Sometimes, to run errands for Granny Marta, and also to familiarize myself with the area, I'd go out with that girl for what she called "field-release drills." With her as my guide, my range of movement expanded a lot.
The usual scene went like this: an orange-yellow figure in baggy work pants stitched full of pockets, nimble as a monkey, vaulting up and down through dim pipes and scaffolding.
And then a second figure—grey as a sewer rat, meaning me—stumbling after her, occasionally letting out one or two shrieks that sounded like imminent death by falling.
"Faster, big guy! The good stuff doesn't wait!"
She would hang upside down from a suspended pipe, waving at me. Her messy orange hair whipped through the steam like a burning flame.
By the time I was braced against a rusted railing, gagging into a foul ditch, she had already expertly used her homemade electromagnetic fishing rod to yank three fat leeches out of the roiling sludge, where poisonous bubbles kept popping.
Those disgusting things—metallic cold sheen, suction cups and all—curled obediently into rings in her small, calloused palm, waiting to be brought back to Granny Marta as treatment material for lead poisoning.
And while she stuffed those horrors into the tin canister at her waist, she was humming a song so off-key it might as well have been from another planet, her expression relaxed and cheerful—like she wasn't scavenging in a sewer of filth, but taking a spring picnic on a meadow.
"Look! Ghostfire bugs!"
Deep inside an abandoned ventilation shaft, she suddenly cried out in excitement.
I followed her pointing finger and saw a few specks of dim, ghostly blue light drifting slowly between heaps of rotting mechanical wreckage. They were some kind of mutated insects, their tails giving off a chilling glow.
She carefully trapped one under a glass bottle and presented it to me like treasure.
The cold blue light reflected on her grimy little face, and in that instant, the wariness, the streetwise calculation, even the harshness in her eyes all vanished—leaving only a child's pure curiosity.
For a moment, I suddenly thought she was actually rather pretty.
Even in an abyss filled with sludge, life still struggled to bloom in its own colors.
And yet that color was so fragile.
When she lifted the bottle higher, her oversized sleeve slipped down a little. In the faint blue glow, I saw it clearly—her thin arm, so slender it looked like it would snap with a bend, was covered in dense needle marks.
The skin around them was a horrifying shade of bruised blue-purple, and in some places it had already ulcerated and scabbed over.
It looked exactly like the arm you'd see in an anti-drug propaganda film—an advanced addict's arm.
"Don't look!"
Like she'd been burned, she jerked her hand back, yanked her sleeve down, and covered those marks as tightly as she could. Her bright, cunning green eyes instantly fogged with panic and shame, like a wounded little animal caught with its injury exposed.
"This… this is from testing drugs for the Red Scorpion Gang…" She lowered her head, her voice tiny and trembling. "They need 'lab rats' for new stuff, and they pay well… but Granny Marta says my blood can neutralize seventeen kinds of toxins now. I'm amazing, right?"
She looked up and forced an ugly, strained grin, trying to claw her way back to her usual I-don't-care attitude.
I stared at her, and it felt like something had grabbed my heart and twisted hard.
Drug testing…
In a place where human life is cheaper than weeds, what did these kids have to go through just to stay alive?
When she smiled and bragged about being immune to poisons, how much fear was she hiding behind that grin?
I didn't speak. I didn't know what I could possibly say.
I only reached out and gently patted the top of her head.
"Yeah. Amazing. You're the toughest Little Spark in the whole sewer."
In that moment, I finally understood why Granny Marta said the kid "wasn't bad at heart."
In this dark forest, everyone has to grow fangs and claws to survive. But some people use their claws to eat others alive.
And some people's claws exist only to protect the part of their heart that hasn't gone completely cold yet.
Days passed like that—ordinary, and yet terrifying.
I got used to being jolted awake by frantic knocking at the door, then rolling out of bed to help Granny Marta carry in blood-soaked stretchers.
I got used to chewing metal grit found in my soup without changing expression, then washing it down with a mouthful of "Ghostfire Bug Brew"—Little Spark's homemade drink. It tasted like a rusty lemon, but it snapped you awake instantly.
I got used to hearing patients shout when they left, "Kid, catch!"—and then tossing me a screwdriver, half a pack of gauze, or a piece of candy wrapped in oil paper and still smeared with machine grease.
I even got used to, after every "outing," combining whatever strange materials I'd scavenged into little trinkets and leaving them on the clinic counter.
Oh, did I forget to mention it? My hands have always been good with tools.
For example: a hair clip bent from an old spring, with thin wire twisted into a little flower.
A small bottle of "nail polish" mixed from fluorescent mushrooms and waterproof coating.
Or a charcoal sketch—because paper big enough and clean enough is hard to come by—of a husky wearing a respirator mask, squatting among a wolf pack with a completely bewildered expression.
The next day, there would often be something else on the counter as a return gift: half a greasy biscuit, a small roll of clean gauze, a jar of clean water, and so on…
Until one day.
I woke up to a clamor of loud voices.
Still half-asleep, my mind like a bowl of sludge, I staggered into the clinic's front room to see which blind idiot dared to wreck someone's sleep at "dawn" (even though there is no morning here).
The moment I lifted the curtain, I froze.
The front room was packed.
Granny Marta, stern-faced, brows drawn tight as if wrestling with the universe's hardest problem.
A gaunt woman with a child on her back, her face streaked with tears, yet her whole body trembling with excited disbelief.
And on the clinic bed, an injured worker—weak, but grinning as he stared at me.
He looked familiar. Like the one brought in yesterday…
Before I could understand what was happening, a blur of orange-yellow slammed into me like a cannonball and stopped right in my face.
"How did you do it?! Big guy!"
Little Spark's pale face was so close it nearly pressed against my nose. Her eyes were wide as saucers, and she sprayed spittle all over me as she shouted.
"How did you do it!?"
"W-What…?" I mumbled, dazed, reflexively leaning back. "What did I do? Did I smash another bottle again?"
"Rustbone disease, you idiot!"
Little Spark spun around and jabbed a finger at the worker who was cautiously testing movement in his arm. Her voice went sharp enough to pierce the carriage roof.
"Rustbone disease! The worker everyone said was done for yesterday, the one who was just waiting to die! He's alive!"
She turned back to me, looking at me with raw worship, then jerked her chin toward Granny Marta and loudly announced in a tone that was both gleefully smug and absurdly proud:
"You proved the old witch wrong!"
(End of Chapter)
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