright sweet.
"Haa."
The moment that smoke filled my lungs, it pushed out the foul air and replaced it with something almost pleasant. Cigarette smoke was a hell of a lot better than the smog. I stared blankly as two thin streams of smoke rose and dissolved into the green haze. Then, as usual with smokers, the random conversation started.
"Hey. You hear the news?"
"What news?"
"Some big shots from up top are coming down soon."
"That's not exactly breaking news, is it?"
What was he getting so worked up about? I shot Schroed's bloodless gray face a cold, disgusted glare. The Hood was basically one giant trash heap for the whole city, but people from Sentinel still came down sometimes to scavenge for usable junk. Occasionally something valuable popped up, so the upper district probably treated this place like some kind of people-infested dungeon. I was about to brush it off as another group of bored rich kids coming to pull the item gacha when—
"No, this time it's different. It's the Academy. The Academy! People from the Academy are coming!"
"What?"
The name made me perk up despite myself. The Academy. Just hearing it stirred up a complicated mess of emotions.
"Sssip..."
I took a deep drag. The smoke that sank into my lungs dragged me briefly into a sea of unconscious thought. Maybe it wasn't just my mood—there might've actually been some stimulant mixed in.
Cain Jaeger. That was definitely the name of the body currently chewing on this cheap cigarette. But "me"? I wasn't originally from here.
Accident. Possession. Reincarnation. Seoul, Gwanak District, Sillim-dong—my old home. As I recalled the language of that increasingly distant hometown, the memory palace unlocked with those keywords. There wasn't much point in dragging out the whole story. It was all in the past now. Even this longing I felt was just a fragment of old memories. Everything felt futile and meaningless, yet the fact that I still remembered it all meant some lingering attachment remained.
Where should I start? Right. The day I woke up in this other world, I was absolutely convinced that my heart-pounding adventure and exciting new life were about to begin. Wow! I'm the protagonist of this world?! ...Well, even if not the lead, at least a significant supporting character. That's what I thought.
But there was none of that. In this world, I wasn't the protagonist or a supporting character. I wasn't even a proper extra. I was something lower than the average imperial citizen who at least got mentioned in passing. Trash from the Hood. The untouchable scum whose existence was so filthy that the setting simply glossed over it with one line: "Apparently people live even at the bottom." That was me.
At first I denied reality, but there was no point. In the end, the only answer was to accept it. They say all happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. After coming here, I experienced that famous line with my own body. I was completely broken. The fun, happy story of the original work that I thought would be mine was now nothing more than a delusion locked away in my memories.
Anyway. The Academy was basically an elite military academy for young adults who'd just come of age, open to every class—except those from the Hood. It was a showcase that blatantly displayed the world's class system. The main stage for this world's protagonists and supporting cast. A place that would never be allowed to me. That was the Academy in Sentinel.
'Come to think of it, that woman should be showing up right around now...'
My wandering memories had even invaded the territory of the "heroines" who had nothing to do with me.
"Huuu..."
"Holy shit! You scared me. How long are you gonna burn that thing?"
I blew out a long stream of smoke and took a deep breath. The filthy air in my lungs snapped me back to reality. Thinking about trees I could never climb only pissed me off.
"It was a mast, asshole."
The nearly spent butt was about to burn my fingers. I quickly flicked it to the ground and crushed it under my heel. Better safe than sorry. One spark in the wrong place could cause a massive explosion and wipe out an entire work site. Trash mountains going up in flames like that wasn't exactly rare in the Hood.
But then.
"Hey, Cain."
The usually chatty Schroed suddenly made a circle with his left hand and started thrusting his right index finger in and out of it with obscene motions.
"How about it? Why don't you give it a good rub? Who knows? With your looks, maybe you could charm some young lady..."
"Bullshit."
The meaning of that vulgar gesture was obvious.
"Oh? Maybe you're more into young masters than ladies?"
"Shut your fucking mouth."
I spat loudly at Schroed's feet as he leered. It was disgusting, but it wasn't entirely nonsense. That made it even worse. Whether man or woman, the most realistic way to rise out of the Hood was by selling your body. If you became a plaything for the people up top, you could escape this hell immediately. No one wanted their toy rolling around in a filthy trash bin, after all.
But that was as far as it went. The people from Sentinel weren't idiots. They might clean up a pretty beggar from the Hood and play with their body, but they would never give their heart. A toy was just a toy. Once they got bored, it was thrown away and sent right back to the Hood.
The worst part was that once Hood rats tasted the air up top, they could no longer stand the fact that they'd been sent back to this pit. Most of them chose to leave this life behind entirely. There was only one exception.
Women who got pregnant with a child from someone up top. They would cling to the delusional hope that maybe this child would reconnect them with their lover. Or perhaps a noble family with few heirs might reach out for their bastard. They tortured themselves with that hopeless fantasy until their last breath. It was truly a miserable sight. Dying cleanly would have been far better.
'Cain, my baby. Remember this. You...'
That fucking Schroed. That son of a bitch and his nonsense had completely soured my mood. I stroked the cold metal rod at my waist, eyes wide, and muttered under my breath.
"Whoa, whoa. Sorry, friend. What's gotten into you?"
The sly bastard must have realized he'd pressed my panic button, even if he didn't know why. He scampered off in a hurry. I watched the back of his head, pulled out the metal rod, aimed it for a moment, then shook my head and put it away. He probably hadn't meant to dig at me on purpose. He was just running his mouth like always.
"Haa, fuck."
This was exactly why this neighborhood was so goddamn awful. Everyone had too many traumas and trigger points. A harmless joke could set someone off, and the next thing you knew, people who'd been laughing together were at each other's throats. Burning through emotions over nothing and getting trapped in this endless, pointless cycle was just daily life here. Surviving each day was hard enough without people in the same boat creating conflict instead of working together.
"...Still gotta do what I gotta do."
I'd already compromised with reality and given up on a lot, but there was still one thing I desperately wanted. Getting the hell out of the Hood, no matter what it took.
The short break had been enough. I stood up and started climbing the trash mountain again.
"Please. Let me find something today."
To get out of here, I needed the bare minimum requirement: a way to protect myself. It didn't matter if it was strength or money. I needed something that would let me show off my superiority so no one could look down on me.
Obviously, getting that wasn't easy. Treasure hunting in a trash pile. Easy to say, but doing it with a sane mind was pure insanity. When people from up top came down here to scavenge, they usually had solid clues. Throwing yourself at it with no information, no leads, relying on tiny odds—that was completely crazy.
Still, if you did it every day, something would turn up eventually. The problem was the success rate was fucking abysmal.
"Ugh..."
I poked a suspicious lump with the end of my tongs. A rotten stench hit me as something grayish-white oozed out. Probably the corpse of some dead animal. I'd suspected as much before I even touched it. But leaving it alone wasn't an option either—if you ignored it, it could explode and turn the whole area into a wasteland. Touch it early and get a milder disaster, or leave it and get a worse one. A hellish binary choice.
Of course, there were plenty of valuable scraps like scrap metal or clothes that weren't this disgusting. But those were all monopolized by the stronger guys. Among the trash, I was the filtered-out trash. My job was to find the last bit of use in the burnable waste that had been deemed unrecyclable.
"Let's see..."
It was tiring, filthy, inefficient work. Even the trash of the Hood avoided it. But there was a reason I kept at it. Because every once in a blue moon, a jackpot would hit. And only from those jackpots could I get what I needed.
"Oh."
Found it. Just like that.
In that brief instant, I spotted a glint of light and ran toward it without hesitation. Sharp wooden splinters and trap-like pits couldn't stop a veteran like me. I weaved through the dangerous, filthy obstacles in seconds and reached the spot where the sign of a jackpot had appeared.
"Whoa, this is actually good."
The massive head of a goddess statue made of solid metal was poking slightly out from between piles of trash. Oh goddess. For a second, I felt a surge of faith I didn't even know I had. The direction felt a bit off, but I made the sign of the cross anyway, then pulled the statue out of the trash and examined it closely.
It was damaged in several places and covered in rust, but it was clearly made of pretty good iron. Must have come from some ruined church. The only thing that bothered me was that there wasn't a single spot that looked like it would actually shine... but I decided the goddess's miracle had simply reached even the lowest place.
"Hng. Damn, it's heavy."
What mattered now wasn't that minor sense of unease. It was that I'd finally found a thread of hope to escape this miserable life. A solid chunk of metal weighing about twenty to thirty kilograms. Even if most of it went to processing costs, there was more than enough here to complete my plan.
With a satisfied smile, I gently stroked the metal rod at my waist and muttered.
The moment this fake club that turned into a tin can after spitting out a single iron fragment was reborn as a proper gun, my days of eating trash would be over.
"Today's a lucky day."
I covered the basket on my back with more trash to hide the valuable find. The already heavy lump of metal got even heavier, but it didn't feel heavy at all. This weight was the weight of happiness. On the way down, I even found a couple more bits of junk that looked like they'd fetch decent money, making my pockets that much fuller. Now I had enough to buy my little sister some candy while she waited at home.
It really was a lucky day.