Chapter 02
Raimund wandered the streets for a while.
Before going to launder the credits, he wanted to double-check if there were any decent pickpocketing targets around.
He couldn’t go to the 3rd Residential Districtāhe’d just hit it. The victim was probably already looking for him.
That left only the 1st or 2nd Residential Districts.
In the 1st Residential District, even people out for a casual stroll wore gold and pearls. Going there would make him stand out like a stain on a white tablecloth.
So he had no choice but to go to the comparatively less extravagant 2nd Residential District.
He took a red unmanned tram from the 3rd Residential District, transferred to a purple tram, and finally arrived at the 2nd Residential District.
As people dressed neatly in coats to ward off the chilly fog disembarked, Raimund scrambled to follow them.
Raimund, who didn’t even have a decent outer garment, let alone a coat, quickly scanned his surroundings. He grabbed a few discarded newspapers from a trash can at the tram stop and some free magazines from a rack near a bench.
After carefully unfolding the crumpled newspapers and tucking the magazines under one arm, he looked reasonably like a newspaper and magazine delivery boy.
He left the main street and headed toward the residential area. He hadn’t been to the 2nd Residential District very often, so he wanted to get a general lay of the land before getting to work.
The 2nd Residential District was a world apart from the 5th. The streets were clean, and although there was a slight haze of fog, the atmosphere was calm and peaceful.
The streetlights and roadside trees were all well-maintained, and there were no incidents of someone causing a noisy disturbance in the middle of the road.
In the alleys, there were recycling bins instead of broken bottles or crushed cans, and the walls of every building were clean, save for a bit of moss.
Two police officers patrolling the streets at a leisurely pace approached Raimund.
“Making a delivery?”
“Oh, yes. You’re always working hard.”
“Be careful out there.”
Raimund stepped aside to avoid obstructing them and walked far enough away that the officers’ gazes wouldn’t reach him.
Passersby chatted normally and cheerfully. The clothes they wore were immaculate, with no loose seams. In a word, it was a perfectly peaceful and affluent residential district.
The houses lining the edge of the street seemed five times larger than those in the 5th Residential District, which had olive, peony, and hazel trees.
Small front yards and gardens, shiny black iron fences. Splendid granite steps and dark-colored front doors that gave a neat impression.
The narrow, tall windows on either side of the doors were spotless, sometimes obscured by white curtains.
The houses, with their irregular pattern of white bricks set between the red ones, were… beautiful. Truly.
Raimund didn’t have any major regrets about his own modest, grimy lottery-winning house, but seeing this long row of mansions, which might as well have been palaces compared to his own home, stirred a different feeling within him.
Raimund had grown up in an orphanage in the 4th Residential District. The facilities there were so poor they were practically scraping rock bottom.
Thirteen children crammed into a room the size of a snot, sleeping together. Meals consisted of green potatoes and a grayish-white paste made from artificial protein.
The director always had cheap liquor and headache pills on hand. He only cleaned up his act briefly when an inspection was due from somewhere.
At other times, he would obsessively control the children, forcing them to perform incomprehensible tasks in a high-handed manner.
If they didn’t obey, they received severe punishment. Getting beaten, simply called ‘corporal punishment,’ was a given, and there were also creative punishments like the ‘closet penalty’ or ‘reflection time.’
Despite being a place that left him with nothing but bad memories, Raimund felt strange when he thought about the orphanage.
It made him angry, but at the same time, it made him want to cry.
The director received government subsidies in exchange for running the orphanage, so he had a duty to care for the children.
But the director failed to do so. No, it would be more accurate to say he chose not to.
The old, liquor-soaked director would hurl abusive insults at the children like a broken record.
āYou filthy bastards. Scum like you eat away at the shelter. Fatherless brats, you’ll end up dying in the gutter without a penny to your name. You have no value whatsoever. Got that? You idiots aren’t worth a single credit.
ā¦Bringing that up again just brings me down.
While walking, he looked up at a particularly elegant house he was passing.
It was a three-story house. A lot of white paint and stone. The living room curtains were open, perhaps to let in as much light as possible despite the limited sunlight.
Beyond the window, he could see a small figure.
A person with long, white hair tied back. Someone who had been nodding, apparently engaged in conversation inside, suddenly turned toward the window they had their back to.
*Ah, I’m going to look suspicious.*
Raimund hurriedly left the front of that house.
Yeah, there are days like this.
Getting hit from the morning, stealing money, exchanging a sham fee for safety, going to a residential district full of nice, upscale houses, and only ruining my mood.
Raimund lowered his head and adjusted his hat. He couldn’t afford to dwell on such thoughts. He had to move as much as possible to save face in front of his ‘family.’
The world is never fair to anyone, so isn’t it only natural that someone with nothing like him has to run around on his own two feet?
***
With that resolution, he scouted for opportunities for hours, but all his efforts were in vain.
When he found a place with somewhat lax security, there was no one around. When he went to a place with people, there were always one or two police officers. If he started trouble in a place like that, the police would naturally get involved. He wanted to avoid that.
Raimund realized anew just how security-conscious people were in the 2nd Residential District.
In the end, he wandered the park without any gain, boarded the red tram, and let out a sigh.
Yeah, he’d already had his fill of luck that morning. A pickpocket is only lucky once a day, right?
Comforting himself with such thoughts, Raimund rested his tired legs from walking all day and watched the small artificial sun within the dome begin to set.
Arriving at the 5th Residential District, Raimund didn’t head straight home.
His destination was on the outskirts of the district, near the border dangerously close to the closed-off industrial zone.
Going around the back of an almost completely dilapidated building, he saw a small shed door.
Raimund slipped the credit stick he had stolen through the crack in the door.
ā*Thunk.*
“Raimund. I’d like to cash this in.”
There was no reply. Raimund leaned against the wall next to the door and looked up at the sky.
After about ten minutes, a disposable credit stick silently slid out through the gap under the door.
The person on the other side whispered to Raimund, who picked up the stick.
“You made a big haul. How are things these days?”
“Some days are like this, some days are like that.”
An ambiguous voice, impossible to tell if it was male or female.
He suspected they might have a voice modulator implanted in their vocal cords, but it was just a guess. Raimund pocketed the stick containing the precious credits.
“You could make a lot more if you wanted to. If you just went to the Economic District.”
“I won’t go. How would I know what would happen to me there?”
“Yet you don’t seem to be looking for any honest work you could do in the Commercial District either.”
“I told you. Even if I found a job, I’d starve before the first payday.”
Raimund didn’t exactly enjoy this petty thievery either.
He had all his limbs intact, so he could do any physical labor.
But the reason he didn’t have a ‘proper job’ was simple.
And the places where a nobody like Raimund with no education or background could get hired were obvious.
Could he survive on the salary they offered? Could he get an advance?
No, first of all, would there even be a crazy shop owner willing to give a guy from the 5th Residential District a normal job?
Of course, that might just be his own excuse.
Maybe if he thought harder, he could find a way to get a more decent, legal job.
But Raimund had to send 300 credits every week to the orphanage director as a ‘token of pure gratitude,’ on top of his rent.
He also needed a considerable amount of money to maintain his house, which was breaking down here and there due to aging.
And what about his family? Hazel’s meals? Peony’s shirts, Olive’s painkillersāthey don’t just spring out of the ground.
Raimund shrugged and tried to wrap up the conversation.
Then, the voice spoke.
“Oh, really? Then you’ll be happy to hear this. Interested in doing a simple errand for some payment?”
“An errand? What kind of errand?”
“I heard it from a broker I know. I don’t know the details, but if you’re interested, I can put you in touch with the client.”
Ah, Raimund thought he understood.
Crime happens within the British Shelter, of course. Not petty crimes like pickpocketing or shoplifting, but serious, severe crimes.
He himself wasn’t involved in that world, but he had heard that they sometimes hire outsiders to evade the watchful eyes of various surveillances.
They recruit unrelated civilians to act as couriers or messengers, supposedly.
“I don’t want to get that deeply involved. I can’t afford to catch the police’s attention either. If I get caught, my house gets redistributed to someone else.”
“That’s a possibility.”
“How much is the payment that you’d come to me with this offer?”
Raimund asked without much thought.
The voice from beyond the door paused for a moment before answering.
“50,000 credits.”
Hearing the answer, Raimund felt as if someone had struck him on the crown of his head.
50,000? 50,000 credits?
That was roughly equivalent to 25,000 pounds in old currency. An amount Raimund had never even imagined. That seemed like more than a simple errand?
Raimund asked, full of suspicion.
“You’re looking for someone to run an errand, right? Not a healthy person who can afford to lose a kidney?”
“The client is in such a hurry to find someone that the request reached me through several channels. You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. If you agree, I’ll get a small brokerage fee. As a token of my gratitude, I might be able to reduce the commission for exchanging your credits to old currency.”
Raimund wasn’t confident this job was safe. The payment was too good.
It didn’t seem like a simple task of just dropping something off at an unknown location. If the payment had been around 5,000 credits, Raimund would have happily accepted.
The amount was so large that it actually made him hesitant. The job was surely as dangerous as the pay. Raimund was about to refuse.
He was definitely about to, but at that very moment, he had to go and remember the three-story house he’d seen in the 2nd Residential District.
A beautiful house. A home with a clean yard and a spacious living room. An elegant house that sparkled even under the dim artificial sunlight.
With 50,000 credits, he could loaf around for years.
He wouldn’t have to pickpocket anymore.
He could buy Peony a new shirt.
He could get Olive a prosthetic leg or a wheelchair, or some other assistive medical device, and buy him stronger painkillers.
Hazel? What if he could provide proper treatment for the child who had trouble speaking ever since being hit on the head with a bottle thrown by the director?
What if he could create an environment where they could receive a proper education?
Hazel wouldn’t have to grow up to be a petty thief like him.
Peony and Olive wouldn’t have to live in the mire of the 5th Residential District.
He himself could plan a future honestly, instead of through stupid theft.
A future worthy of a nineteen-year-old,
He could grasp everything he had dreamed of.
*If only this time, just this once, I can do this one thing right.*
Raimund responded to the broker, whose name he didn’t even know, on the other side of the door.
“I’ll do it. What do I need to do?”
