The City Where Gray Rain Falls Chapter 3

The constables who only looked after their own interests had allowed him to infiltrate safely without being caught, but the shock when he first set foot here was indescribable. It seemed as though despair had been firmly packed together and molded into the shape of a space.

At least ‘outside,’ there was freedom. Though an exhausting poverty dogged most moments, to the point that life was a struggle for survival, and one had to take responsibility for the consequences on their own, there was at least the minimal freedom to choose the direction one wanted to go and to leave.

The citizens Isaac had faced over the past few days seemed like prisoners trapped in a gray jail, merely waiting for the day they would die. Death row inmates, at that, without even a speck of hope that they would ever walk out alive on their own two feet.

Even so, Isaac had a reason he had to come to the city.

“Where on earth are you, Asel?”

Asel. A friend and brother he had been stuck to his entire life, and his only family. That kid was somewhere in this city.

∞ ∞ ∞

‘Isaac, I’m definitely going to the city.’

Around sunset, when the grueling day’s work was finally winding down, Asel would crouch on the hill and, pointing toward the city that wasn’t even visible from there, would say those words like a habit.

‘Impossible. How could you?’

Infiltration missions into the city were arduous tasks that staked life and death even for the so-called chosen ‘comrades.’

People had gone, but those who returned could be counted on one hand. The fact that no one ever came back, especially after being discovered or captured, clearly demonstrated the difficulty of that mission.

There was no way that kid could do it—someone who routinely forgot even simple errands, who often forgot to put on pants or shoes, wandering around in nothing more than an old, baggy T-shirt someone else had discarded. He would likely be discovered before even setting foot inside the city and killed horribly.

‘Why can’t I go? I can just go with you.’

‘I hate the city. It feels suffocating just thinking about it.’

‘I probably can’t go alone though…’

‘Right. So don’t you go either. It’s dangerous.’

Unlike Isaac, who knew how to be content with his own world, Asel, like the others, yearned and longed for the inside of the city.

He would joke that his biological parents might be citizens of the city, or say that he wished he could live as a citizen even for just a day.

Isaac, who had watched over Asel by his side all along, had thought lightly of it—that he was simply nursing a fervent one-sided crush on the city, like most people born outside.

One-sided crushes were bound to end in disappointment and resignation someday, and if it was just a fleeting infatuation, all the more so, it was something that would naturally resolve itself over time.

But that had been a rash and complacent judgment. Just as Isaac himself had heedlessly set foot in this city, chasing after that kid.

∞ ∞ ∞

Waaaah. The siren announcing the city’s morning blared noisily, disrupting his deep thought.

‘Ah, already!’

Even through the small window, monochrome figures could be seen pouring out into the gray street as if they had been waiting.

They would all be on their way to line up for the dry bread distributed by the party and a bowl of water to wet their throats.

The precious daily ration was never plentiful. Only by rushing out the moment the passage permit time arrived and diligently standing in line could one also secure the share for family members who were infirm and left at home.

Isaac hurried to go out as well, putting on the coat hanging by the door and pulling his hat down low to conceal his hair sticking out in all directions and his foreign-looking complexion as much as possible. Then, after once more checking that the documents proving his identity even under random ID checks were secure inside his coat, he stepped outside.

‘Cold.’

Even in the chilly weather that instinctively made one clutch their collar, people walked toward their destination in orderly rows and columns without hastening their steps.

Perhaps it was because of the rain that had fallen for days on end. The ration line today was unusually long.

From the throats of people living in shabby houses that could never block out the cold and damp, coughs burst forth in rapid succession. The unrelenting coughing, to the point of making a listener’s own throat itch, gave a stronger sense of an inhabited space, ironically more so than the deathly silence of usual days.

“The distribution ends here.”

Not even half of the people still in line had received theirs, yet the bread sent by the party quickly ran out.

It would have been proper to hurl curses at the rulers who had prepared an amount far short of District 28’s population, to demand they hand over the bread, but no such thing happened. Not a single person voiced a complaint; they merely forced their dragging, reluctant feet to turn away.

Though he had come out relatively late, Isaac had narrowly managed to secure a single piece of bread for his share. This was because there had been more sick people who arrived late with faltering steps.

— To the citizens, delicious bread full of butter, plentiful and fresh water to quench your thirst!

The bread was like a stone, not much different from outside. Contrary to the party’s promises printed on posters so old their original colors were beyond guessing, not even a scent of butter, let alone the taste, could be detected. That was only natural, perhaps, since it was crude bread made solely for filling the stomach.

Growl. His starving stomach clamored loudly. He had no appetite, but to live, he had to eat. If he mixed a bite of rough bread with a sip of water and chewed for a long time, it would be somewhat edible.

Those who turned away without receiving rations cast lingering, regretful glances at the people holding bread, but no one readily shared what was theirs. In District 28, where only individual survival mattered, charity was a luxury.

“Cough, cough.”

The old man who had been coughing fitfully as if dying in the back row couldn’t bring himself to leave easily and wandered the area empty-handed. If he were to get caught by an ill-tempered constable like that, he might be singled out as a suspicious person loitering, or be beaten without reason.

Isaac approached him silently, broke the hard bread into two pieces, and handed him the larger of the two.

The old man hesitated warily, then took the bread, broke his half into yet another half, tucked one piece into his coat, and immediately shoved the other into his mouth. It seemed he had family waiting for him at home.

Only after chewing and swallowing it in one breath with his sparse teeth did the old man, in lieu of thanks, whisper information that was likely most needed by the other at the moment.

“…Looking for work?”

“Ah, I’m…”

Work, he said. The person whose identity Isaac had stolen, named ‘Joshua,’ didn’t even have a decent job on paper.

Originally, the party provided jobs to those who wanted them. With the small income earned there, one could buy food or goods beyond what was rationed, but jobs with decent pay or requiring expertise were snatched up by the earlier districts, and what remained was only the worthless sort that endangered lives or broke bodies.

Even those were so few and far between that the majority of people in District 28 were unemployed, so it was not strange for the young man ‘Joshua’ to be jobless.

Once the rationing was over, people would again line up amiably and head to the job center run by the party. Because with luck, once in a while, a job that was ‘less life-threatening’ would turn up.

“If you want work, don’t go to the job center. Go to the square bulletin board right now.”

Isaac had originally planned to mingle among the crowd and go to the job center as well.

He had no intention of looking for work. There was a risk his identity would be exposed during the verification process.

He had sought it out simply because the area around the job center was where a mix of people gathered—young people his age to various age groups—and it was a place where a certain amount of small talk and information exchange was permitted.

For Isaac, unfamiliar with the city, it was also the optimal place to look for someone resembling Asel in appearance, to catch any news of rebels coming in from other districts, or perhaps to spot a familiar face seen before from outside.

“It’s… okay.”