Chapter 01
Some days begin with excruciating pain.
Raimund Gepfert, currently lying on a pile of trash in the back alleys of the 3rd Residential Sector, was one of those who knew this fact all too well.
The world had changed drastically since humanity built shelters and isolated the human species from the harsh external environment.
People trapped within societies constructed under transparent domes quickly adapted to the changed world and began seeking their own means of survival within the even narrower confines.
Of course, there were always those who fell by the wayside.
People who couldn’t adapt to the changes, those who lost their jobs and homes for various reasons, the expelled, the fugitives.
Such people wandered the streets like pallid, bloodless ghosts. Without purpose, without will.
Compared to those people, his own situation was actually quite decent. Even if his entire body reeked and his cheekbone was swollen from a punch.
Rummaging through the pocket of his worn-out jeans, he pulled out a sleek, black wallet.
It contained various cards, receipts, and even a cozy family photo whose origin he didn’t know, but those things didn’t matter.
Sticking his finger deep into the card slot, he felt something hard and thin.
A pale yellow plastic stick, about half the size of a standard business card.
Oh, this looks like quite a haul.
He hastily pulled out the stick, shoved it back into his pocket, and tossed the wallet onto the trash heap without a second thought. After confirming that the palm-sized wallet had fallen neatly behind a biodegradable trash bag stuffed with filth, he finally pushed himself up.
“Ouch. That guy sure had a mean punch.”
He looked like the type, too.
Raimund muttered, rubbing his bruised cheekbone. He’d been punched just because their shoulders bumped while passing by.
He felt awkward saying it himself, but deep down he was quite proud of his face.
The orphanage he’d grown up in never told him anything, but he figured that whoever his parents were—his mother or father—they must have been fairly good-looking people.
Raimund’s blond hair was a strikingly clear shade, and his eyes were a dark green.
At 19, just over 6 feet 2 inches tall with a well-proportioned build, he had the kind of looks that wouldn’t get him shunned anywhere.
But he didn’t go anywhere. No, he couldn’t go.
*Ugh.* Brushing the trash off his body, he pulled his fallen hat down low and left the spot.
The 3rd Residential Sector wasn’t where the truly well-off lived, but luck sometimes followed him. Raimund felt the few Credit Sticks in his pocket clinking against each other.
He took a driverless tram to the main street. The red tram was the only one that went from here to the 5th Residential Sector.
Squeezing through the packed crowd and finding a spot in the corner, Raimund stared blankly at the passing scenery.
The guy he’d bumped into earlier would probably realize his wallet was gone about thirty minutes from now.
He’d retrace his steps, checking the shops and places he’d visited, and only much later would he finally think of Raimund.
Then he’d go check the trash can where he’d been dumped, but well. All he’d find there would be a dirty wallet with the Credit Sticks missing.
Imagining that scene made Raimund feel a little better. Even his throbbing cheekbone seemed to ease up a bit.
In less than two hours, the tram arrived at the 5th Residential Sector and slowly came to a halt. After passing through the 4th Residential Sector, there weren’t many passengers left.
Raimund got off at the stop with the straggling crowd. Passing under the rusted, crooked signboard, he entered the narrow, damp, and gloomy fog-filled streets.
The houses lining both sides of the street were all small, cramped, and gave off a strange smell.
A foul odor, like a mix of rat droppings and musty air. His own body odor must be contributing to it, too.
Raimund was careful not to brush against any passersby, and to avoid bumping into anyone himself. Completely different from how he’d been in the 3rd Residential Sector.
But here, that was only right.
The 5th Residential Sector. A place where the unchosen crowded together, eyeing only government-subsidized housing.
People with no proper jobs, for whom living day-to-day was the best they could hope for. Or else, lunatics squatting in the murky, foggy alleys, muttering incomprehensible things.
Passing by neighbors both strangely familiar and bizarre, Raimund quickened his pace.
*Evie Lane.* The name was scrawled in paint on the damp ground. Only when he stopped in front of the small house at the end of that street did Raimund finally relax.
Keys, where were his keys…
-*Click.*
“Brother!”
A small, toddling warmth clung to Raimund’s legs.
Raimund easily scooped the child up into his arms.
“Heyzel. Were you playing nicely? Where’s Peony?”
“With Olive.”
She couldn’t be more than four years old at most.
The child called Heyzel mumbled, stuffing her hand into her mouth.
Raimund pulled her saliva-soaked hand out, wiped it on his clothes, and gave her a kiss on the cheek.
A small two-story house.
Climbing the narrow stairs with rusted railings, he saw Peony emerging from a room at the end of a space so small it could hardly be called a hallway.
She looked tired, having just finished tending to Olive, but her face brightened when she saw Raimund.
“You’re back already?”
“Got a job done. How’s Olive? Already asleep?”
“No… I don’t think he can sleep without the painkillers. It’s that leg of his, as always.”
Peony lowered her voice so the person in the room wouldn’t hear.
Raimund couldn’t help but sigh at times like this.
Effective painkillers were expensive, and the people who could buy them freely didn’t live here.
“With any luck, I might be able to buy at least one bottle. Then Olive should get better.”
“I hope so. But I don’t want you to shoulder all the burden, you know? Olive and I are nothing but grateful to you.”
“I know. I understand what you mean.”
“I’m going to go wash Heyzel’s pants.”
Pretending not to notice the frayed elbows of her shirt, Peony used Heyzel’s pants as an excuse to slip away.
Raimund waited a moment, then gently knocked on the door.
“Olive. I’m coming in.”
A bedroom much smaller than the one downstairs, and a boy occupying the only bed.
The boy lying on the bed sat up immediately upon seeing Raimund. He put on a brave smile, but Raimund noticed the cold sweat beading on Olive’s forehead and how pale his face was.
“Brother. You’re early today.”
“Yeah. I was worried about you guys, so I came back quick.”
Raimund said it jokingly as he plopped down on the edge of the bed.
Family.
The kids from the orphanage back in the 4th Residential Sector.
At those words, Olive’s mouth curled into a faint smile, then faded.
“Yeah, since we’re at it, should I call you ‘Dad’? Like we did with the Director?”
“Ugh. Do I hit you guys like the Director did, or what? How dare you talk to the breadwinner who’s working his bones to the ground to feed, clothe, and shelter you?”
“Alright, alright. Anyway, you wouldn’t have come back empty-handed. Looks like you got something good.”
“Bingo. Just check how much is on them.”
Raimund handed the Credit Sticks to Olive. Two white ones, and one pale yellow one.
Olive fetched the old junk laptop from the bedside table with practiced ease.
This was an old partnership. Raimund would bring them, and Olive would crack the security programs and check the balances.
He didn’t know how Olive bypassed the locks on the Credit Sticks, but either way, Olive did exactly what Raimund needed.
“The white ones don’t have any extra locks. Together, they’ve got 423 Credits.”
“The yellow one?”
“Just a sec… Ah, this one has 1,640 Credits.”
Olive, tapping away at the clattering keyboard, turned the laptop screen to show him. White code and numbers floated on the black program screen.
After shelters were built in Britain, intercontinental trade stalled and exchange systems collapsed, prompting the shelter governments across all continents to establish a new currency.
Humanity, who once traded with cowrie shells, then gradually moved to gold, myrrh, spices, and silk, had now shed paper and aluminum for a currency that existed only in the electronic world.
That was the new means of exchange called the Credit.
The devices that stored Credits were called Credit Sticks.
People carried Credit Sticks in their pockets, just as they used to carry paper bills and coins.
While there was no limit to the number of Credit Sticks an individual could possess, each stick had a maximum storage limit based on its serial number.
For example, the most common white Credit Stick could hold up to 500 Credits.
The yellow ones held 2,000 Credits, and the red ones, 3,000 Credits.
Though rare, black sticks could hold tens of thousands of Credits.
Of course, there were special Credit Sticks linked directly to bank accounts, following the old concept of debit cards, but few people took such bold measures due to security concerns.
How pitiful it would be if a thief like him cleaned out their bank account.
“Disappointing in some ways, but not bad for a day’s work, right?”
“Are you gonna launder it through the old currency?”
“Yeah. I’ll take it to a broker. They take a big commission, but there’s no other way.”
The commission was 8 percent of the declared amount, wasn’t it?
Leaving Olive to disable the security programs, Raimund began calculating in his head.
After deducting the 8 percent commission from 2,063 Credits,
This week’s rent, 250 Credits owed to the shelter government.
300 Credits to send to the orphanage Director.
73 Credits for electricity and water.
Food costs too. Ah, and the plumbing repairs Peony kept mentioning—might as well take care of that now. Hold on, can he buy Olive’s painkillers with what’s left? If he put off the plumbing repairs…
“Brother, all done. Here you go.”
“Thanks.”
“That’s what I should be saying. You brought us here.”
You can never say thank you enough for that, Olive added, seeming genuinely sincere.
Raimund took the laptop back and carefully laid Olive down.
“Someday, we’ll move somewhere better. You need space to move around.”
“I don’t have legs anyway, though?”
“Then use a prosthetic or a wheelchair. There’s no such thing as impossible.”
“Haha.”
Olive let out a dry laugh and closed his eyes. He seemed genuinely exhausted.
Raimund left the bedroom without a sound. Downstairs, Peony was thawing frozen food and fussing with Heyzel’s clothes. She looked up with surprise as he came down.
“You’re going out again?”
“Yeah. Gotta finish today’s work.”
“Come back before dinner. Heyzel, tell your brother to come back safe.”
“Mhm.”
Heyzel, who had shoved her fist back into her mouth, and Peony, who frowned at that before wiping the drool dripping down her chin.
Watching them, Raimund gave a cheerful wave and left the house.
But the moment he stepped outside, his cheerfulness evaporated like steam.
And he thought, unconsciously. *Ah, I wonder if a whole chunk of Credits will just fall out of the sky?*
The 5th Residential Sector.
Located on the outermost edge of the shelter, a slum where the shelter’s failures and the poor gathered.
Here, there was only the clatter of scrap metal hauled in from the Economic Zone and other residential sectors, and the stench of garbage mountains.
When artificial rain fell, the streets were practically guaranteed to flood.
It was a place where people with no space to call their own would crawl into narrow alleys, tram station seats, or closed-off sewers as a matter of course.
Compared to them, Raimund was incredibly lucky.
Just before he left the orphanage, an epidemic of flu had swept through the 5th Residential Sector, and the weak—who couldn’t even afford medicine, let alone treatment—had died off one by one.
Thanks to that, Raimund was able to secure a house allocated by lottery to shelter citizens as soon as he left the orphanage.
At first, it had felt terribly unsettling to live in a house where someone had died and been carried out.
Now, he felt like bowing down in gratitude.
Was this kind of thinking immoral?
Not at all.
To survive in the 5th Residential Sector, you had to sell your conscience, your morality, your ethics. Such feelings were nothing but luxuries.
If you don’t eat, you die. If you don’t pay the rent, you’re kicked out. The shelter’s nights are cold and harsh.
Acting according to your conscience doesn’t guarantee your life.
You might get to leave this world with the nickname “Good Samaritan,” though.
Anyway, that’s what the 5th Residential Sector is like. The very bottom of the shelter, a godforsaken life.
If only I could leave this place.
Raimund didn’t wish for much.
He just wanted enough for Peony, Heyzel, Olive, and himself to live reasonably normal lives.
A house where the fridge and shelves were stocked with food,
where the rain didn’t leak in, and where he could hold Heyzel without needing a blanket to stay warm.
A place where, when you opened the window, fresh air came in instead of the stench of rotting garbage.
Where Olive could get around freely with prosthetics or a wheelchair,
where there was a facility nearby where Heyzel could receive proper treatment and education,
and where Peony could safely go out for an evening walk by herself.
Raimund ran a hand over his face.
No, really. He was genuinely sick of this street.
He wished the senile old man wandering barefoot, grabbing anyone and asking for money, would just disappear.
He wanted to escape the watchful eyes that scanned for anything worth stealing, or for any resident who seemed too happy.
But… to do that, petty pickpocketing like this just wouldn’t cut it.
He needed to find a more lucrative job.
The kinds of jobs he could do with no real education were painfully obvious, but still, he needed a different opportunity.
A big chance to escape this life, more miserable than the filth in the sewers.
But to wait for such an opportunity, he inevitably needed money, and the only way he could think of to get money quickly was pickpocketing.
Was he destined to be nothing more than a useless criminal?
Just like the orphanage Director always said,
was he just a useless being who only tarnished the shelter?
—
No, snap out of it.
Whether it’s pickpocketing or whatever, if he can support those three, that’s what matters.
Don’t be ungrateful, Raimund.
“First, I’ll scope out another residential sector, then head to the broker, check the price of painkillers…”
He reviewed the tasks he needed to finish today as he headed back to the tram station.
That was the last ordinary day Raimund remembered.
