The City Where Gray Rain Falls Chapter 2

The other constable recognized the identity of the blond young man who had been savoring his freedom in the rain and hastily restrained his partner, who was about to draw his bayonet first.

“We almost made a grave mistake by failing to recognize the Chief.”

“…!”

At his colleague’s urgent apology, the constable—who had done nothing more than try to check the ID of a suspicious man in the dead of night—bent his waist past a right angle, as if about to touch the ground.

The conspicuously pure white uniform denoting the Chief’s status had been hidden beneath a knee-length black coat, making it difficult to distinguish until its owner stepped into the light of his own accord.

As Samuel took one step closer to the streetlamp, the snow-white uniform permitted only to him and the hat matching its color finally shone bright yellow.

Soon, the constable’s entire body trembled violently, and rainwater mixed with cold sweat streamed down to the ground. Then, cutting through the patter of rain, the sound of gulping saliva could be heard.

“Ah, I-I’m sorry. I, I…”

The constable, who had been so spirited as if he would condemn an outlaw in a single breath, could no longer straighten his back now, unable to even manage a proper excuse. Although the official inauguration was not until tomorrow, he had dared, as a mere low-ranking constable, to fail to recognize the Chief of Security. His future must have been terrifying to contemplate.

Moreover, this newly appointed Chief of Security was no ordinary bureaucrat or party executive by origin. He was a cruel and ruthless butcher who slaughtered people without batting an eye, a beast with no mercy even for those begging for forgiveness through their tears.

There was no one else in this city who swung a sword and fired a gun so unhesitatingly at those deemed enemies. Because not a single one of his actions contained any human hesitation whatsoever.

Countless people had met their end within the Security Bureau, and the majority had been captured by Samuel and, passing through his hands, became cold corpses. The constables who had worked in the same place knew this fact better than ordinary citizens did.

“…You were merely acting according to the law. There’s no need to be so frightened.”

Fortunately, the new Chief seemed willing to be magnanimous this time. It could have been that he was simply in a good mood, or perhaps showing leniency ahead of an auspicious occasion, but the nameless constable had no way of knowing the reason.

Barely managing to soothe his pounding heart, the constable kept his back hunched and watched his superior’s every move.

“Ah, truly, I-I’m sorry. From now on…”

“I’d like to enjoy my walk a bit more. May I?”

“O-of course. We’ll accompany you!”

“You men must guard the city while everyone else sleeps.”

With that, the new Chief Samuel lightly waved his hand and walked away from the constables, who were at a loss, their gazes fixed on the ground.

The rain showed no sign of letting up, and because of it, the antique gray city smelled cold and dank. Raindrops splashing up from the ground were drawing ugly stains on the trouser cuffs of his white uniform, yet oddly, his mood alone felt refreshed.

In this city, there were several things only those who held power could do. Roam wherever they pleased, at will. And while doing so, face neither threats to their safety nor random ID checks.

Samuel, too, was living power in this city.

Though his soaked clothes should have been bothersome, Samuel pressed his hair, which was beginning to droop little by little from the rain, into place under his angular hat and strode forward.

Deliberately slowly, very leisurely, he savored the freedom of the streets that seemed emptied just for him and melted into the deep, deep darkness of the city.

∞ ∞ ∞

At the very edge of the city, District 28.

The terminal point, reached only by the time all manner of waste flowing from the city center had arrived and the already dry bread had lost every last bit of moisture, crumbling to dust.

It was a place where the ‘citizens’ so envied by the people from ‘outside’ lived, but in reality, it was a place where those barely retaining the shape of humans and those who had lost the courage to resist, due to the ragged shadows hanging at the edges of their shoulders, were gathered together haphazardly.

Somewhere in there. A dilapidated house where the break of day could barely be confirmed through a palm-sized window. On a plank that scarcely maintained the shape of a bed, a young man with wildly disheveled hair roused his aching body.

‘At least it doesn’t look like it’s raining today.’

Outside the window he had to rise onto his heels to peer down through with difficulty, a landscape no different from usual spread out.

The buildings, the streets. Everywhere his gaze landed differed only in shades of dark or light; it was all gray.

A festival of monochrome where nothing of nature’s color remained, coated thickly with layer upon layer of gray cement. The other colors had clearly been stolen by those inside, the city’s rulers.

A week ago. Isaac, who had secretly infiltrated the city from ‘outside,’ felt the exact same suffocating sensation now, belonging inside it, as when he had merely gazed at it from afar.

‘Why was everyone so desperate to live in the city, to the point of making themselves sick with it?’

Those born outside instinctively yearned for the inside of the city they could not enter.

Concretely, they wanted things like soft butter to spread on bread, hot water that flowed when you turned the tap, fragrant shampoo, gentle fabrics. And further, they dreamed of the peace of daily life where they wouldn’t tremble in fear of dying from some trivial disease.

Regardless of any harsh conditions attached, as long as they were permitted to live in the city, the majority were those who would use any means necessary to get inside.

The situation outside could truly be called dire.

The city exploited the resources produced outside and dumped its filth, yet considered its duty done by tossing out, as if bestowing great favor, nothing more than food scraps. Around the city, people suffering from always insufficient food and medicine, and overflowing garbage, abounded.

‘I’ve heard that if you go just a bit farther, there are seas, plains, and deserts.’

If one could shake off their lingering attachment to the city and turn their eyes elsewhere, they might be able to enjoy various landscapes.

Like the green of the forest, the blue of the sea, the yellow of the desert, the red of the sky at sunset. Even hearing that places where waves of color rippled existed. Why did they deem only the ash-gray city beautiful, why did they love only this place?

Of course, he himself had never been there and had only heard rumors, but he couldn’t understand it. Between a wide world possessing a spectrum of colors and a stuffy rat hole possessing only ashen gray, wouldn’t choosing the former be the obvious choice?

After witnessing the reality of the city firsthand, such thoughts only solidified further.

Having lived only a handful of days but already thinking that outside was at least better, life in this place was, to put it nicely, no different from outside, and to put it bluntly, was like beggary, shit, and garbage.

The city center where party executives lived, or the districts with single-digit numbers, might indeed enjoy abundance, just as the expectations of the outside and the city’s rulers tirelessly boasted.

In any case, on the faces of the people of District 28 that Isaac looked upon, not a trace of satisfaction could be found; only the anxiety characteristic of those whose freedom was suppressed filled them.

The food rations the party promised were miserable, and jobs were absurdly scarce. They could not leave their own district without the party’s permission, and even if they fell ill, they could not receive proper medical treatment. If they could receive even a single painkiller of unknown origin at the moment of death, they considered themselves fortunate.

The communal housing area, directly abutting the sewers, always had a stench rising from it, and it teemed with rats and insects. To the point where no one cared even if a months-old corpse was discovered in the house right next door, no one was interested in the safety or survival of their neighbors.

The pain and dissatisfaction of a reality that could not be changed no matter what was forgotten through drugs, gambling, and prostitution—whose source of influx was unknown. Though these were things the party had defined as illegal, it was fine as long as they were carried out secretly in places unseen. For some reason, unless it was a tip-off about rebels, crackdowns ended up being mere formalities.