Ever since my adolescence, I have always had a strong aversion towards mirrors.

Mostly, it was the fault of puberty. Whenever I got out of the shower and glanced at my figure reflected in the glass, my stomach would tighten and my nails would dig into their palms. The self-loathing illness would bubble up like a geyser, and quickly I would be reminded of a distressing physical reality that screamed in my head:

The person who I always thought I had been was nothing but a lie.

Tears would well up when I realized that I wasn’t going to grow up like all the other girls. There was an inevitable future of lifelong misery ahead of me, and the first time I recognized that bleak destiny was when my body started to undergo its first changes of adolescence.

I thought my reflection was disgusting. There were ghastly microscopic hairs that would grow mockingly no matter how much I struggled to shave them. I hated how my shoulders were widening and how coarse angles were increasingly visible in my bone structure. In my head, I was slowly transforming into something monstrous, like a mutant freak alien gorilla.

Ugly. Ugly. Ugly. Revoltingly ugly.

Back then, I was filled with green-eyed jealousy.

 

+ + +

 

This morning in the City of Ohm, it was raining.

The ramshackle roof of my hideout was leaking, and the angled piece of broken plywood above my head barely provided the minimum protection against the elements. Everything in my surroundings felt as damp as soggy bread. My skin was raw from the cold after chafing on moist condensation for hours, but at the very least it was better than the alternative of being flooded in a relentless torrential deluge.

I knew without looking that the earthen ground underneath my makeshift bed was probably flooding with liquid sewage. It always flooded here when it rained. The periodic floodwaters in this area were likely the main reason why I’d had no competition for this spot when I first established myself in this overcrowded isekai city.

Located on the banks of the Escheu River near the lesser bridge that spanned the northern and southern districts, this marshy levee frequently bore the brunt of the rising water table whenever the weather was slightly temperamental.

Furthermore, this location sat downstream of the harbor and the industrial districts. The most disgusting toxic sludge and sewage eventually drifted to these banks. In fact, most of the rainwater in the city’s residential districts probably also drained here.

It was a literal cesspool of waste, refuse, and garbage.

Common sense dictated it was a good place for a trash picker to work, but not exactly a pleasant place to live. However, what more could one expect from the notorious “Nezumi”, the Rat Queen of all things unpleasant and foul? I had a history of thriving in unpleasant places, so something trivial like this was nothing but a mere droplet in the ocean of my tenacity.

Even if I had the current shell of a young unattractive woman, my aged spirit had already been tempered and jaded by the crucible of another world long before I’d transmigrated to this unfamiliar place.

 

The former me on Earth was also no stranger to death.

I had tried to stop my transgender friend from committing suicide on the train tracks and failed despite my efforts.

How many other funerals do you think I’d attended before that?

How many dark and deeply disturbing accounts do you think I listened to in gruesome detail as I comforted a sobbing kindred soul after she was physically threatened in a filthy bathroom with a broken beer bottle?

How many times do you think I opened my wallet, struggling to figure out how much change I could spare for my companion who recently got fired because her employer had found out she’d just started hormone therapy, and consequently couldn’t afford rent, find a place to stay, or have a home to return to?

On how many occasions do you think I’ve been suddenly groped and touched without warning on a first date because “a girl with a dick” couldn’t possibly have a reason for going on a coffee date other than to give complimentary *fapfaps* for a deceptively sweet-talking man harboring a tranny fetish?

How much poverty, violence, and sadness do you think I witnessed regularly in the world that surrounded me?

If you avert your eyes because my words are too unpleasant, I don’t blame you.

If you believe I’ve brought my own fate onto myself and deserve it for “choosing” to be born this way, I don’t have a response.

However, while this may be your fiction, this is my reality, and I am trying to survive.

I am absolutely adamant about surviving.

 

+ + +

 

With apathetic hazel eyes that were sharp and wide awake despite the early rainy hour, I raised my left arm into the air as I examined the surface of my pale skin. During the night, I had slept without unwrapping the rag bandages that covered my flesh, and the bindings on my limbs had come partially loose after tossing and turning for the whole evening. The crinkled ends of the unwound fabric spiralled and pooled around my shoulders, leaving a portion of my mummified skin uncovered.

As slack as they were, the bandages failed to hide the vulgarities that they were intended to conceal.

There was a little piece of “that” exposed right there. It was black and gangrenous, much like a piece of rotting flesh.

The Disease.

Over the past seven months, it had only expanded and grown in surface area. Originally, this small plaque on my left arm had only reached as far as my upper shoulder, but now the dark splotches had progressed all the way past my elbow. Similarly, the other markings elsewhere on my body had multiplied.

It was now impossible for me to wear short sleeves on a casual basis.

Currently, I wrapped what I could with rag bandages and favored baggy clothing such as shawls and scarves. Given the seasonally cold weather and my prior reputation as a street brawler, none of my attire drew any particularly ill-favored attention during the winter. However, with spring now turning the corner, it wouldn’t be long before I would soon be forced to confront the nature of my slowly changing appearance.

Appearances aside, the Disease was generally asymptomatic. It did not hurt or itch or smell. Apart from the slight loss of sensation and the difference in skin texture, the Disease appeared to be mostly cosmetic. It did not interfere with my daily function or my ability to carry out everyday activities. As long as I ignored my physical features or avoided looking at myself throughout the day, it was seductively easy to forget about.

Sometimes, I’d even get carried away, thinking I was totally normal in the rare moments of laughter I shared with my new companions that I met in this isekai world.

I didn’t feel any different, after all.

I was still the same person I always was. That part inside of me never changed, and with my eyes closed, I couldn’t see my own skin.

The actual problem lay elsewhere.

 

+ + +

 

I sat up cross-legged on my makeshift wooden bed of planks as the stiff wood creaked underneath me. The leaking ceiling of this lopsided shelter was less than a foot above my head, so naturally the space was cramped. A dark woolen cloak that I had been using as a blanket slipped from my bare shoulders to my lap. My frizzly short hair was a total mess, a product of bed-head as well as chronically poor hair care.

After arriving in this isekai universe, I was so tear-fraught and frustrated that my hair was constantly getting pulled amidst merciless fights that I tried to cut it as short as possible. However, using a rusty knife to hack away at your hair doesn’t exactly lend itself to nice bangs or even layers. If anything, it was full of split ends, knots, and dirt. Combs were expensive luxury items in the Middle Ages, never mind the fact that nobody took showers or baths in the first place.

My hair was getting to a length that I was considering cutting it again. Although it only just reached an inch or so past my ears, there was already plenty to get a good grip on, and I often felt a need to tie it up to keep it out of the way. I reflexively brushed the stray strands of my hair out my eyes as I shifted diagonally on the bed to examine the side of my torso. Like my arms and legs, the majority of my chest and abdomen was wrapped in bandages made from miscellaneous strips of rags. However, these bindings were still securely knotted and cozy, and they showed no sign of being dislodged after a night of sleep.

While it is not good for women to leave breasts bound for too long since the cloth constricts over time, I felt like my case was somewhat of an exception. Unlike other women of this era who wrap cloth tightly around their breasts as a form of structural support, my current flat chest had no need for such a brassiere.  Rather, the bandages were designed to conceal the largest splotch of Disease on my entire body.

I slowly started to unwrap the cloth around my midsection. A few minutes later, the fabric was completely unwound, and I could examine the enormous black plaque on my skin in the full entirety of its macabre morning glory. This one on my torso was…

Beyond disturbing.

It was disturbing because it was alive.

The best way to describe it would be to imagine a flat tumor of black, rotting flesh growing out of your midsection. It pulses periodically and seems to have a mind of its own. Horrifically, it has a giant mouth with dozens of small multi-layered sharp jagged teeth, much like a Venus flytrap lying in wait for its next meal. The maw is about as large as a coconut and is embedded in your skin. Although it does not move very much on its own, it is possible to pry it open and inspect the shark-like rows of tiny fangs and wonder exactly where the bottomless cavity leads to.

It was clearly something demonic, grotesque, and supernatural.

In the beginning when the sooty skin plaques were more mild, I had initially believed that my skin condition was some kind of biological Earth disease, like an unusual melanoma, mycosis fungoides, or the bubonic plague. However, after the giant evil teeth started growing a few months ago, I completely gave up on my efforts trying to identify the Disease that everyone was constantly whispering about. There was no way that something like this could be cured with antibiotics, steroids, or vaccines. What was the point of possessing scientific knowledge from Earth when sheer unbelievable magical fantasy laughed at you in the face?

I was quite sure that this was physically impossible under the laws of Einstein's general relativity. The creepy dark hole on my abdomen was endless as far as I could tell, and I could stick a six-foot long pole inside and it wouldn’t strike any resistance. You could call it something like a wormhole, but outside of science fiction, there was no way something like that could exist without literally collapsing time and space.

In short, there was a vegetative monster parasite with a stomach the size of a pocket-dimension growing on me.

Of course, I’d freaked out at first. I’d even tried stabbing myself with a knife to carve it all off, but it grew back even bigger than before. Much like the rest of the Disease, it only seemed to grow larger day by day.

I couldn’t help but wonder; how much time did I have left before the rest of me was consumed by it all?

I was completely silent as I started to rewrap the bandages around myself.

 

+ + +

 

A few minutes later, I finished my morning routine and efficiently packed up all of my belongings. Although the sun was not visible behind the rainclouds, my intuitive sense for time pinned the clock at somewhere between eight and nine o’clock in the morning — which was certainly “sleeping in” by my standards.

I briefly poked my head out of the shack to get a gestalt feel for the weather blowing in my face.

The rain was still relentless, which incidentally meant this was going to be a difficult day for the urban poor who lived in the City of Ohm.

Rain was usually a bad sign.

Well-to-do civilians avoided the muddy streets, meaning crippled beggars who made a small amount of coin off of sympathy and piety took a major dive in their primary source of income. Similarly speaking, petty criminals who cut the purse strings of clueless rich foreigners also found their hunting grounds particularly sparse.

Even for trash pickers like myself, rain swept away the easiest pickings. Valuables got buried underneath mountains of stinking mud, and hunting for even a single copper was like searching for a needle in a haystack.

Rain made people gloomy and irritable.

The only silver lining about rain was the fresh water.

I rolled several leaky containers out around my hut and left them open atop the mountains of trash. As the rain fell, it would collect, and that would be my drinking water for a few days.

There was almost nobody who would willingly choose to drink from the sludge-filled river if given a choice. If you ever spotted a filthy and bruised child as skinny as bones hunched over the edge of the bank and desperately gulping to quench their parched throat, you could almost safely guarantee that they were at the end of their rope, and potentially dead before the end of the week.

I had been there once before.

However, right now, I was fairly well-to-do by the standards of the poor.

 

+ + +

 

I held a large piece of the leftover bread loaf that I’d obtained last night in my hands.

First, I tore it in half and looked at it again.

I paused.

Thinking better of myself, I tore the half again into quarters and stared longingly at the fragmented scraps. My stomach growled, but today, the carnal instincts of my hypothalamus would not triumph over the rational executive function of my prefrontal cortex. I had filled my stomach yesterday evening, and I still had further plans for the remainder.

Three quarters I wrapped inside clean rags to save for later. The remaining quarter I stuffed into the folds of my clothes.

And then I was off sauntering away over this massive dune sea.

 

+ + +

 

As limber as a leopard, I hopped from one island of trash to another.

Carefully, I avoided misplacing my feet. The piles of rotting wood and decomposing bones were fragile, and they easily crumbled if you weren’t familiar with where to step. It was too easy to accidentally slip into a sinkhole of noxious methane gas or find yourself trapped in tangle of invasive bogweed.

Since this area regularly flooded, the ground was soft and dangerous. Dense fog from the river frequently swept over in the mornings and ruined any sense of visibility. The landscape of this quagmire was also constantly evolving, and few people knew this unfriendly maze-like territory as well as an inhabitant such as myself.

Yet even as a native, there were plenty of areas that I didn’t dare approach.

Most of the time, I only followed set paths that I had tediously learned by heart. There were a few instances when I had gotten lost in the wasteland and nearly found myself killed by a colony of carnivorous swamp spiders while encumbered knee-deep in quicksand, or some variation thereof.

This was not frivolous or light-hearted terrain by any means.

The locals called this place Quagmire Bottom, and it was located on the river banks in the neglected outskirts of the city.

I had multiple hideouts and stashes scattered about and I regularly switched between them.

Like the luxurious queens of fantasy and fairy tales, I had a reputation for hoarding. Consequently, I had the occasional adventurous guest (both human and not) who came sniffing for treasure. While the hazardous environment provided a sufficient deterrent in most cases, there was the occasional day or two when I returned home to find my belongings rummaged through and overturned. As a result, I had humbly rediscovered several months ago that the famous adages for stock trading on Earth were equally relevant in an isekai world of destitute poverty.

Never put all your eggs in one basket.

It was common for me to split the rags and valuables I collected into multiple small batches. Whenever I found a new spot that seemed promising, I would mark it in my mind and revisit it later. Every morning, I would run a loop around the few stashes I needed for the day before beginning my productive enterprises in the city proper.

All of this was part of my daily routine.

 

+ + +

 

Before long, I slipped into the main city streets.

Now that I was in the public eye, I melted in with the sparse crowd of city denizens and slowed my gait to match all the other miserable soaked people trodding along. Occasionally, I pirouetted out of the way as a carriage or wagon came tumbling through the stone streets with the driver cracking his whip, splashing poop-water into the air.

It was not good to attract attention, as an altercation of any kind involving the authorities never turned out favorably for the poor. Yet conversely, there was safety in numbers. As a former resident of New York City, I could attest to the fact that one was far less likely to be mobbed by gangsters in Times Square than in a shady Chinatown park after midnight.

There was a certain logic and rationale to living in a city, even a medieval one.

Depending on the time and circumstance, sometimes it was more favorable to travel one way or the other.

I was on my way to the Market District.

 

+ + +

 

I found the person I was looking for huddled underneath the eaves of a tannery, trying her best to avoid the rain and elements that pelted the cobblestone road.

She was a woman, middle-aged, and pathetically poor.

If you didn’t know her from her better days, it would have been easy to jump to the conclusion that she was just an ordinary street beggar covered in grit and filth. However, few people remembered the fiery beacon she had once been in her past.

When she noticed me standing in front of her, she looked up.

“Oh, Nez, it’s you,” she said. “You look good in that cloak. I didn’t even recognize you at first.”

“It was yours to begin with, and I only borrowed it. When do you want it back?”

My first response was as polite as the textbook, as always.

“No~ No~ That cloak will only bring me more misfortune than it’s worth. It suits you better now. If it makes you feel better, you can consider it a long-term security investment on my part.”

I frowned unhappily. This woman knew me too well.

She knew I was the kind of person who thought excessively in terms of marginal profit and opportunity cost, so she adapted her language appropriately to utilize esoteric jargon in her conversation with me. These were not skill sets that just any beggar on the streets could just whip up out of nowhere. But then again, this was Madam Altheda, and she was a genius.

Despite her misleading title, she wasn’t noble-blooded or an aristocrat in any shape or form. Rather, not very long ago, she was once a prostitute, and in fact arguably one of the finest in the red light district. In Earth terms, it was probably appropriate to think of her past status as something analogous to being a geisha.

 

The cloak that she spoke of was the one that I had been sleeping in lately. It was a plain dark somber color as rich as deep shadows, woolen, supple, warm, water-repellent, and furthermore of decent quality. It was the most expensive piece of clothing that I currently had on my possession. Although it wasn’t striking or flamboyant in any way, it could have easily been worn by any individual of the middle class.

The reason for this was that not even the richest merchants were foolhardy enough to flaunt their wealth openly in the streets. This was like painting a bright neon target sign on your head and just asking for trouble. As a result, unless you were crazy rich and constantly flanked by bodyguards, virtually everyone else tended to wear outerwear that concealed their status.

A nice cloak was the perfect item for this purpose, and all people with any amount of money to their name owned one. However, as a woman, there was one consideration that posed a slight problem to me.

Specifically, I was short. Just by looking at my silhouette, it was obvious that I was either female or an adolescent child.

If I wasn’t cautious about the way I maneuvered in the street crowds, an astute observer would note that I was alone and unaccompanied. It didn’t take much of a leap of logic to quickly draw the straightforward conclusion that I must have been a lost or vulnerable wealthy lamb with wool made of pure gold.

This was the tastiest kind of target for wolves who made their livelihood on blackmail and ransom.

While it was perfectly normal for poor women to wander about independently, this was an era when it was considered scandalous for a respectable woman to travel outside without an escort. This was what Madam Altheda meant by “more misfortune than it’s worth”.

 

“It looks like it’s been a rough day?”

I changed the topic after taking a quick glance at the panhandling pot that laid at her feet. It was basically empty.

Well, it wasn’t totally empty, but anybody with experience begging for money on the streets would know that you’re supposed to throw in a few of your own coins in to make it appear like there was some money flowing. Human psychology is strange. People were more likely to take out their wallets when they saw their neighbors doing the same. Similarly, it was textbook strategy among minstrels to stage a few applauding friends in the audience and have them toss a few fake coins into the hat after each song ended.

By my reckoning, Madam Altheda probably had not received any sympathetic souls yet today.

“The weather is bad.” She dryly stated the obvious in response.

I nodded and gestured at the ledge underneath the eaves where the middle-aged woman rested, indicating my desire to sit together with her. Altheda scooched over to the side slightly, making just enough room for me to squeeze in beside her all while avoiding a puddle. Meanwhile, I took off the nice cloak I was wearing so it didn’t clash with the impoverished image my friend was trying to project while panhandling for spare change.

Despite the way it sounded, the two of us were actually quite close. Even though we were separated by at least a decade in age, I considered her to be the closest confidant I had in this isekai world. When we first met, our positions were entirely reversed. I was the starving one in the streets, and she was the one who offered me her companionship nonetheless.

However, now everything had reversed.

“Funny how life can suddenly flip upside down on you in an instant,” Altheda remarked as I sat down.

I didn’t respond to her comment as I rummaged through the folds of my shawl.

Soon enough, I located the quarter piece of bread I was looking for and pulled it out.

“Bread?” I asked. Although it was more of a statement than a question as I placed it directly to her hands.

She gave the day-old block of carbohydrates a long stare before she responded.

“Still fresh. You got it from the Rag Merchant yesterday?”

I nodded silently as Altheda tore the quarter-piece of bread in half and tried to pass half back to me. However, I refused.

A sly smile appeared on the middle-aged woman’s face as she popped a small piece into her mouth.

“I knew you’d decline. You’re so predictable, you know? It’s kind of cute in its own way.”

“I didn’t give you all of it,” I retorted.

“I know. How much do you have left? A half? No, three-quarters?”

“Something like that,” I said, sounding annoyed.

The one and only Madam Altheda laughed as she tapped me lightly on the head. “You didn’t have to give me any, you know? None of other girls visit me anymore ever since I lost my foot.”

I grimaced when she mentioned that.

A month ago, a freak client of hers had gone batshit crazy after finding out Madam Altheda was retiring from her active role in the most prestigious prostitution house in the city to focus on raising her newborn child. Altheda had described it in a disturbingly light-hearted way when she told me the story, but basically it was a sickeningly twisted sequence of events along the lines of “porcelain dolls have no need to walk” and “small feet are sexier anyways.”

In short, the customer drew a knife and my best friend got her feet sliced up by a madman.

Even worse yet, the client was the son of an influential aristocrat, so the prostitution house didn’t even take any retaliatory action. Well, of course, they asked for a large sum of money in compensation, but Altheda didn’t receive any of that. They claimed that Altheda had already resigned, so they drove her out into the streets while her feet were still bleeding. Apparently, all the respect, fame, and admiration that she previously possessed all vanished overnight, and quickly nobody wanted to have anything to do with a cripple who had no value to bring to the negotiating table.

Later on, her right foot ended up becoming infected, so I offered to help treat it since she didn’t have the money to see a Healer. In my past life, I was studying to be a nurse practitioner, so I thought I could manage the infection with some of my modern knowledge. At the time, I was also skeptical of the medieval bloodletting mumbo-jumbo, so I was fully prepared to go the full nine yards with boiled water, homemade poultice, distilled alcohol disinfectant…

I did everything that I could think of.

I even tried to culture penicillin.

However, long story short, everything failed.

The infection progressed to osteomyelitis, and that point I knew there was no choice but to amputate. Later on, my friend became septic and I nearly lost her, just like I’d lost far too many others. For a moment, I was terrified of the thought of being all alone again.

It was finally at that point that I was so frantic and desperate that I spent nearly all of my own savings and brought her to the Healer, where everything was solved with a simple magic spell that took less than thirty seconds to cast. Funny how months worth of careful savings could go up in smoke just because of an instant of feverish emotionality. I also lost my faith in all of my other-world knowledge at that point.

Retrospectively, I should have just forced her to go to the Healer from the very beginning. Even if she needed to visit a loan shark to get the money for it, it would have been worth the price. However, the way it was now, Altheda was crippled, and there was no path for the disabled in this cruel isekai world except for the hardest road of them all.

It was my fault that she’d trusted me, believed in me, and consequently lost her foot because of it.

I couldn’t look at her in the eye for weeks after that.

 

+ + +

 

“I heard you went out with Sasha outside of the city yesterday,” Altheda remarked to me as she nursed a sleeping infant in her arms.

“Hm? Who’d you hear that from?”

“Rumors fly faster than the wind here. Of course I still hear things.”

I looked at my friend’s baby, and the only thought that crossed my head was that it was quiet.

Too quiet.

It was never a good sign to have an infant that was too quiet.

“I just needed an extra pair of hands to wash some rags,” I continued.

“Ahh~ For the Rag Merchant again? I heard that’s going real nicely for you too. If anyone deserves it, it ought to be you. I’m cheering for all the best for you!”

“Flattery doesn’t work on me, Althie, you know that already.”

“Hahaha~ But seriously, I wish you wouldn’t wander outside so casually, Nez. We’re right on the frontier of goblin and orc territory. You never know when your good fortune will run dry. The world can flip on a dime at any moment.”

“Eh, sometimes I feel like everything is a gamble to begin with. It’s a calculated risk. Besides, I’ve never seen a goblin.”

“Bwuh~ Are you really as old as you say you are? Sometimes you say these really stupid things!”

Suddenly, our chatter went quiet. Both Altheda and myself found ourselves reflecting in deep thoughts. Even though our dialogue moved superficially at the pace of wildfire, a disconcerting veil of restrained feelings floated like a murky cloud above our heads.

The two of us had mutually sensed it at this point, so naturally the small talk ceased.

 

+ + +

 

Altheda was the first to break the silence.

“There was another death last night,” she started, almost hesitantly, as she stared down at her lap.

“It was the Count’s youngest daughter. Ripped apart and cut into pieces.”

“I see,” I responded.

My friend did not continue to elaborate. Although her language was exceedingly vague, we both knew precisely what she was talking about.

“That’s bad, isn’t it?” I spoke my thoughts aloud. “It’s personal now. The Count is going to want something done, right?”

“Correct. The rumor is that they’re planning to take a torch to the Slums. Everything will burn.”

“......”

I was speechless. The Slums? All of it? But it was enormous — at least a third of the city — and so many people lived there.

“Seems exceedingly heavy-handed, right? Their only objective is to exterminate a handful of the Diseased ones, yet they’re remorseless about catching everyone else in the crossfire. Apparently, it’s gone uncontrolled for too long now.”

“I don’t think anyone ever cared about what happened to the poor in the first place,” I said bitterly.

Altheda shook her head as she looked at me in the eye, her rich emerald pupils sad and profound.

“That aside, the streets are getting more and more dangerous lately. There are Familiars stalking the night, and they are just as dangerous as any monster or demon from the outside. The City Guard is on full alert, and the night patrols have been doubled. There will probably be a curfew announced later today.”

“Familiars,” I repeated, sounding out the feel of the word on my tongue. “You mean, the mindless monsters that the Diseased turn into after they’re consumed by the darkness of their skin?”

“Yes. It’s a terrible fate. There are many more of them now than before, and they prey on human flesh.”

I avoided Altheda’s gaze at that point as I looked down at the palms of my hands.

“...Thank you for the warning. You should watch out for yourself too.”

“I wasn’t finished yet.”

 

She closed her eyes briefly before rubbing her eyebrows with her fingers.

To me, she looked more tired than I ever remembered seeing her before.

“They’ve placed a new bounty on anyone who’s Diseased. The reward is ten silvers alive, five if dead. Even somebody who submits a tip to the City Guard can claim one silver coin if it turns out to be true.”

My stomach suddenly froze.

My friend continued to speak, her voice weary and flat.

“Be careful,” she said, her eyes staring daggers at me, leaving some critical words intentionally unsaid.

“What are you talking about?” My voice rebounded, instantly recovered from the hesitation I felt before.

Altheda spoke as if she knew about my curse, yet I had never been one to tell her. Where had she found out? And how long ago? Why hadn't she said anything about it? How was she not bothered by this knowledge? Both of us knew that all Diseased eventually lost their humanity, albeit the rate at which it occurred and physical manifestations were different for each case. A billion questions flashed through my head, and all of them buzzed my mind around like a hive of frantic insects.

I laughed out loud, more self-conscious than ever of how plastic my voice sounded.

“Oh come on, Althie, why would I be worried about that? It’s a good thing that they’re finally doing something about the Diseased! I’m sure all of us can rest easy at night from now on.”

“Nez!” Altheda's eyes were firm and serious. “Don’t think you can win playing word games against me. I’ve been dancing to these treacherous tunes far longer than you've been alive. I wouldn’t be telling you this if I didn’t want to help you out. There is more to our friendship than coldly calculated giving and taking, isn’t there?”

“But why? What? How does this make sense?”

“Nez, we all take bets, and I’ve taken mine. We’ve known each other for months now, and it’s more obvious than the sun in broad daylight that you’re different from everyone else. You are strange. You're an outsider. You stand out like a sore yet glistering nail in the bleak gloomy haze of this world. Many people are watching, keeping tabs on you, and counting the coins in their pockets. The landscape is rapidly shifting.”

“Different...”

“Be careful of whom you trust.”

We stared blankly at each other as the rain continued to plummet.

∎