Chapter 1
Life sucks, and then you die.
At least that's my personal opinion on the matter as I watch the final bus for the evening drive away. The only bus that leads into my district, drives away. Only bus. Fucking dickhead of a driver, he could obviously see me standing right here! He was probably too drunk or too high to even bother stopping the bus.
My feet ached, my back killed, and I had the mother of all migraines having a fucking fiesta behind my eyeballs. It was 2:35 in the morning for goodness sake! I had just finished my shift at Happy Mackey's fast food ''restaurant''. And I say restaurant in all sarcasm.
The place was a hole in the wall but served the best milkshakes in all the districts combined, so it's managed to stay afloat. And I suppose it's not that bad, as long as you don't have to work there. Cleaning up other people's diarrhoea and vomit is not my idea of fun, just a little fact about moa.
So in all honesty, I did not need this. I so did not need this at all. It was, in all contexts, a horrible night. And that's when it started to rain. Great. There was only one way I was getting home. Through the fucking Slums.
The Slums was the most unpredictable, harsher side of town. It was filled with all the bastards, thieves, killers, rapists, and every now and then assassins go to creep and wallow in their shallow depths their lives.
Don't misunderstand, however, not only the damned take possession of the Slums. All the poor, desperate, and hopeless people also seem to migrate to this side of town sooner or later. The people who have nowhere to go, the people who have no choice. This is why I constantly work hard. I would do almost anything to stay out of the Slumbs. When you end up at the Slumps, you know you've hit rock bottom, and anybody who's anybody knows that once you hit rock bottom, there's no going back anytime soon, unless you believe in miracles. Fat chance of that happening. But I suppose if I were to admit one thing, it's that the Slumbs have a strange kind of beauty. It was in the end, a beautiful wasteland.
Glow-in-the-dark Graffiti lined almost all walls, devouring all space that is offered to it. If you overlook the cold cement, harsh broken down buildings, and homeless people. But the Slumbs have a strange kind of vibe. As if the walls and houses know something that you do not. And in all honesty, they probably do. But I will not subject Gakupo to this life, no matter what.
For once, I will be the one to protect us. So what if I'm dead broke, or didn't finish high school? At least I'm still alive.
"Right?!", like yelling it out the open skies and deserted, closed off buildings as if that will make me believe any of my own thoughts any more. But what do you do when you've lost it all. No, that's not true, not all. I still have Gakupo. But somehow, even though there's still my older brother, I can't seem to forgive my present, or my past.
Like I said, life sucks, but in my case, I don't get to die. Ever. Or at least not yet.
I suppose that's a good thing, at least I'm not turning suicidal. Yet. When that starts happening, I really will have to start seeing that councillor.
Sighing, I stuffed my hands into Gakupo's oversized jumper, and tried not to fall over the hems of the too-long jeans. Life would be so much easier, I suspect, if all people where equal. After all, they call this a free city, but somehow it seems to take a fortune just to be able to live. One wrong move, one side step, and it's all over. It all ends. Rich people can buy justice, and poor people are always the accused, and more often than not, the guilty.
Life wasn't always like his, I remember, I use to have a mother and a father. I even use to have a cat. A normal fucking family.
I clench my hands inside my hoodie pockets, and I can almost feel the skin peeling, and a warm wetness accompanies it. But I suppose that happens every time I think back to that night, when they told me about the accident.
I suppose no one truly could have seen their death coming. Or the animalistic driver in a black Sudan. No one could have seen the other car coming, either.
They say that my mother died instantly, internal bleeding, and my father died of a stroke. But I saw my father in the hospital bed that fatal night, all those nights ago, and the look of despair and desperation upon his face. They say he died of a stroke. I say he died of a broken heart; my father was simply not strong enough to live without my mother. He was never the strong kind. But he was stubborn, too stubborn, and my mother never seemed to be satisfied, so, deep inside I knew they'd die, one way or another. I just never truly knew how spot on my vision was until the day of their death.
The rain begins to get heavier and it starts plummeting towards the earth, to a point where I could no longer see straight, and my light blue hair was drenched in moisture. Looking through my fringe, I see an abandoned warehouse with the numbers fourteen barely recognisable. I suppose I had two options: option one, stand out here and get drenched or, option two: enter the abandoned warehouse that will probably give me aids just from breathing the air.
Light zigzagged across the air, closely followed by a loud clash that scares the shit out of me, and has me wondering just why someone up above is having a hissy fit. But at least that gives me my answer. Well, aids it is.
Walking up to the warehouse takes almost all of my courage, being the fact that I'm basically in the middle of a storm, walking into an abandoned warehouse that just so happens to be located in the Slumbs. Now where have I seen this before? Oh yeah, murder scenes. Lucky me. There only seemed to be an open window, but I suppose beggars can't be choosers. And it wouldn't be too hard just to imagine which one I was. Here's a clue. I have no choice.
Mental note, when breaking into a windows of abandoned warehouses, be sure to bring spare sledge hammer. As I was unprepared, I slowly tried to climb over the shattered pieces of class all around the window, desperately trying not to accidentally slit my throat. Accidental suicide was not on my agenda. I soon managed to enter the warehouse, throat intact, thank goodness, but no sooner was I inside the warehouse that a flash of lighting cascaded everything in a blast of light for a split second. In that split second that the lightning lasted, the two shapes meant nothing to me. The only thing that seemed to register was the fact that I was surrounded by crates full of deadly weapons, and a grenade being handed from one slender hand to another far larger one. Shocked beyond belief, I didn't manage to register the crate right behind me, or the fact that I was slowly backing up into it, until I fell right over it and landed ungracefully on my ass, a very gentlemanly "fuck" was given.
After that I did what any sane man would do, and what all the crates filled murderous weapons where basically screaming at me to do, and I ran. Fast. Nothing but a flash of red hair to haunt my dreams.