Could a Flower of Purity Really Bloom in a Filthy Mire?
(An extra chapter for our brother "Midsummer's Recklessness," 3/5)
A-Cha, covered in blood, stared at the scene before him in utter shock.
This should have been three connected underground warehouses, but the walls between them had been dug through, joining them into one enormous space.
There were still plenty of wooden crates stacked in the corners, but people filled the place. From the entrance platform where the three little players stood, they could take in the layout of the entire area. It had been turned into a compact, crowded, yet orderly shelter.
People were packed tightly together. The place seemed incredibly noisy, but they appeared to have grown used to living in such cramped conditions.
Some men were digging into the corners with tools to create more usable space. In the crowd, people had built crude "huts" out of planks salvaged from dismantled crates, dividing the area into small cubicles and making the most of the limited room.
People had even hung empty crates from the ceiling of the warehouse, like tree houses.
They were "living quarters" set aside for the children, with handwoven rope ladders for them to climb up and down.
Coo-Coo Chicken, standing beside A-Cha, even spotted a place in the warehouse where a pot was set over a fire, simmering something.
If not for the strange surroundings, they might have thought they'd returned to the survivor camp.
Judging by their clothes and appearance, these people living in the enormous underground warehouse were clearly ordinary citizens of Cadman City. Just as many people in the outer district had fled into the sewers when the Astral Rift attacked, the inner-district residents had made the same choice.
But it was obvious they'd been much luckier than those who'd