Sasuke seethed in pain and frustration as another gallon of blood-red bile blasted against the floor. He was beginning to worry that there was some kind of hole in his stomach, that it was literally all blood. Part of him was certain he was about to die.
It would serve him right for swallowing that fucking slug.
He was just so desperate. Scrubbing floors and sleeping in a board house were beneath him damnit! Opportunities like this came less than once in a lifetime for people in his circumstances. Sasuke knew he'd regret it for the rest of his life if he didn't take the risk. The old man who'd been living here had clearly been studying the specimens; there was a ragged pile of notes along with the dozen odd jars.
All but one still had a squirming red beast, perhaps the size of a banana.
It might have been his imagination, but they seemed to be pushing towards him. Futilely rubbing against their glass prisons as they tried to join the first that had, seemingly voluntarily, wiggled its way into and down his throat. Still, there was presumably no threat of them escaping. They were stacked up in the closet, not two meters from the dead man's bed.
Fuck, he still had to clean up that corpse. It's why he was sent in here to begin with; only now, he also had to deal with the disgusting puddle he'd made over the floor as well. At least the bucket and the scrubbing brushes were already carried up; they'd expected at least a bit of a mess already, being that this particular tenant was so adamant that nobody enter.
Pretty obvious why now.
As the pain faded to bearable levels, he got to work, not even standing before grabbing the brush and starting with the half-meter diameter bile pool that was stinking up the room. Doing a half-assed job, and keeping an eye on the door, he managed to get it done fairly quickly. Though as he folded the sheet up over the corpse on top of it, he realized his next problem.
The specimens and how he would smuggle them out. Maybe it would be best just to tell his boss; he'd probably call the purifiers, see them incinerated, probably. They had to be worth something on the black market though, and he did have a connection; even a meager score would likely be more than a month of his wages.
Of course, getting caught was a death sentence. Hell, getting caught stealing a coin from the bastard's bedside drawer might be a death sentence; his boss would certainly kick him out, and Riverwrath got cold in autumn. It was that thought, funnily enough, that spurred his decision.
He was definitely stealing those red-slug things. No, it wasn't safe, but neither was continuing to live at the mercy and whims of his fat bastard of a landlord. A solid score might leave him with the cash to get a safe, registered parasite, or at least a useful one, something that would let him earn enough money to get ahead, gods willing.
After a few more moments of thought, he relented to himself that he didn't have the tools to try anything clever. So, he stacked up the jars, carefully, in the pillowcase. If the boss asked, they were empty liquor bottles, and he was throwing them out. It wasn't unbelievable; the man living here clearly had money.
More money than a day laborer, in any case.
Plus, he lived here rent-free for some reason or another. The young janitor began to go over his theories again as he delicately crept down the wooden stairs to ground level, taking recently obtained information into account. Did those red slugs give some kind of mind control? Some way of intimidating or becoming extra persuasive, at least?
There was still the possibility that they were just old friends, close in some way, but Sasuke doubted it. Not once had he ever seen the pair talk, for one thing. Also, Mr. Gri was a greedy, insufferable prick; it was doubtful that he had any friends, let alone one he cared enough about to take care of at financial expense.
At least he didn't run into the bastard on the way out, but that raised a different problem: where to store his score. He didn't have all the time in the world to look for a hiding spot, and it was quite hard to focus with the searing pain in his guts flaring back up! Fuck, what was going on with it?! It seemed to come and go at random, intense enough to make him wince while he shuffled off to the nearest alley that didn't get too much foot traffic.
In a great pile of garbage, the clunky pillowcase didn't look all that assuming.
It would have to do.
It would have to do if, for no other reason, because he desperately needed to get back inside. He wanted nothing more than to find a soft, dark place to lie down; anywhere to rest! The workday had only just started though; cleaning a corpse was a morning surprise that he got minutes after waking up. Gods, that walk was going to make him go outside for a long, long time.
The nearest incinerator was a half hour away, and that was an estimate for a walking man that wasn't dragging a corpse along the gravel! Surely he could at least ask Gri to borrow a wheelbarrow? If nothing else, he needed something sturdier than bed sheets to drag it, and there was a simple sled inside somewhere. Corpse removal was probably its primary purpose, come to think of it.
He took his sweet time looking for it and moving the body down three flights of stairs.
For this, he was punished.
"Hurry the fuck up kid! He's already dead; you don't gotta be gentle," his wet, gargled voice barked. It made him flinch hearing it, always, and he fucking hated that fact. He was Sasuke Uchiha; he was highborn damnit! He was smarter, he was better than this bastard in every way that mattered! "HEY! You listening brat? I said hurry!"
His stomach was searing again. More painful than ever as the lumbering footsteps grew closer to his back, standing at the base of the stairs as Sasuke doubled his pace, struggling not to sputter out bile as the pain turned sickly. When he finally had the body braced on the stairs with its feet on the ground floor, he delicately lifted himself upright.
It wasn't the first time Gri hit him.
A slap on the back of the head that barely hurt but skewered his pride.
"The hell are you doing?"
"I need the sled," he gritted out, turning just enough to look at him out of the corner of his eye. It was fucking obvious! It would be worlds easier to load him onto the sled if he remained propped like this could the empty skulled shithead piece that together?
"You want to borrow the sled that I own and that's how you fucking ask for it?" he asked, tone growing more haughty than angry.
"WHY THE FUCK DID YOU LET HIM LIVE HERE!? WHAT DID HE HAVE ON YOU?" the young man roared without thinking. He just couldn't take it; he could take another second! It hurt so fucking much his stomach was on fucking fire!
He slapped him in the face harder this time.
Sasuke just made a guttural noise, a noise of pain and not from the slap.
"Alright, fuck on off brat, enjoy dying in a gutter," he demanded, boring down at the boy until he finally pulled himself upright. Sasuke looked at the flimsy front door. He continued staring at it as he shuffled out of the building, the pain fading slightly as he put a distance from the bastard he hated more than anyone in the world.
Well, with one exception.
Desperate to be optimistic, he noted that at least there was all the time in the world to hide his score now. Maybe he'd trek over to one of the farms in the industrial district, find a quiet spot to burry it. His mind went into a sort of shock as he finished his quick walk to the pile of garbage turned hiding spot, staring blankly and trying to remember what to do next.
In the ten minutes he'd left it there in the alley, the pillowcase, and his score, had been removed.
"FUCK!"
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