NOVEL WEB Chapter 9 - From the Ashes
< Chapter 9: From the Ashes – 1 >
Unemployed people roamed the city.
The eyes of the hungry were dry.
Instead, at the center of their hollow eyes, a dangerous light grew in unison.
A season where only hatred and anger sapped all the nutrients of their souls.
A harsh autumn had come.
* * *
Companies gave up on growth.
Even holding on was not easy.
In fact, most companies were perishing because they could not withstand the recession.
Workers had not been paid for months.
Even so, they had no choice but to cling to the factories.
If working like a slave there was a battlefield, outside for the unemployed was hell.
It would get better if they endured.
It would get better if they endured.
Both companies and workers chanted this mantra, but things did not get better.
All economic indicators continued to plummet.
Below the point they thought was the bottom, there was an underground, and below that, there was hell.
The whole country was falling into hell.
* * *
Frank Smith was a skilled worker.
Five years ago, he was also a soldier dragged to the front lines with his neighborhood friends.
– God, save the King!
– Aren’t we all coming back with medals?
– Then I’ll propose to Betty!
Only two of the five boys who were dragged into the war started by the king and nobles returned, and soon Frank was alone.
The one remaining friend whom he thought had returned safely.
That guy could not shake off the specter of war.
Thanks to standing behind a man called a so-called ‘hero,’ he could also get that guy’s medal, but,
– How much will you give me for this?
– A medal? I don’t accept things like that.
– ……My wife starved to death last night, and now I’m the only one left to pay for my son’s formula.
– This damned world. I’ll give you as much as it weighs. I can’t offer more.
– I’ll sell it.
It was worth only a few meals.
Right.
At least it was more useful than the paycheck that hadn’t come for three months.
Frank Smith clutched his hungry stomach and went to work at the factory.
The commute was a battlefield.
The poor, vagrants, and the corpses of those who starved or were beaten to death lay in the shadows of every alley, but no one cared.
Under a gloomy sky that was hard to believe was autumn, everyone hurried along with their eyes fixed on the ground, except for those walking proudly and laughing loudly.
When someone looked at them, they all had red armbands on their arms.
“……”
Frank’s eyes turned cold.
Once they said the king and nobles ruined the country.
Even after you lot overthrew the country, nothing has changed.
Instead of the noble lords and knights, now it’s the revolution committee members and congressmen strutting around.
We are the same.
No, we are even more miserably suffering!
This damned country.
This fucking world.
* * *
Was it because of such trivial thoughts?
Or was it due to hunger?
While engrossed in his work on the factory line, Frank experienced moments when his vision blurred.
“Ugh.”
He and his colleagues tried slapping each other’s cheeks and even rolling sharp metal pieces under their feet.
However, the symptoms of his hazy consciousness did not stop, and exactly on the twentieth occurrence of his vision going dark.
Crunch!
“Ah, aaaaagh!”
A terrible pain overwhelmed Frank.
Frank, who had collapsed only after being hit by three bullets and reaching the allied base, fell into a panic and screamed.
“Argh! Aaaaargh!”
“Stop, stop! Pause!”
“Damn it, there’s no such thing as a pause! Do you think this machine has an emergency stop button?!”
Crunch, crunch, crunch!
“Aaaaargh-!”
“An axe! Bring an axe!”
“I’m sorry, Frank!”
Thud! Thud! Thud-!
“Aaaaaargh!”
“Boss! I can work! I can go back to my position right now! I can do it, please!”
Frank Smith clung to the foreman.
Holding on to consciousness that seemed ready to faint at any moment, he was literally desperate.
The traces of his crawling were clearly marked on the floor.
As if painted with blood.
Frank’s brush was his right leg.
The lower part of his knee was an empty, blood-soaked chunk of meat.
The severed end, crushed by the axe, was bound and pressed with all his colleagues’ might, but it continued to bleed.
The workers who had to cut their colleague’s leg were watching the situation with pale faces.
To save Frank, whose foot had been caught in the machine and was being sucked in from the toes, there was no other way.
The foreman glared at him.
“Mr. Smith. Get a grip. What kind of accident are you planning to cause with that leg now? Huh? Going to shove your head in next?”
“Boss! No! I really can do it! I can work even if I die standing! My son only has me now!”
But the foreman just scoffed.
“Your son is pitiful. His dad’s a cripple.”
“!”
“Drag him out. And expect a compensation claim in a few days, so don’t run away or kill yourself. Otherwise, I’ll sell off that son of yours.”
In the Republic plagued by addiction and disease,
There was no place to discard babies.
They said fresh livers and bone marrow were all ‘miracle cures.’
Frank wanted to kill the foreman right then and there because of the horrific insinuation, but he was more terrified by the ominous echo of a word he had never heard before in his life.
“Compen…sation?”
What the hell was that?
The foreman pointed at the machine.
It was the machine that had devoured Frank’s leg.
“The cost to call in an expert to clean and fix this. The cost of the machine not producing until then.”
“W-What? Are you saying I should pay for that?! Where in the world is such a law!”
“If you don’t like it, hire a lawyer.”
The foreman laughed.
Then he glanced at Frank’s leg.
A cripple would surely hire a lawyer.
That was the blatant mockery in his expression.
* * *
Frank Smith was fired.
With his leg severed and not even properly treated, he was cast into the hell of the unemployed.
* * *
“Ugh, uaaa, uaaaaaah!”
The tears wouldn’t stop.
Cries of rage poured out endlessly.
Frank himself couldn’t understand how tears and screams kept coming from his body, weakened from lack of food and energy.
He sobbed, clinging to a wall, hopping on one leg, then fell and crawled.
Just then, a car passed by on the road.
It was something a pauper like Frank couldn’t even dream of having.
Young men with red armbands stood in the car’s rear compartment, shouting slogans through megaphones as they passed.
[Don’t live on your knees! Rise and die!]
[Forward! Forward! Sons of the revolution, advance once more!]
[The night of feudalism ends and the morning of revolution dawns!]
[A new world for the people has arrived!]
“Uaaaaaah!! Damn it all!”
Revolution, my ass.
The people, my ass!
It’s all bullshit not worth a piece of bread!
The world hadn’t changed.
Not even a bit!
It was then.
A soft, amiable voice, completely different in tone from the authoritative and militant cries of the Revolutionary Committee, caught the passersby’s attention.
“Sir. Instead of staying here, go to 3rd Street. They’ll give you bread and soup there.”
“Hey, boy! Do you think delivering newspapers will secure your future? I bet you’ll get beaten up and have all your newspaper money stolen within a week. I’ll stake my hand on it. People need to learn to read and do math. They teach it for free on 3rd Street. Come with me.”
“To those with families to support! Those unintentionally harmed by the revolution! And above all, to our comrades who served this country! There is a job center for you on 3rd Street!”
His eyes widened at the last words.
Frank squirmed and moved.
Even though he strained his whole body, he could neither voice nor move well, looking like a worm crawling on the ground.
“H-Here. Here!”
Maybe that earlier wailing was his last bit of strength. The voice that leaked out was worse than a squeaking mouse.
But the young man talking about 3rd Street found the source of the voice with uncanny precision.
“Gasp!”
Hearing him swallow his breath, Frank thought the young man must have been shocked by his appearance.
But no.
The young man recognized Frank.
“Corporal! Corporal Smith, is that you?! How did you end up like this, sir?”
“Private…?”
Frank, surprised, recognized the face of the young man running towards him before losing consciousness.
* * ** * ** * *
He heard a baby crying.
‘My son.’
Even while burning with fever.
Even after twice escaping death last night.
Frank survived.
* * *
“Ugh…”
“Corporal!”
“…Private?”
Frank Smith woke up three days later.
The doctor took his temperature and checked the stump of his leg, then nodded.
“He’s out of the woods. He’s been blessed.”
“Thank you, doctor!”
“No need for thanks. Was he your comrade?”
“Yes. He was a corporal in our platoon.”
“A subordinate of Colonel Hastings. Then there’s no need for thanks. Let’s have a drink at the ‘Veteran’s Den’ later.”
“Heh heh, see you tonight.”
The young man and the doctor continued chatting beside him, but Frank was too disoriented to join in.
Then he remembered the baby crying he heard in his sleep.
– Waaah! Waaah!
“Al… Allen!”
Frank bolted upright.
“Whoa, Corporal!”
The young man supported him.
He was the young man promoting 3rd Street, someone Frank recognized.
“Private. You little punk.”
“Heh heh, you remember me?”
Of course he remembered.
The youngest in the platoon.
He clearly recalled the soldiers grumbling that the world was ending, now that they had to take care of such a kid.
“Where, where is this?”
“3rd Street. Under the Colonel’s protection.”
3rd Street?
That was far from home!
Frank tried to get up, but stumbled.
He suddenly remembered he only had one leg.
“Ugh, ugh!”
A mix of resentment, anger, and fear overwhelmed him.
Why did he end up like this?
How would he survive now?
‘What about Frank?’
“My son. I have to get my son!”
He had left him with the landlady, but the old woman wouldn’t have taken good care of him.
She might have even sold the child if Frank was just a day late!
The Republic had become a world where everyone was on their own.
A hell where no one looked after anyone else.
But the young man, with an expression that was hard to read—somewhere between a laugh and a cry—wiped his eyes and shouted to someone outside.
“Please bring the baby in!”
Then the door soon opened, and a middle-aged woman entered, holding a squirming baby.
He recognized his son just by looking at his hands.
“Allan!”
His son was laughing obliviously, seemingly full and warm.
Seeing the traces of formula milk around his mouth, someone must have fed and cared for him well.
“Why, why?”
Frank was dumbfounded.
More than saying ‘thank you,’ he couldn’t help but first blurt out, ‘why on earth?’ He couldn’t understand the situation at all.
Who in these times would feed precious formula milk to someone else’s child?
Jjamjji approached and helped Frank up.
“Sergeant, District 3 is different.”
“Different?”
“This is a small ‘utopia’ that the Colonel started.”
Though the unfamiliar word ‘utopia’ was hard to grasp, Frank was more curious about something else.
“You’ve been saying ‘the Colonel’ repeatedly, but who exactly are you talking about?”
“Oh, Sergeant! Who else would ‘the Colonel’ be to us?”
“Surely not the Count Hastings?”
“Hehe, he’s a Congressman now, but to us, he’s just the Colonel. We’re all war veterans, aren’t we?”
War veterans?
“What do you mean by ‘war veterans’?”
At this, Jjamjji’s eyes changed.
The flash in his eyes mirrored the indignation and anger that Frank himself felt.
“It’s the glory this country stole from us. We’re not just conscripted soldiers who got dragged into the war, turned into wrecks, and came back ruined. We’re warriors who fought for the country.”
Frank was certain that it was Count Hastings—no, ‘the Colonel’—who had taught Jjamjji these words.
“Instead of this, Sergeant, get up. Let’s go out and get some counseling.”
“What kind of counseling…?”
“You need to find a job, Sergeant!”
Frank involuntarily glanced at his right leg.
In these times when there’s a shortage of workers.
Who would hire a cripple?
Even so, Jjamjji just grinned.
“Seriously, don’t worry about it. Sergeant, have you heard of a job fair? Or employment support programs?”
“What, what? What are you talking about?”
“Geez, even after all those flyers, you still don’t know. People must be picking them up just to throw them away. Anyway, it’s awesome. If there’s a position, you get it immediately! If not, they train you for a new job, and you get paid just for attending the training!”
“…What?”
“Besides, war veterans are specially managed, so there hasn’t been a single person who failed to get a job yet. The Colonel personally ensures it.”
Frank had no idea what he was talking about.
Is this really the Republic?
Am I not in some other world?
“Ah, let’s just go out first. Since it started not too long ago, it’s easy to get in now, but once word gets out, it’ll be super competitive. Let’s just go check out the fair, have some bread and soup, okay?”
“Uh, okay. Yeah. Let’s do that.”
Still bewildered, Frank let Jjamjji help him out the door.
Then, an unimaginable sight unfolded before his eyes.