ID: K.YMJ_v̸̢̩͋̓ȏ̵̭̞̓̿̏i̶̧̦̱͉͑ḋ̶̢̢̲̞ent/re
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>ACCESS GRANTED, TIME RESTRICTION REMOVED
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>ACCESS TO M.E.M DISK I ENABLED
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"If you are born without a purpose and spend years looking for something that you don't even know the word and definition for, then why are you alive?"
Dea was the only person to answer a question I asked. Everyone else at the brothel seemed to either not hear me, ask me to get something without answering, or just changed the conversation when I asked something. They kept me fed and around because I was good at running around and getting things quietly, the perfect housekeeper for a place like here, unseen yet immediate. I'd become desensitized to what happened at the White Sea (the name of the brothel I lived and worked at) at a young age. I was to restock the rooms at the end of every session, more water, lube, replace anything that was broken, report damage to the front desk, that sort of thing. Every conversation was always either "Kuro, go get the hazel switch from storage, I've got one of those guys again" or "Hey kid, go tell the front desk to sue my customer for damages. The wall's broken."
After work, everything got boring. There was nothing to do but sit on the roofs of nearby buildings and listen and watch. If I was lucky, there would be a gunfight on the ground and I would have the best seat in the house for viewing the pretty bursts of red and white. I'd do that for hours every day after my shift, stand on the roofs made of crumbling tiles and rusting corrugated metal sheets and listen to the screams and laughter. Everyone else's lives and deaths, anyone of the Void that I could observe without consequence, were my entertainment.
One day, I got a light workload and had way too much time to burn, an extra 4 hours that should've been work. There was nothing left to do but walk around the city and maybe cause some trouble, something I couldn't afford to do at work. Going by foot I viewed as too easy and dangerous (no one cared if you were a kid, they'd fuck you up regardless), so I jumped from rooftop to rooftop, looking for some hapless idiot to harass without being seen. I was sitting at the top of a run-down liquor store, wondering if I should steal all of the money in the crunched-up metal box the sleazy little oil-rag of a proprietor the store had been trying to pass of as a cash register or just set up a little game of hide-and-seek with the money being the one hiding and the owner of the store seeking and about to jump down to wreak havoc when I was spotted. A woman, dressed like they had some semblance of money looked me in the eye and mouthed something, probably "come down".
I should mention how her eyes could probably catch you (or anyone, really) off guard with their creepiness.
There's a thing we have down here in the Void called "basilisk eyes", named for this one girl from one of our oldest stories with that name and eyes. The kind that can freeze and/or spook if you glanced at them without being prepared to see. Usually luminous, those types of eyes were unnatural colours and were likely to appear on those with ether affinity. The more vibrant, the more powerful. They look a bit hypnotic and pretty, in an otherworldly way, along with being creepy to many. People tell me my right eye is a basilisk eye, usually as an insult, as in "Don't fucking look at me, damn one-eyed basilisk kid." Maybe it's because mine was less of the "compelling" side and more on the "creepy". Anyways, I'm kinda grateful to it. It made it so not many people would look at me for very long to plan something unfortunate, a valuable trait down here. I've only looked in an unbroken mirror once as a kid, about 6 years old, and deemed that mine was rather weak, proof that one of my parents must have had them but didn't pass much of it to me so I only have one. I don't even remember it's colour. All I can remember is having fringe at 5 and having terrible eyesight in one eye.
This person was someone with genuine basilisk eyes, silvery and basically glowing with some form of malice. Yep, true basilisk eyes, I say!
Anyways, this woman looked up, saw me, said something, and I just bailed. I didn't even decide to try and understand what she said. I ran all the way back to the Sea and slept the rest of the day off. As I ran, I wondered why I did so. I'd looked at death and decay foy years, why was I running from something that seemed harmless? I didn't know it was the Ruler that I'd run from, all I knew was that my fight-or-flight was triggered and I decided that certain death was about to get me if I didn't leave right the fuck then.
The next day, I decided to people-watch in the lobby of the Sea for extra fun to make up for my wasted break hours from yesterday. I sat up on one of the ornate cabinets displaying the various merchandise we sold when lo and behold, the scary lady from yesterday walks in. And she immediately spotted me again. First she wandered about the lobby, looking at anything shiny that caught her eye, walked to the middle of the room, and then turned to my hiding spot and motioned for me to come down.
"Hey, kid. Get down, I gotta ask you something." I hesitated. I would've bolted again, too, if the owner of the Sea, Cherry, wasn't manning the front desk and mouthed at me to obey. She's called that because it's the only name she gives anyone, and no one alive knows her real one. No one here has a real name, when they found me I hadn't one, and most who work here change their names. Cherry also apparently clawed her way up from the bottom of the business to become the heiress of the property when the old owner died. She sometimes does jobs that she used to do just for the hell of it. She seemed rather fond of managing the front desk, so I'm on good terms with her, and plus, she's one of the few threads of connection keeping me alive and fed. I couldn't really throw that away, so I do whatever she tells me to do.
"Don't show weakness. It'll get you killed."
"Agree with those with power, do whatever, whore yourself out if you need to. If you don't, you die."
"Make it obvious that no one should even bother with fucking with you. It'll save you the problems."
"Don't be noticeable, but don't be translucent either. That'll keep you alive."
"Everything rests on your honour. Defeat is the worst dishonour to suffer. You either claim victory as yours or death claims you as its' property."
Those were the rules I lived by. They always managed to keep me safe, alive, fed, maybe even entertained. They always interlocked and agreed on everything. Now they were all conflicting with each other. Following power would get me killed. Obedience would lead to admitting defeat. I was no longer just a shadow, I was called out and given the spotlight. A rock and a hard place, death and dishonour, and a high chance I'd end up rotting in some alleyway either way.
Death, dishonour, death, dishonour, death...
Dishonour. Honour can be gained, however hard it might be, there's still a chance.
Life cannot once you've run out.
So I came down.
She led me away and to the back of the Sea. I remembered this one time I watched a magpie bird pull up a worm and no sooner after it ate it another swarm of birds descended on the poor magpie and scratched, pecked, and bludgeoned it to death. It was a waste. There aren't many birds in the Void, and too many worms and bugs. I hated both. And plus, I was a "magpie child", sickly pale skin yet shadows somehow follow me around, and I felt I was about to be bled to death for trying to keep myself fed.
Then she turned to me and told me something I won't forget for all the days of my life.