-Retribution-
The people who I used to believe were friends all turned away because of my situation. I don't blame them. And now is not the time to worry about those things. I was in debt, and to pay it back, I had to work like a dog, just as I told the boss. So I started working properly for the first time. At dawn, I delivered newspapers, and from morning to evening, I worked at the factory, packaging. At night, I dressed up in ridiculous costumes and distributed flyers on the streets of entertainment districts.
I slept about three hours a day, and ate two meals a day. That's how I started working. My mother lived three more months after that day. Contrary to the doctor's belief that my mother would not last a few weeks, she struggled for three months until her last breath, thinking about her son. She tried to keep me from being alone, even for a little while more.
On the day I went to pay the last of the hospital bill, I also cleaned my mother's single room. I was really broke, so I had to go and distribute leaflets at the entertainment district. Wearing a suffocating mascot suit on a midsummer night, I handed out flyers of a newly opened karaoke room to people. It was the day I scattered the remains of my dead mother into the river, but there was no rest for me. Since three months before I started working, there was a part of my head that remained motionless and hardened.
I don't know if it's because my feelings have been dulled, but I noticed something strange when I finished work at 2am and sat down in the back alley of the entertainment district. Did I really want my mother to live by paying the expensive hospital bills for three months? Why don't I feel sad at all? However, the questions that came to my mind were quickly suppressed by fatigue and disappeared in an instant. Since I still had to deliver newspapers in the morning, I planned to stay in a rental warehouse and sleep on a chair so that I could rest for 2-3 hours.
But my body, which would usually have headed to the warehouse quickly, could not move easily. I sat in a daze in the animal suit when I heard the sound of fighting coming from somewhere. The sound of fighting in an entertainment district is not uncommon. But it would be rare if the voices were not drunk but instead sober. Even so, it didn't catch my attention. But one word that someone said made me move.
"Damn* you, bastard!"
*T/N: "damn" in the religious sense. The more literal TL would be "receive divine punishment" but that sounds awkward.
Following the voice of a rough man, there was the sound of clashes and fights.
DANG, CLANK, THUD, CHANG!
People and objects collided, the sound of bottles breaking continued. resounded. This type of sound was very familiar to me. As I walked around the corner, I saw a man surrounded by four men who were attacking. Of course, the one being confronted was on the defensive and driven into a corner, but the situation was almost neck and neck.
I was good at fighting alone, but what I would not want is many attackers. They were in their early to mid-20s and looked like neighborhood gangsters who pretended to be strong and came out to play at night. With such guys, I could have handled them by myself. What surprised me was that one of them was fighting with only one arm. He was wearing a cast on one arm, but he managed to fight against the four people with an expressionless face.
I don't know what happened, but the man with the cast seemed to have won in the end. If it wasn't the phrase that caught my attention in the first place, I wouldn't have paid attention, so I started to turn around. But just then, I saw one of the attackers taking something out. That was a dagger that I'm familiar with. The same kind of knife I've used before was held in that person's hand. Before I could realise it, my feet moved automatically. And when I came to my senses, my hands had already moved.
