Neon Light

The moonlight was glinted by the damp road and the steel signs exterior of the alley. There might be some heavy rain while I'm inside.

I looked up to see the shining stars.

Protruding in the background of the night, the towering neon buildings with their liveliness and colourful flying banners mocked us of our place.

Those vibrant and hopeful places were the 'Hive of District 67'.

Only the people with the heavily charged permits could go to that place. Or even better, live lavishly in that place.

While those who were unfortunate enough to live in poverty were shoved into this lower world; the place filled by alleys, shanty towns, and ruins that sprawled like a maze of veins within the City.

Thanks to this reality, two types of people were born since this slums of civilization was established.

The people who call these iron veins as Vascular, and the people who call this maze of alleys as Lowstreet.

Vascular and Lowstreet are the same thing, obviously. It was just a different way of saying it, because not every people saw the same thing that was implored by the others.

But funnily enough, you can actually immediately tell the personal ideology of someone by judging what word they used to refer to this place, although not totally accurate.

To those who chose to call this place as Vascular, they were the people who thought that they could rise and make profit from this veins of the behemoth of civilization, either for their own or others.

They saw this underworld part of the City as a necessity for the civilization that pumps nutrients for the worthy.

These types of people were opportunists, no matter where they lived.

And for those who chose to call this place as Lowstreet, they were the people whose mind had been opened to perceive the horrific nature and the unfairness that runs rampant through this horrible land.

They saw this part of the City as nothing but an unnecessary maze and purgatory, a place broken beyond repair. These people were mostly pessimistic realists.

Me?

I'm both.

"Oy, punk! Give us all of your belongings!"

Six people crowded the path that I took. All of them were wearing ragged clothing that were considered outdated, mostly retrieved from mountains of trash—tainted by dirt and wetness. Both men and women within their little group.

They had unkempt hairstyles, messy facial hairs, and a shabby posture fitting of the crude holding knives and improvised axes.

Their eyes were eager and dead, ready to gnaw their fangs onto me like a group of rats at the sight of a meaty treat.

Without a word, I hurled my spear on the shoulder of the man in front of me.

"AAARGHH!!"

"You folks surely need to clean your eyes better to differentiate a prey and a lion."

One of them charged forward, while the rest kept a distance.

"Hurraaah!"

The attack was predictable. I merely step aside and launch a heavy kick to send him back to the other four.

As one of them started to run away with a whimper and fear in their eyes, the other immediately followed suit. They even left the one I wounded with my spear to limply crawl away to the intersection of paths in this alley.

"Tch, we can't risk our own life after that!"

"Leave that hotblooded shithead!"

"HELP ME! I'M BLEEDING!"

Despite that it would've made my journey to my apartment longer, I respected their act of desperation by standing still and letting the wounded escape.

I ironically sighed at that moment. "Crawlers will always be Crawlers. The wounded one won't survive the midnight, and probably the others as they weren't mentally prepared to lunge at the meaty boar.

"Not like it was my problem, everyone has a tale to tell of their own, after all."

Crawlers are the people who search from dumpster to dumpster for food. The people without home, the people without identity, the lowest kind of title given by the will of the City. Barely organised, they hardly could be even called a Syndicate in this ragtag of a world.

They rarely unite as one, and rarely succeed in anything within their lives.

They became like this not because they wanted to, you know?

I continued my journey within the veins of the City, avoiding all mannerisms of huge threat such as the rowdy battle royale of madmen who strive for each other's loot in the right corner of the alley that I just passed.

The Streetlight Talons were standing by, too.

The crazed battle royale would not be interrupted as long as they didn't make any problem with the Syndicate that owns this area, and the dwellers that payed the protection fee of the aforementioned Syndicate.

In the dimly-lighted path, I noticed a shrivelling figure that was looking to the sky on the corner of this alley.

It was a child, possibly in her eleventh. Her clothing was not the kind that had been rotten from many years within the Lowstreet, and it was also not the kind that had just been merely discarded out from the Hive.

I didn't recognize her face either, must be from another District.

She had probably survived a couple of days within this hell as a child, which was an achievement in itself. Alas, it seemed like her time was up.

She had nothing to do with me. I could just go on with my business like any sensible person would do.

Indeed, I could just ignore her.

The sound of my footsteps startled her, making her dart her white gaze to me in a confusion and wariness. The hue of her blood red hair began to look sharp.

Her frowning eyes narrowed in confusion as I reached out with a food box in hand.

"You survived your early nights. Well done, this is your reward."