Zaunite Community

Li Wei lived in the Zaunite Community, right next to the Piltover Factory District. It was still a fair distance from Piltover University, which sat in the Rich District.

The Zaunite Community, as the name suggested, was a neighborhood where Zaunites gathered. Most of the people living here were Zaunite Apprentices who weren't even Piltover citizens, along with a handful of Zaunite immigrants—or "New Piltovans," as they preferred to call themselves—who had spent their entire savings to obtain Piltover citizenship but couldn't yet afford to move elsewhere.

In short, the people here were all poor folks from Zaun.

And Piltover prided itself on community autonomy. When a neighborhood was filled with nothing but poor people, it naturally turned into a "ghost town."

There wasn't even basic public services here. No one swept the streets, no one maintained the roads. Hospitals, schools, and public transit were all nonexistent. Even the Enforcers didn't bother coming around much.

The walls along the streets were covered in Zaun-style graffiti, while the road surfaces were riddled with unpatched spiderweb cracks.

The shopfronts' floor-to-ceiling windows were all boarded up with thick planks. The shopkeepers sat openly at their doors with hunting rifles, warmly greeting regular customers while keeping a wary eye on every stranger who passed by.

The trash cans on the roadside were all overflowing, with garbage spilling out like a mudslide.

The heavy, wet, bulky stuff clumped together and stuck to the ground like stubborn scabs.

The light, dry, small stuff bunched up and tumbled along the road like tumbleweeds.

Any Piltover native who came here would wrinkle their nose in disgust.

And that of course included Seraphine.

Earlier, she had been so focused on finding Li Wei as quickly as possible that she hadn't had the energy to feel sick about it.

But now that Li Wei was right beside her, walking through the streets of the Zaunite Community again, she couldn't help but notice the appallingly filthy environment.

"Eww~" Seraphine tiptoed along in tiny steps, doing her best to dodge the trash swirling in the wind.

But even so, bags and rags and such would still occasionally blow past her, brushing against her pristine stockings, her embroidered gold dress, her delicate skin, and even her beloved pink hair.

It gave her goosebumps from sheer disgust.

So Seraphine walked even more carefully, and even more slowly.

"Can you walk a little faster, Miss Seraphine?" Li Wei couldn't help urging her on.

Her movement speed as a teammate was so slow it made him want to buy her a wheelchair.

"S-sorry. There's just so much trash here, and..." Seraphine wiggled her sore, sweaty toes inside her expensive but uncomfortable high-heeled boots. "I really can't walk anymore, Mr. Li Wei."

"How about..." She suddenly perked up again. "Mr. Li Wei, why don't you carry me for a while? That way we can go faster, and you can 'sing' to me!"

"No!" This girl was always after the tunes in his head.

But Li Wei had no intention of becoming Seraphine's personal automated wheelchair with a built-in music player.

What if, during physical contact, his mind wasn't just singing but also thinking about other things? Then how would he ever be able to face people and lecture them with a straight face again?

"Hurry up. Once we're out of the Zaunite Community, the environment will be much better. There's a tram stop over there—we can rest once we get on."

"We can talk about music when we get there."

"Alright." Seraphine looked a little disappointed. But after getting the promise that she could listen to music once they arrived, she forced herself to pick up the pace, silently following behind Li Wei.

But before she had taken many steps, she suddenly widened her innocent, naive blue eyes as if she had discovered something new, and tugged at Li Wei's sleeve from behind.

"Mr. Li Wei, look—"

"Why is there a person sleeping in that pile of trash?"

"Huh?" Li Wei was a bit curious too.

Then he followed Seraphine's gaze toward the "pile of trash" by the roadside.

"That's not a pile of trash." Li Wei's mouth twitched. "That's his 'house.'"

"H-house?" Seraphine exclaimed in surprise. "Isn't that just a pile of cardboard? Can cardboard be a house? Won't he be cold living in there?"

"Why does he live here?"

Li Wei didn't even know how to explain.

Why? Because he's poor, of course!

Who the hell would come live in a Hooverville if they weren't broke?

So Li Wei couldn't help asking back, "Seraphine, have you never been to the Zaunite Community in your entire life?"

"Well... my father never let me come here. He said only bad people live here, and it would be dangerous."

Li Wei: "..."

He instinctively wanted to make a sarcastic remark, but looking around at the environment, Mr. Ervin wasn't exactly wrong.

If he had a daughter, he definitely wouldn't want her anywhere near this place either.

"Let's go, Seraphine. As for why that man lives in a cardboard box... spend more time out here, and you'll naturally understand."

"Mhm..." Seraphine nodded blankly.

But not long after, she spotted something else with curiosity:

"Mr. Li Wei, is that also a 'house'?"

"No..." Li Wei glanced over. "That's just a pile of trash."

"Then why are there people sleeping in it? And several of them, all lying together."

Seraphine instinctively wanted to step closer for a look.

"Stop!" Li Wei called her back with a dark expression.

No wonder Mr. Ervin hadn't let her come. With this young lady's naivety, if she'd wandered into the Zaunite Community alone, she'd probably have been in trouble long ago.

"Don't go near them!"

"Why? They're sleeping in a pile of trash. They look so... pitiful."

"Pitiful my ass!" Li Wei cursed with clear disgust. "See those needles and empty bottles? That's a bunch of Shimmer-crazed lunatics! You'd better stay far away from them!"

"Shimmer?" Seraphine was a bit surprised. "That banned drug? My dad said it's pretty expensive, isn't it?"

"So what if it's expensive? These people would sell their wives, their kids, even their own lives just to escape reality for a little while with that stuff."

"But what's the point? Once the drug wears off, all that's left is an even more miserable reality."

"A person can be poor. But they shouldn't live twisted like this."

Li Wei had no sympathy for these addicts. He just urged Seraphine to keep moving with him.

Yet Seraphine's mind was still heavy.

Because as she walked, she realized that there were many more Shimmer addicts like that by the roadside.

Some were unconscious, some stood blankly, and others even twitched and crawled on the ground like infected zombies. But they were still alive—that was the most terrifying part.

"M-Mr. Li Wei." Before long, she gently tugged at his sleeve again.

"What now?" Li Wei didn't even bother turning his head this time. "Don't tell me you've spotted another 'trash pile'?"

"Mm..." It really was that. "Mr. Li Wei, look at that. Is it a trash pile or a house?"

"That's a trash pile!"

"But there's someone sleeping inside it."

"Is there?"

"Yes. A foot is sticking out."

Li Wei: "..."

He took a serious look and sighed, rubbing his forehead.

"That's not sleeping in there."

"That's dead in there."

"Huh?" Seraphine's face went pale. "A c-corpse?"

"What's there to be surprised about?" Li Wei sighed. "Around here, people always die from illness with no money, from exhaustion, or get killed by gangs. When they're dead, you toss the body in the trash pile, and it gets burned with the garbage on schedule. That's it."

"How can this be..."

"Don't their families... take them to a cemetery for burial?"

"Who told you they still have families?" Li Wei sighed helplessly. "Family is a luxury in Zaun, you understand?"

"And even if they do have family, when someone dies, we still dump the body like this. At best, you put in the effort yourself to haul it to the harbor and throw it in the sea—call it a 'sea burial.'"

"Otherwise, cemeteries, coffins, funerals, grave-sweeping—all of that costs money. Zaunites can't afford that kind of face-saving expense."

"Th-then... is it the same in Zaun too?"

"No, in Zaun nobody dumps bodies around."

"Only Zaunites in Piltover do that."

"Well, that's a relief." Seraphine released her lip, which she'd bitten white, not sure who she was relieved for.

"Relief my ass!" Li Wei grumbled. "In Zaun, there are special Alchemy Shops that collect corpses—they use them as experimental materials for those science freaks."

"A perfectly good corpse, why waste it by throwing it away?"

Seraphine: "..."