Chapter 60
Life in the Scrap Yard was monotonous.
Every morning, I was practically forced to wake up early—thanks to an alarm I
never even set.
The laborists are plotting to overthrow the city!
Report them! Only through reporting can we save our city!
The police blared the same announcements every day through loudspeakers, their
deafening noise threatening to tear my eardrums apart.
Grabbing my throbbing head, I headed out to buy groceries.
“The paradise of workers will come!! You dogs of the factory owners!!”
“Get that bastard! Arrest him!!”
More precisely, I had to dodge the police as they chased after a young
laborist handing out flyers at the market. If I wasn’t careful, I’d end up
dropping everything I had just bought.
After returning home and eating a simple meal, I unfolded the newspaper.
I wasn’t looking for the usual propaganda. I was searching for any mention of
black magicians or demon worshippers.
But, of course, there was nothing of the sort.
The ringleader of the laborists, Karl Lenaro, remains at large!
Eradicate the laborist ideology that is corrupting our society!
A vigilant citizen makes for a healthy society!
The entire newspaper was filled with nothing but articles condemning the
laborists.
How heinous their claims were.
How much damage they were causing to the factories in Scrap Yard and the city
as a whole.
Page after page, all of it was just the same repeated rhetoric.
It was infuriating to read. This wasn’t journalism—it was outright propaganda.
After another hastily prepared meal, I holed myself up inside, avoiding the
outside world as much as possible.
An empty, cold bed.
My mind kept drifting back to the times when I had happily tumbled around with
Erfa, Iomene, and Almeine, their warmth against mine.
The memories made me sink deeper into my gloom.
Maybe it was because of this despair that I couldn’t sleep.
“Laborists are the enemy of society!! They threaten the very existence of
Scrap Yard!! They must be captured!! Must be!! A vigilant citizen makes for a
healthy society!!”
The police’s relentless announcements outside didn’t help, either.
In the end, I had to use my body modifications to deliberately disable my
hearing before I could finally get some sleep.
But when I did sleep, the nightmares came.
Dreams of hell.
Dreams where I became the Demon King and brought about the world’s
destruction.
Dreams where the women I loved perished because of me.
I often woke up in the middle of the night, unable to rest for long.
I cried frequently. My despair deepened. My appetite disappeared.
At some point, I stopped going out to buy food altogether.
I wished the newspaper would bring some news about black magicians soon.
Or, at the very least, that my dreams would return to the apocalyptic visions
of demon worshippers trying to end the world.
I just wanted to be cursed and die already.
A month passed in that miserable state.
Then, one day—
“Excuse me? I live next door.”
Someone knocked.
When I opened the door, a thin woman was looking up at me.
“I’ve been hearing crying and loud talking in the middle of the night for over
a month now. You’ve been screaming in your sleep. Are you having nightmares?”
Her expression was blank, but I could sense a hint of curiosity.
I let out a bitter laugh.
The walls in this lodging were thin. I supposed it wasn’t surprising that my
nightmares had been so loud.
“Sorry. I’ll keep it down.”
I was about to close the door when she stopped it with her foot.
“You got fired, didn’t you?”
“...What?”
“I get it. Even skilled technicians are getting laid off left and right.
Here.”
She handed me a basket.
Inside, I found several pieces of black bread.
“I wasn’t going to give you anything. We’re struggling too, you know. We can
barely afford to feed ourselves. But my husband insisted. He said we had to
help. Just eat and keep going. You don’t need to pay us back.”
I stared at her, stunned.
Was she… being kind to me?
Because she thought I was a laid-off technician?
I studied her closely.
Her appearance. Her clothes.
She wasn’t someone who could afford to give away food.
The bread in my hands—considering her situation—wasn’t just bread. It was life
itself.
Tears welled up in my eyes.
There’s something about receiving kindness when you need it most. It makes you
feel warm inside.
I couldn’t even hide the tears as I nodded.
“Thank you. I’ll eat it well.”
The woman smirked at my reaction.
“I’m Anna, your neighbor. My husband, Peter, is a technician too. Let’s hang
in there together.
No matter how tough it gets, we have to keep living, right?”
With that, Anna waved and returned to her home.
Even after she was gone, I stood in place, clutching the basket of bread,
crying for a long time.
It wasn’t much. Just a small gesture of comfort.
But somehow, it gave me the strength I desperately needed.
Yes.
It’s hard, but my choice was the right one.
I was someone who needed to disappear for everyone’s sake.
I shoved the black bread Anna had given me into my mouth.
It was dry and hard as a rock, but the taste didn’t matter.
What mattered was the thought behind it—the kindness that, for a moment,
soothed my exhausted body and mind.
After that day, I started exchanging greetings with Peter and Anna’s family
whenever we ran into each other on the streets.
“Heading out again today?”
“Yeah.”
Peter and Anna always looked exhausted.
They left for work at a time that could barely be called morning—more like the
dead of night—and returned close to midnight.
Anna was visibly losing weight every time I saw her, and Peter was
deteriorating just as rapidly.
At night, when I lay in bed, I could hear their family talking through the
paper-thin walls.
Not that I wanted to eavesdrop, but the walls in this lodging were absurdly
weak, and I had no choice.
“Jim, Amy How was work today?”
“I only had to clean chimneys for nine hours today! And the factory even gave
us food!”
“That’s great. You know you have to take care of your little sister, right?”
“Yeah. I know.”
Before I knew them, I used to dismiss these sounds as just background noise.
But now that I did, I couldn’t help but listen.
Like most workers in this place, Peter’s family was struggling.
“Your cough’s getting worse.”
“It’s not as bad as the other women at the factory. Don’t worry, Peter.”
Anna worked at a textile mill and had developed a persistent cough—something
she hadn’t had before.
She told me that many of the other women in the factory coughed up blood.
“The factory owner just announced that they’re cutting the technicians’ wages.
Down to 90 leon.”
“How the hell are we supposed to survive on that?!...”
“If we refuse or strike, they’ll fire us immediately. Worse, they’ll report us
as laborists and throw us in prison. You know what happens in the labor camps.
People come out completely broken… if they come out at all. There’s nothing we
can do. We have to accept it.”
“Those factory bastards…!”
“Don’t say that, Anna. If the police hear, they’ll arrest you for being a
laborist.”
Jim, 3 years old, and Amy, 5 years old, were already working as chimney
sweeps.
And yet, despite all that, their situation never improved.
“I’ll work harder. It’s the only thing I can do.”
Peter’s eyesight was failing. Anna’s coughing wouldn’t stop.
And Jim and Amy—just children—were already working to survive.
I thought back to the black bread they had given me.
Despite all of this, they had chosen to share their food with me instead of
getting angry at the crying man next door.
My gaze drifted to the pile of gold coins I had hidden in the corner of my
room.
Should I… give them some?
The thought passed through my mind.
But I quickly shook it off.
This money wasn’t meant to help others. I had accepted it to ensure I could
live in solitude, away from people.
Considering the dangers of the power within me, I couldn’t afford to spend
recklessly.
They had helped me, but I had no way of helping them.
As I listened to Peter and Anna’s struggles through the wall, guilt began to
gnaw at me.
And yet, time marched on with brutal indifference.
During that time, I did everything I could within my limits.
I searched for demon worshippers and black magicians.
I tried to sleep as much as possible, hoping that my prophetic abilities would
reveal something through my dreams.
And when I woke, I roamed the dark alleys, hoping to find any trace of them.
More often than not, I found nothing.
Instead of demon worshippers or black magicians, I kept running into thugs.
“Know anything about black magicians or demon worshippers?”
“Nope.”
They knew nothing.
“Forget we ever met. That’s an order.”
And so, my days became a cycle of wiping memories, wandering back alleys, and
returning home in disappointment.
Then, one day—just another fruitless night.
I came back, washed up quickly, and crawled into bed, pulling the blanket over
me.
That’s when I realized something was wrong.
The room next door was silent.
Usually, I would hear Jim and Amy talking, or Peter and Anna’s quiet
conversations—some kind of sound, some sign of life.
But for the past two days, there had been nothing.
At first, I brushed it off.
People had their circumstances. Maybe they had been sent on an overnight
shift. Maybe they had left for a short while.
But by the third day—
“Clear this place out! Everything inside belongs to us now! Strip it all!”
That evening, as I returned from another fruitless search, I saw the lodging
manager breaking into Peter and Anna’s room.
He and his men were hauling out their belongings.
Something was wrong.
“Wait! What are you doing?!”
The manager gave me a dismissive look and gestured toward the empty room.
“They didn’t pay rent. Per the contract, their possessions are now ours. We
need to recover our losses somehow.”
“They… didn’t pay rent?”
But Peter was a factory technician.
Anna and the children worked tirelessly.
“Where did they go?”
“How should I know? They just disappeared. Haven’t seen them in days, so we’re
clearing the room.”
Panic gripped me.
I ran to my room, grabbed some money, and shoved it into the manager’s hands.
“I’ll cover this month’s rent. Don’t touch their belongings.”
“Well, that’s fine with me. You sure about this?”
“Yeah.”
After settling the payment, I bolted from the building.
Something was wrong.
Something had happened to them.
Peter.
Anna.
Jim.
Amy.
Where were they?
What happened?
I ran through the streets of Scrap Yard, shouting their names.
“Peter! Anna!! Jim!! Amy!!”
I searched everywhere, like a madman.
“Where are you? Answer me!”
Please.
Let this be a misunderstanding.
Maybe they were working long shifts and staying at the factory.
Maybe they just forgot to pay rent.
I clung to that hope as I scoured the city for half a day.
Then, as night fell, as the cold air settled in and the streets grew dark—
I found them.
That was the good news.
The bad news…
“Mom… I’m cold. I don’t want to go in there.”
“You have to, Jim. Just a little further, and you won’t feel pain anymore.”
“If we walk in, the pain will go away, Amy. Jim.”
Peter, Anna, Jim, and Amy were standing at the edge of a freezing river, about
to step in.
And the moment I saw them, I understood why.
Peter’s right arm was gone.
Jim and Amy’s eyes were covered in bandages.
Anna looked hollow, blood dripping from her lips.
These were injuries I had seen too many times before.
The marks of industrial accidents.
The kind that happened all the time in Scrap Yard.
Join Our Patreon
Support our translations and gain early access.
Read up to 5+ chapters ahead before the official release!