Chapter 1

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Chapter 1: Surviving Together

"Hey! My hair!"

"Ah, not again... Why is this the first thing I deal with every morning…" Justin groaned as he awoke from his hangover, not even bothering to find his glasses. He first needed to untangle the hair wrapped around his arm and elsewhere too; it was everywhere. The bathtub was filled with various sizes and ages of bullet casings, piling up like small mountains. Sky-blue hair flowed like mountain streams, winding, spreading, tangling, and twining.

"You really should cut this hair... Get off me first."

"But you're still lying on it!"

"Alright, let me remember how we used to do this." Justin lay on the "bed" of bullets, feeling the weight on his chest, suddenly realizing the bathtub had become smaller. No, they had grown.

Since he started hiding there with Jinx from Silco's pursuit—how many years had it been? Three, five years? Justin glanced at the girl's flat chest. Time seemed not to have left any traces here, making it hard to judge its passage.

"But... how does your hair grow like weeds? Hey, you used to have nice short hair when you were a good girl, and now it's nearly touching your ankles."

"Cut the nonsense! Hurry and braid it, let's start working!" Jinx sat on a chair swinging back and forth. The old wooden chair creaked with her movements, ready to fall apart at any moment.

"Then stop moving." Justin held the girl's head still with his chin. This long blue hair had grown in his hands for years. A simple braid, he could do it with his eyes closed.

"Stay in today; we still have canned goods left from Tuesday's heist in the Upper City. Stay home and study the semi-automatic rifle we snatched. Your Fishbones is outdated and needs a little tweaking."

"Fishbones is the strongest! It will never be outdated!" Jinx suddenly jumped up from the chair, spiraling in the air, her legs locking around Justin's neck as she sat atop his head.

"And you? What are you doing today?"

"I'm meeting the old lady for some business… Get off me; you're too heavy!"

"I want to go too!"

"It's not a place for kids."

"But you promised to always be with me!"

Ah, damn… Justin's heart skipped a beat. This crazy girl always said nonsensical things, but he feared her condition might be acting up again. Or maybe, this was her normal self?

"Okay, I won't go anywhere."

You can never figure out a lunatic's mind—no matter how long you've been with them. The Undercity doesn't even have a decent doctor, let alone a psychologist. Justin couldn't get any reliable medical advice, so he just went along with her madness. Dim lights, dark lines, old accessories, broken dolls. Justin sat at the table with them, repeating the distorted memories of childhood through watercolor paintings over and over.

Mylo really doesn't look like this... Justin suppressed the urge to grumble, playing house with Jinx in such a dismal setting. When a sane person stays with a lunatic, it doesn't make the lunatic sane; rather, they get pulled into madness. If not for his reincarnation, Justin would surely have mental issues by now.

"Dinner's ready—can I request not to eat with these guys? Just us."

"Like a date?"

"Like a date."

Lunch was simple—or maybe lavish? A bottle of mineral water, a can of beef. And nothing else. Even as a transmigrator, Justin ate worse now than he did in his previous life. It seemed like he was living backwards.

In the Undercity, a can of beef was already considered a feast compared to what others had, at least it wouldn't harm the body.

"Ah! I want cheesecake!" sighed Justin for the eight thousand seven hundred and sixty-second time.

"I really need to go out. Today we'll finalize our target, scout tomorrow, and act the day after." Justin's nature was always to plan each step thoroughly, which was how they had, time and again, managed to swipe some coins from the pockets of the elites and make a successful getaway. However, this time, he wasn't preparing to cause trouble in the Upper City.

Navigating through the intricate streets and stepping over the greenish, moldy sewage, Justin opened a door only to be hit by a wave of pungent, cheap perfume that made him sneeze multiple times.

"Quite the rare guest," greeted a figure wearing a fox mask, with a long pipe in hand, tall and gender indiscernible, rasping, "I knew that skinny little girl couldn't satisfy you. So? Interested in me? First time's half off."

"…I'm here for the old lady."

"Oh? You have such heavy tastes."

"Take it easy on the shimmer, Isaac; it's muddling your brain," Justin rolled his eyes, bumping him aside with his shoulder. Isaac, unbalanced, fell to the ground. He wasn't annoyed and didn't even bother to get up, lying at the doorway, propping his head with one hand while puffing away.

Along both sides were small rooms separated by almost transparent pink curtains, with two or more bodies inside, lost in hedonism, entangled with each other. Justin wasn't an upstanding person, yet any time he had romantic notions, that sickly sweet smell would invade his nostrils, corroding his nerves.

The farther he went, the fainter the nauseating scent became. It wasn't because the deeper patrons were being discreet but because they used a higher-quality shimmer. Reaching the far end, he opened the door, and a sharp tobacco smell wafted in, just as suffocating, but it created a separate space inside.

"Ah, it's rare someone comes to see this old lady," said a small, frail elder in the room, her limbs skinny like chicken claws, her face lined with wrinkles. Since Justin was a child, she'd always looked this way, making him sometimes wonder if she was a Yordle.

"I hear you and Jinx have been causing quite the stir up in the Upper City? You two are becoming famous."

"For our line of work, being famous isn't good news," Justin sighed, his head aching at the thought. "I had planned everything so well, but Jinx insisted on making a big scene. We barely got away after it went awry."

"You chose to bring that troublemaker into your home," the old lady spoke slowly, time seemingly meaningless to her. "You like pretty little girls? I have plenty here."

"None of your girls know how to make bombs," Justin shrugged. That disastrous night had changed many people and many things, but it hadn't influenced Justin much. He'd always thought Jinx had some loose screws in her head and tried to change a few things, but God always seemed to have a sense of humor.

Justin had now entirely given in, having neither plans to comfort her nor to change her. Let her be mad; this world wasn't normal anyway.