The slums breathed like they were alive, releasing steam that rose thick in the air beneath neon signs and darkened windows. Trash was piled in now and then on the wet pavement, and no amount of rain was going to wipe it away.
Ren walked on one of those god-forgotten streets. Looking at him, one could have easily mistaken him for a ghost or an eerie apparition if it wasn’t for his slight limp that gave him away as something still alive. Then there was the blood that ran down from somewhere near his temple and nose.
He scanned the street. It looked empty, but he knew better. A few steps in, he recognized the sound of boots and puddles being disturbed under heavy strides. He’d heard them earlier following him from a distance, too. They were catching up to him.
He slipped through the gap between two fences, past an old malfunctioning sign mentioning something about "easy pleasure". Whatever that meant.
His breathing came hard, releasing warm vapors in the air. It was cold. Even the pain in his fingers had started to vanish because of it. And he was hungry too, because of course, life was always adding more weight to whatever circumstance he found himself in. It was never the other way around.
He stopped at the corner of the street and caught the wall beside him, scraping a bit of its paint with his fingernails. But he didn’t want to rest just yet, because rest meant that it would be over.
He stumbled. Pain spread quickly everywhere, but instinct dragged him up one more time.
The path ahead narrowed, revealing a maintenance route that had been clearly unused for a long time. Pipes then hissed overhead, scaring him.
Behind him, the footsteps sounded quicker every time. He estimated they were around two, or maybe three of them following him.
He turned a corner too fast and slipped on the wet pavement. With one hand, he pushed from the ground, while with the other, he attempted to regain balance, but it was too late. Something caught his hood and yanked him backward.
He turned sharply in place, and before he could even look at them properly, the one who had grabbed him threw a blow to the face, then a knee to the stomach. The air quickly left Ren’s lungs.
Then, another figure stepped in, took him by the hair, and slammed him against the nearest wall. There were no words spoken, no screams, just the thuds and the teeth clenching from the effort.
The impact blurred Ren’s vision, and his ears rang, but his sense of smell must have been left intact because he sensed the familiar stench of cigarette smoke.
Someone then said something, Ren couldn’t hear, and then somebody else laughed. It was a full laugh, like it came from deep inside their rotted, cruel souls.
The joke must have been a good one also, because a new series of fists rained on Ren. They were messy and uncoordinated. Ren almost laughed at how his mind was fixating on that in such a moment. But then one boot landed in his ribs, and that took away the little thought-processing abilities he had left.
"You’re not even worth the blade," one of the men said.
Then something hit his temple hard, and light engulfed everything in an instant.
When he regained consciousness, Ren didn’t know how much time had passed. His first thought was how rain, blood, and dirt were soaking the only clean set of clothes he had left.
He opened one eye. The shapes around him bent in unusual ways for a while as his vision took its time to recuperate. It all felt like being underwater.
He got up slowly, no rush this time, finding balance on one of the lighting poles buzzing overhead. As danger had passed, everything else came rushing in. It was a mix of pain, anger, and a pinch of too much awareness screaming through his thoughts.
Ren started moving again. Crawling at times, falling at other times. He hadn’t picked a direction based on any rational thought. Anywhere was better than there at that point.
After a while, the environment around him started to turn from flashy neon lights and rusted pipes engulfed in vapors, to darker alleyways surrounded by abandoned structures that looked nothing like he was used to. Not even gangs bothered with this area anymore. It was useless space.
But Ren didn’t have the luxury of choice. He needed a place to lay low, so he walked forward, through all of that.
His hand touched the edge of a broken fence, which bent on one side as if something had torn through it decades ago. Beyond it, Ren saw a tunnel, partially buried by rubble and bushes. It looked old. Really old. Rain dripped down through the cracks above, but as he moved passed the entrance, the air became drier and the sound of rain faded away behind him.
At the end stood a room, carved unnaturally into the tunnel. The walls were barely standing, but protected by what seemed like an old arch. It was covered in lines that Ren initially mistook for graffiti. As he got closer, he saw symbols instead, markings that looked like some forgotten language. Too measured and patterned to be the work of kids.
Suddenly, Ren stumbled over a broken panel lying around in the water just before the room’s threshold. He quickly lost balance and fell to the ground.
"Damm..." was all Ren managed to curse.
He let his body rest on the floor for a moment, with one hand falling forward past the boundary line. His fingertips barely touched the clean stone.
Then it hit him. A pulse moved up his arm. It was faint, but it seemed to make everything around him lighter. Which made no sense. Everything in his body was screaming "heavy" in those moments.
He blinked slowly, trying to make sense of it, then suddenly light came down from somewhere beyond the arch. And something moved slowly through it. Delicate. Elegant.
A cat.
Its fur seemed soft like dark silk, and its eyes were golden, staring directly at him.
Ren pushed himself up on his elbows, but found no words, no proper reaction, as he couldn’t tell if he was seeing something real or simply hallucinating.
The cat watched.
And a voice echoed directly in his mind. "Look at what your world has done to you."
Warmth spread up his arm, into his shoulder, and then into the rest of his body. His eyes started to close, and in the final moments of being awake, Ren thought he could hear purring.