Chapter 22: Living Alone

Anyway, now that the monsters were dealt with, Finn could finally breathe while he was splayed on the ground.

Inside the barrier, the smell of the beasts wasn’t as attractive to other beasts anymore. Humans had different scents—or aura, or essence, or whatever they called it—and this was why they could still be detected in close distance even within the barrier.

But, regardless, he didn’t have the energy to do anything after this. His stamina and HP must be dangerously low now.

At some point, his eyelids got heavy, and all the exhaustion completely caught up to him, and his sight darkened.

…

…

…

Finn felt a bit whoozy, his entire body was in pain, and it felt like all the strain he had been pushing down and compartmentalizing, barraged him the moment he felt it was ’safe’.

Scrape, Scrape…

He wasn’t entirely sure what was happening as he couldn’t move, but he tried lifting his heavy eyelids to see.

Scrape, Scrape…

He was…moving. Rather, he was being dragged out, apparently from the back of his collar.

He could somewhat feel the roughness of the turf and the pebbles, though he did not have the energy to even react to the discomfort.

When his head bumped against a rocky surface, again and again, however, his eyes could only twitch.

Thud, Thud

Thud, Thud

Scrape, Scrape…

He realized he was being dragged across a staircase, which ended after a few steps. He was then dragged across a more uniform stone floor of the landing. He was taken over a threshold—his glazed eyes saw the door jamb—and he immediately felt the difference.

It wasn’t just that he was dragged to a building’s interiors; it was like he was suddenly embraced by a warmth that told him it’d be okay.

He could feel it, a comforting aura surrounded him as soon as he entered (er, dragged to) the building. And when he entered the bedroom, this feeling increased by folds.

He could see a flash of black and white on the side getting farther, and he had the rough idea that it was Pang who pulled him to the Inn—probably into the room filled with warm energy that slowly helped him recover.

Like this, he finally succumbed to a comfortable slumber.

.

.

.

“Sleep is when the body shuts down, rest is when the soul exhales.”

Ah, he remembered now. When he asked what the difference between sleep and rest was, that was what his mother said. His understanding, as a child, was naturally limited, however.

Still, after that, he just helped them out with the inn. He helped his mother with the chores, with cooking, and he helped his father capture game and repair a few things in the inn.

He also watched them take losses, accept IOUs from people who would never pay back, and lend money to people who’d get angry when they asked for it back.

And then they died, never to be seen again, leaving him alone.

Seeing the so-called Karma his parents suffered after doing all those good things, he naturally grew up to be quite the cynical child after their deaths.

When the inn was taken over by whoever the bastard took a loan from, he lost the only thing his parents had left him. Then, he was pulled into an orphanage in the suburbs, where he learned how to survive on his own.

For the next year, he lived under fear in the orphanage. The big kids and the adults would often hit them at the slightest annoyance, making them do chores from dusk til dawn, and then feeding them with the bare minimum at the end of the day.

Sometimes, one of the bullies would even take that single meal of the day.

There were even adults there who just felt…icky. His instincts flared, and he knew he couldn’t stay there.

Most of all, he needed revenge. He needed to grab that traitor at the back of his head and drag his face into the filthiest sewer he could find and drown him in it.

Anyway, he knew he would not be able to find him by staying in the orphanage. So…he ran away, straight to the City where his parents had been heading when they perished.

But he was a kid with no family and no money. What could he do?

The fortunate thing was that he was born in the digital age and was able to sneak into the headmaster’s office to print a couple of maps.

The fastest way would be by boat, but he didn’t think he’d be able to ride a boat for a while, especially one going through the same route as his parents.

At first, he still managed to sneak in public transportation and bigger vehicles like elf trucks, but sometimes it wasn’t possible to do so…so he went on foot.

It took him weeks of traveling to go the long way around on foot, traveling at the side of the roads, and traversing vast open space, farmlands, and suburbs.

He lived by the trees, by the roads, and he survived because he hunted with his father as a kid, knew how to prepare his own food, and had lived next to resource-filled forests.

Then he landed in the City, and he tasted first-hand how naive he was, and he meant this literally.

In terms of basic needs, things were much worse in the City than when he went through the orphanage and while on the road. He lived under bridges, in alleys, or in sewers. He shivered in the cold and melted in the heat, and there was nothing he could do about it.

In the City, he no longer had forests with wildlife he could hunt, nor could he pick fruit from shrubs as he wanted. Like that, getting his stomach filled became even more of a challenge.

To get something to eat, he had to go through trash or beg people he didn’t know.

He had tasted rotten food, spoiled meat, and bread that had been stepped on. Because the other beggars—some of whom were adults—would always get the somewhat edible food, he didn’t have a choice.

When he almost died from food poisoning, it was then that he learned to beg. He discovered that restaurants also had a lot of edible waste, too, but he wasn’t able to take advantage of it for long because, before long, many other beggars and scavengers would be there before him.

The few times he received some change from kind strangers, some older kids would beat him up and take it away.

The best meals were a few bites of bread that were soft enough to chew, or getting the leftovers of a stranger who hadn’t thrown things in the trash yet.

Days turned to weeks like this. When the sky was bright, he’d spend the day finding a way to get a bite, and at night, he’d find a way to spend the cold nights, shivering, wondering how he was still alive.

One day, he saw an old man—a teetering one— who would sell bottles he got to the junk shop. That day, Little Finn learned how a little eight-year-old could finally earn his keep.

He got his first job as a helper, and he managed to buy food—especially prepared for him. Sometimes, he could even afford a bed space in the homeless shelter.

It was warm. It was the kind of warmth that spread from the throat to the stomach, and then to the heart.

That was what he was feeling right now, at present, in another world, and surrounded by this new warmth.

So this is his inn, huh?

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