Kisho walked aimlessly, heading toward some unknown direction.
He did not know where he was going. He could only drag his chaotic body forward, step by step.
His head hurt terribly, and he felt terribly dizzy.
He was so hungry it felt as if all his internal organs were burning, but… strangely, he did not want to eat anything at all.
At the horizon, fiery red clouds burned across the sky.
Kisho raised his head and looked at the sun that was about to be dragged below the horizon, reflected in his eyes like blood and tears held within his pupils.
He did not know whether he was mourning himself, or mourning those who had died.
After leaving that unfinished building, how long he had walked and where he had passed through—he could not remember any of it now. Probably because even after the sun had sunk behind the mountains, all around him was still an endless stretch of yellow sand.
Kisho continued walking forward in a daze. Only after the world began to spin did he realize that he had fallen to the ground.
Did he fall?
He did not know. He only knew that he felt terrible—his whole body hurt as if needles had been driven into it, and at the same time burned with a scorching pain, as though being roasted by fire.
Was it because he had been sunburned?
Kisho thought blankly.
He tried to climb up, but his hands and feet did not respond at all.
"...This is the limit... huh..."
Thinking this, he sank unconsciously into pitch-black darkness.
...
Kisho was jolted awake by a violent bout of heart palpitations. Then he saw that he was lying on a rock, and from the arm hanging off to one side came an unbearable, piercing pain.
A disheveled man was squatting beside him, struggling to cut into his arm with a rusty dagger. Beneath the man's hand was a battered paper box wrapped in a plastic bag, already holding a shallow layer of bright red blood.
If he had woken up even a moment later, the dagger in that man's hand would have sliced into his artery.
When the man saw that Kisho had awakened, his pupils shrank abruptly, and he viciously stabbed the dagger toward Kisho's chest.
"Clang—!"
The dagger plunged into the rock behind Kisho, the blade curling and chipping, even the wooden handle breaking off and flying away.
Kisho rolled off the rock, bracing himself, but the dizziness brought on by the sudden movement made it impossible for him to stand. He could only barely steady himself, half-kneeling on the ground, breathing heavily in low gasps.
The man threw away the ruined dagger, cursing as he grabbed a stick from the side and walked toward Kisho again.
Kisho saw the look in that man's eyes—it was not the look one gave a human being, but the look used on livestock. An ungrateful beast daring to resist—damn it!
Kisho could not understand why that man was looking at him like this.
But he no longer wanted to think about it.
He slowly raised one hand.
The sunlight overhead was brilliant, as if it meant to scorch all filth in the world to death beneath the blazing sun.
A streak of fire dragged a smoky tail and tore through the air.
"Bang—!"
...
The disheveled man collapsed to the ground clutching one charred arm, staring at Kisho in terror, as if looking at a monster.
The agonized wailing caused by the searing pain was crushed tightly between his teeth, so hard that he even bit through his own lips.
But Kisho only squatted on the ground, retching again and again.
After retching for quite a while, aside from consuming most of his already meager remaining strength, Kisho's condition did not improve at all.
Meanwhile, the man slowly struggled to his feet and picked up the stick from the ground. Even though his entire body was trembling, he still forced himself forward, step by step, closing in on Kisho. The closer he got, the more ragged his breathing became, his eyes widening until they looked as though they might bulge out of their sockets.
As he approached, the faint smell of scorched flesh drifting from his burned arm made the nausea that had already weakened inside Kisho surge violently again.
"Why... haven't you given up yet—?"
Kisho could not understand.
"Is the price of one arm still not enough to make him retreat?"
No matter how he thought about it, he could not understand.
"We have no grudge, we've never met—why must it be... a fight to the death?"
Kisho thought of his fainting; thought of his sudden awakening; thought of the craving and greed in that man's eyes as he drained his blood; thought of the gaze that looked upon him like livestock being led to slaughter.
He understood.
"So that's it... there was never any so-called hatred. He was just 'slaughtering livestock.'"
"So in this place, people can also be food... and a source of water."
He slowly lifted his head and looked at that man—looked at the "teacher" who had given him this lesson.
But the man's footsteps abruptly halted the moment their eyes met.
...
Coren saw that the little brat who, to him, had been no different from a slab of meat—at some unknown point, the kid's eyes had changed.
One was gray-blue, the other silver-blue—and that silver-blue eye was so blue it felt hollow and empty, as if one's soul could be lost within that blue, sinking into the abyss, sinking into hell.
That kind of color... was not something human eyes should possess.
It was only the color of the pupils that had changed, but the entire person transformed—from a docile lamb waiting to be slaughtered, into something utterly terrifying.
Coren had done plenty of "scavenger" work, and had picked up many people who were unconscious—people who would never wake up again. After draining their blood, he would skin them, break them down into organs. The bones could be ground into small knives or fashioned into other weapons. If the meat was still decent, it could even be sent to the market to exchange for some Jenny.
There had been times when things went wrong, but he always managed to handle them properly; even if he couldn't, running away could still count as a last resort.
But this was the first time Coren had suffered such a huge loss at the hands of a child.
He had paid the price of one arm. He was furious—but he also saw even greater value in this kid.
This kid had the ability to "summon fireballs."
If he could seize this opportunity to capture the kid, whether sending him to the arena in District Four or to the church in District Two, he could exchange him for a substantial reward. But if he failed to capture him, then the arm he had lost would have been paid for nothing—a complete loss.
But Coren looked into the kid's eyes.
Then his entire body began to tremble violently. Jenny, rewards—compared to his own life, those things were as useless and cheap.
He felt a shudder rise from the depths of his soul. His soul was screaming: run... run—!
But aside from staring fixedly at that kid, he could do nothing else. He did not even dare look away—if he maintained eye contact, perhaps the monster from the abyss would delay pouncing on him to tear him apart.
The stick slipped from Coren's hand and rolled onto the ground.
Because Kisho lowered his head and stopped looking at him.
In the next moment, as if granted a great reprieve, Coren struggled to turn around, clutching his arm, and fled headlong in the direction far away from Kisho, never once looking back.
Kisho watched the gradually disappearing figure, then collapsed to the ground, drained of strength.
The hand that could condense a ball of fire with just a light clench was tightly clenched into a fist.