[Year 1507, Mad Hat Island]
Mad Hat. A name that sounds like something from a children's book. But there is nothing childish about this island, except for the children who are forced to grow up too soon—or die trying.
I learned quickly. There is no place for dreams here. No room for stupidity.
The northeast district taught me the dark reality of this place. Women dressed in thin clothes, or sometimes not dressed at all, stand under the flashing red lights, like cheap prostitutes on a circus stage. They laugh with fake smiles, their eyes empty, and some are still teenagers. A big man drags a young boy into a dark alley. I didn't see what happened after that, but I knew. And I couldn't forget it.
Clean water? Forget it. A bottle of beer costs less than a bucket of water. Drugs are more available than food. In the alleys of the eastern market, street kids my age deliver small packages wrapped in newspaper. Drug couriers. Like me. Just one of many. Every job is risky. Wrong place, wrong time, and you could end up skinned by a cartel from the southeast district.
The west district. The world of the mafia. People in suits with weapons hidden behind their jackets. They don't shout; they whisper—and their whispers are deadlier than a sword.
Southeast. The place of cartels and drug factories.
The north of island is another dark place. An auction house. Not ordinary goods are auctioned there. Humans. Children, women, even the elderly. Sold like cattle. I once saw a young girl dragged to the stage, crying, tied up, and forced to smile by a whip. It wasn't a joke. It was reality.
In the northwest, human traffickers, their business is not an auction house, but direct distribution.
Only the southwest and south are calm. For some reason. It's as if there's an invisible force that guards those two regions. There, kids play. There, mothers wash clothes. No blood. No corpses in the gutters. A painful contrast.
I don't live there. I live in the slums, in the ruins of houses, sleeping with rats, and sometimes... next to a corpse that no longer smells because it's been rotting too long.
My food? Anything I can eat. Leftover bread from the market, stale rice from the tavern's kitchen, rats from the gutters. Even once, meat from a place I shouldn't even mention.
After that incident—when I almost got raped and killed—I changed. I no longer gambled with my life. I stole with technique, not recklessness. I fought with instinct. I know when to fight and when to run. I'm not a killer... but I wouldn't mind doing it if I had to. This world taught me that morals are a burden only those who are safe can afford.
I've seen things I never imagined I would see.
A little girl, maybe under five years old, was taken into an alley and never came out.
A woman was hung from a pole, naked, bleeding, with a sign that read: "Damaged Goods. Not for Sale."
An eight-year-old boy was shot in the head for bumping into a mafia boss while running.
This world is not a story. It's not manga. It's not anime. This... is reality. Brutal. Dirty. Merciless.
Sometimes I sit in silence, thinking about my old life.
A small dorm room, sachets of coffee, the sound of car horns from outside the window. Coming home from work at 9 p.m. Complaining about the stagnant salary. Watching anime to escape. And now? Now I kill rats for dinner and sleep with one eye open.
I want to go home. But even if I could, somehow... I feel farther and farther from the person I once thought of as "me."
I'm no longer the office man tired of the world. I am Bastien, a street kid on an island that has forgotten how to be human.