Rain poured down in torrents.
Howling gales swept past, interwoven with booming thunder that lit up the night, circling and churning high above the sky.
"Splash!"
A pair of worn-out leather shoes, used for who knew how long, came down hard into a puddle by the roadside.
Filthy water instantly sprayed up, mixed with black, fishy-smelling flecks of mud.
Joey wrapped himself tightly in the coarse linen coat that hung over his body, as wide as a cloak.
His head was lowered, hiding his cheeks beneath the hood.
But his feet never stopped for a moment.
He did not even need to raise his head to find the way. Like a sewer rat, he threaded through the maze of alleys with practiced ease.
By the occasional moonlight leaking through the rain and mist, and with his fairly good eyesight, he could clearly sense that as he continued deeper in, the hard, solid stone-brick pavement beneath his feet gradually turned into rough, soft gravel, and finally into a muddy dirt road.
In the corner of his vision, the neat brick-and-tile houses on either side of the road, which had once glowed with warm lamplight, had also given way to dilapidated wooden huts that were only vague outlines in the dark, and narrow thatched sheds swaying and groaning in the wind and rain.
He did not stop.
His home was not here.
Thinking back to many years ago, Joey had once had a place that could more or less make him feel at ease.
But after his parents died, that place had become his uncle's love nest instead, while he was the one who seemed like an outsider.
There was nothing worth missing.
He did not know how much time had passed.
Only when the night beneath the raging storm grew darker