(AN: Yeah, the previous chapter felt rushed after I read it properly. Sorry.)
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Creak...creak...creak...snap...crash.
The burrow filled with garbage fell into the pavement, spilling its contents, drawing the disdain and attention of the civilians and the shopkeepers.
"Hey! Watch it, ya bastard! People are going around!"
Scrambling, Flint bent and started picking up the trash in the burrow again while muttering a string of apologies.
"Sorry, sorry..."
The shopkeeper looked at Flint with disgust on his face.
"Tch. Why do filthy vermin like him still exist? They are bad for the business."
The shopkeeper turned and walked away from the scene back to his shop while the people around him avoided him and walked around him to pass.
While Flint was busy gathering the scattered trash, a person approached him with a similar dirty burrow as well.
"You good, pal?"
Looking up from the pile that he was gathering, Flint recognised the man who had bent down to help him gather the garbage.
"Thanks a lot, Genta. Shouldn't you worry about your pile? You should hurry to the collection point to get paid."
Genta, a rough-looking middle-aged man with greyish-white hair and creases in his face, chuckled and said with a kind voice of understanding, "Thanks for the concern, Takeo. There is no harm in helping a friend after all. We still have to do all we can to support ourselves with how things are, even after a decade of that in this cruel world."
"That it is. That it is. How are you doing, man? It's today after all..."
Genta's rough hands shook, and his mouth trembled, before he spoke with a heavy and raw voice with specks of unshed tears in his eyes, "It hurts, Takeo. It hurts a lot. Even after so many years, I cannot forget about them. They were taken away from me. I still dream about holding my stillborn after my wife died giving birth."
"I will be fine. I can take care of the rest. Go. Your family needs you."
After Flint encouraged Genta for some time, Genta left with his burrow to the collection point, trying to dry his tears as he went.
Flint continued to pile the rest of the spilt garbage in his burrow in the silence that followed with the street sounds as background noise, but he kept his ears sharp. After the split garbage had been collected, he looked at the front of the barrow to see that the front wheel axle had broken and was lying on the street.
Well, pure brute force it is.
Pulling out the empty sack from the burrow, Flint put all the garbage in it, hoisted and adjusted the weight over his shoulders accordingly and started walking towards the collection point.
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The garbage dump site lay on the outskirts of Pewter City, hidden in the shadow of a broken wall that formerly served as the perimeter of a League-held maintenance yard. The nameplate over the gate had rusted out, its letters barely readable at all: Waste Management Division – Kanto League Auxiliary. Nobody referred to it by name anymore. To the locals, it was simply "the pit."
The earth was uneven, covered in a thick crust of years of ash, gravel, and rotting waste. A few scattered trash cans lined up in crooked rows, lids missing or buckled by heat and time. The air reeked with the sour smell of rot and chemical runoff — not horrid, but insistent, like a memory that refused to leave.
A Grimer crawled slowly through the distant corner, its form covered in sludge. It stopped to smell at a shattered Poké Ball shell before flowing away. Two Machoke, contracted for heavy lifting, waited by the middle stack, their muscles coiled but their faces empty. They did not talk unless commanded.
There was a small shack off to one side — the pay station. Its windows were covered in grime, and its clerk inside hardly glanced up as employees came in. He stamped their cards with a dull clump, dispensed sparse coins, and went back to his newspaper in silence.
Flint came, the sack heavy on his back, and dumped it onto the pile with a grunt. No one applauded. No one thanked him. But he lingered there for a minute anyway, gasping for air, gazing at the sun rise behind the rooftops outside the wall.
This was the spot where the city's waste found its resting place — and where its forgotten men came to make just enough to live.
Flint collected his paycheck, no matter how meagre, and left.
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The graveyard was just beyond the perimeter of the collection point, divided from it by a crumbling stone wall speckled with moss and age. Flint moved at a slow pace, the sack now devoid, but his shoulders still burdened. The atmosphere here was not the same — quieter, cooler, with the whiff of old earth and wilted blooms.
Graves were stretched out in lopsided lines, some adorned with scarred stone, the others with plain wooden stakes. Some of them had offerings — old photographs, broken Poké Balls, hand-torn pieces of wood. Flint's boots crunched softly on the gravel path as he walked past them, nodding once to a name he knew.
The monument stone stood upright in the middle of the graveyard, its face inscribed with names that had faded along the edges long ago. A hairline fracture appeared on one side — not enough to shatter it, but sufficient to demonstrate time's lack of concern. Fresh flowers had been left at its foot, their colours standing in contrast to the weathered stone as if attempting to keep the past intact with petals.
Flint saw Genta sitting before a grave along the edge, his burrow sitting beside him. The man's back was bent, hands on his knees, staring at the headstone. Before it, there was a small bouquet of wildflowers, lopsided but clearly selected with great care.
Flint said nothing. He did not need to. He stood a few feet distant, observing the wind rustle the grass, observing Genta breathe as if every breath cost him something.
Minutes ticked by. The city murmured in the distance. A Pidgey flew over, then disappeared.
The wind blew through the trees, tossing the leaves like secrets. Flint glanced again at the memorial stone, then at the man standing next to him, and felt the weight of ten years push against his ribs.
As no acknowledgement from Genta had been received, he turned and left.
There were no words, no nods.
Crunch...crunch...crunch...crunch...
Only silence, and the fading sound of boots on gravel.
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After walking for some time away from the cemetery, Flint stopped walking briefly and then continued.
He walked through the streets with a silent gait, keeping his eyes on somebody while maintaining a distance to look like a normal poor person minding their own business and going about their day.
He followed that person to an alley, when his experience and sense of danger, dulled even after so many years, blared at him about something going on in that alley. Putting a hand inside one of his pants' pockets to curl around the Poké ball, he kept himself alert and walked in front of the alley's opening, prepared to be jumped.
He continued walking, without turning his head. His eyes, hidden by the dirty red beanie, briefly saw the silhouettes of some people in the alley.
After passing the alley, he felt being the centre of attention of a group of lookers from the back. Briefly gritting his teeth, he kept his pace so as not to expose himself.
There should be something to make him seem less suspicious...
There. An alley that led to a place he knew was still open to this day.
Turning around the corner to enter the alley, his sharp hearing picked up the sounds of footsteps behind him.
'Amateurs.'
He soon spotted the shop he was looking for. It was open. Sliding the rickety door, Flint entered the restaurant that had seen better days.
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Flint pushed the creaky door shut behind him and moved into the warm familiarity of the old shop. Morning light struggled through paper‑screened windows, darkening gold the steam‑thickened air. The air was redolent with broth and broiled fish, flavoured by the distant pungency of old wood and frying oil.
The waitress — same one who'd been here since before the war — looked up from cleaning a table.
"Morning, Takeo," she said, her voice still heavy with sleep.
"Miso, just like always," Flint spoke softly, drawing out a couple of coins and placing them on the counter. His voice was even, like a man saying only as much as the hour demanded.
He sat down, keeping his beanie low and his shoulders relaxed in the manner of a man accustomed to getting lost in a crowd. The stove hissed on behind the counter; a ladle clanged against the bottom of a pot. The ceiling fan crept round and round overhead, its blades fanning the air but never cooling it.
Footsteps entered behind him — two pairs — waiting a moment in the doorway before coming toward the rear. Flint did not look around; his fingers remained clenched about the hot tea the waitress had put in front of him, warmth spreading into the pain of his knuckles.
His breakfast arrived: mackerel grilled to a gleam in the light, a heap of rice, steaming miso soup at his elbow. He ate in slow, deliberate bites, head bent just far enough for the rising steam to soften the edges of the room.
By the time he'd placed his chopsticks on the plate, the two in the rear had left. The only indication that they'd been present was the gentle thud of the sliding door and the slight draught that trailed behind.
Flint sipped the rest of his tea, left the coins on the counter, and gave the waitress a brief nod as he headed out. The street outside was lighter now, the long shadows of morning extending to the hills.
He walked into them without urgency — just another man with a full belly and the rest of the day ahead.
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(AN: I think I did better here than in the previous chapter?)