(Vol 2) Chapter 43: Bribes and Blackmail, The Way of Human Life

Recap:

My brain went towards all types of crazy hypotheses using whatever thinking I could muster to come up with a means of survival, and I remembered an article I had seen on the web at my school.

"Meat is what is taken from animals and processed to give you energy for your day."

A simple lesson, which was used to teach me and my classmates about the types and categorizations of food, is what changed my life.

Ants. A colony of them were in front of my head. I would have considered this an unfathomable act a few weeks ago, something only those in the most desperate of situations would do.

An anthill was being built within the cracks of the streets I was on. I stuck my tongue out and put it on the ant hill. Infections, diseases, and other such worries were in my mind, but I had to trust my quirk to deal with them.

The ants gravitated towards the moisture, and into my mouth they went. Although it wasn’t my most proud moment, the effects were useful.

My body gained energy after 3 days of continuous ant eatage, Enough for me to travel to the trash a few feet away and grab the significantly more moldy bread than I had seen before. Normal people would hesitate thinking of what diseases they would gain yet me in my hunger induced state scarfing it down.

I wiped my mouth and looked up between the tall buildings. I saw the yellow sky, heard the honks of distant cars, and the rustling of the creatures of the night.

‘Survive!’ 

That was the only thought and desire I had at that moment. I hadn’t abandoned my previous goals, but this one was deemed the most important.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

*Flashback*

*Azure Pov*

*Nom *

*Nom*

'Eating food is the joy of life.’

I had such thoughts as I ate my first full meal in multiple days. After the whole moldy bread fiasco, I have been carefully looking around the area at night searching for food. 

Food, water, and a roof over my head. Even in my young years, I had learned that those 3 things were essential for life, so I had switched to a temporary plan of securing those things before I started my ‘purge’ on villains.

*Stomp*

Of course, in these mean streets, procuring them wasn’t easy. The weather changed constantly, making temporary stay on benches, rooftops and other open places useless. Clean water wasn’t easy to find and so the rain became my best friend.

*Kick*

The only source of food was in the trash cans from wasteful people’s houses. Perfectly good food was being thrown out due to it passing the expiration date.

‘I mean what a waste!’

"Hey you bastard, you think you can keep invading our turf and get away with it. Were Apart of the Taru Factory, and anyone who goes against use gets the ax.

The person screaming a few meters away from me stuck his thumb out and drew it across his neck while putting on a crazy face.

His lackeys nodded and cheered as if they were proud of him for that performance. Perhaps the past me, or really most people in this situation, would be scared shitless out of their mind.

Most people  who didn’t belong to the small percentage that could remain cool, calm, and collected in such situations would be panicking. 

But, at this point in time, I belonged to the simple, easy-to-understand, and easy-to-go group of people and so to me scary situations didn’t matter as much as food.

Although these guys have beat me up a few times and have repeated the same sentence, they’ve never done anything to me and only yelled.

And so I just finished the piece of fish that I grabbed out of the trash a few minutes ago. They seemed angry that I was ignoring them, and one by one, knives were drawn from various places.

They looked more confident than before and had viscous looks on their faces. As if thy were going to enjoy stabbing me.

‘I guess my age doesn’t protect me against evil?’

I’ve been beaten up many times for stealing food by different people but most look at my age and leave me alone rather than killing me. Weather its due to my age or weather im just not worth the effort to kill I wouldn't know.

I had just finished my food, and although I have my flames which I regarded as a trump card, I couldn’t be sure if it could deal with all of them.

They slowly walked closer to me, and I was starting to feel panicky, considering that an eternity of survival and darkness may be awaiting me. I readied myself to use my flames.

Fortunately or unfortunately, those I was fighting against retreated when the sirens blew.

*WEEEEOOOOPPPPP*

"Shit-"

The leader turned around and looked at me. He performed the same neck-thumb movement again and then ran away. His entourage followed him.

I myself didn’t want to get caught up in whatever was happening, and so I got up and dashed away. Although future me would curse at the fact that it wasn’t fast enough.

A few days later, I regretted raiding those factory guys or whatever for food.

After I left, things continued as normal, I was more cautious and purposefully prevented meetings with people when I went out for food.

However, 3 days after those police cars showed up, things turned downhill for me. Vigilance was increased, and even in the depth of night, policemen could be seen patrolling. 

This area was more crime-ridden than my previous one, so you would  normally expect the police to be stretched thin with force, however the increase suggested otherwise. I

 determined that this was the work of those other guys since one day I was being chased by a police officer and I passed by those Taru guys agins, instead of calling backup or something for them, the policeman waved at them before continuing on chasing me.

It would appear that bribes and blackmail were more prevalent in this area. With both restrictions of trying to not meet people and the increase in police, opportunities to find food became scarce, and I continued to move from the outskirts of the city, looking for places where vigilance was lax.

And I had arrived in an even more dangerous area than I had been in before. However since the police weren't as commonly sighted as before, younger me considered this a haven and so I enjoyed the freedom that could be found, not knowing of the terrible future that awaited to befall me.