Chapter 6: The Unwanted Meal

“With this, I can only give you four.”

He took out four cookies from under the counter. A look of dismay crossed Cheche’s eyes. She immediately held up six fingers.

‘Last week, you gave six.’

The exchange worker snorted, seeing Cheche’s mouth shape.

“Fewer children are crushing and baking stones, so cookies are more expensive. Four is generous. You’ll be lucky to get even that when all the kids go to the screening center, won’t you?”

Cheche reluctantly reached out her hand as he was about to put the cookies back.

But four cookies were only enough to last two days. Moreover, eating stone cookies continuously would likely cause an upset stomach. To prevent malnutrition, it was better to get several cookies and exchange them for other provisions.

“Uh… Mom…”

Just then, Yeosu tugged at the end of Cheche’s sleeve. When Cheche turned around, Yeosu, as if on cue, pulled out broken stone pieces from her pocket.

“Th-they’re… here. Th-they’re broken, but.”

It was the result of her early morning efforts, digging in the dirt around the shelter with her bare hands. Her small, wiggling palms were full of scratches from sharp stone fragments. Cheche’s eyebrows twitched.

The exchange worker, checking the stone pieces, let out a snorting laugh.

“What do you expect to do with those scraps! How foolish!”

‘B-but still…’ Yeosu’s intimidated lips moved slightly.
Cheche’s expression was unreadable, so it was impossible to tell what she was thinking.

The exchange worker’s taunting laughter continued.
Yeosu’s outstretched hand was trembling when it happened.

‘Give them to me.’

Cheche snatched the stone fragments and showered them over the exchange worker’s head.

“Argh! F*ck! What are you doing!”

‘What can you do?’

Cheche gazed intently at the exchange worker, whose face had turned white, covered in stone dust.
Suddenly, a flicker of fear crossed the exchange worker’s eyes.

‘Let’s go.’

Cheche pushed Yeosu’s back.
As if this wasn’t the first time, Yeosu nodded and diligently followed her.

The exchange worker, belatedly regaining his composure, huffed and puffed as he climbed over the counter.
He intended to rush at the mother and daughter, but unfortunately.

“It’s the truck!”

“The truck appeared!”

The moment the black truck appeared near the incinerator, everyone at the exchange shouted and gathered around.

‘This damn thing!’ The exchange worker’s furious yell was swallowed by the crowd.

“I’m first!”

“What kind of goods today?”

People stretched their necks out like rats emerging from a hole.
The contents of the truck, which visited the incinerator irregularly, were their main interest.

Yeosu, pushed by the crowd, also eagerly stood on her tiptoes at the mention of the ‘truck.’
She rarely saw moving machinery in the incinerator, so she stared at the huge tires, which stirred up dust, as if it were a rare spectacle.

“What are the goods today! Wanderer!”

“Wanderer! Give me some first!”

The owner of the truck was known as the ‘Wanderer.’

They secretly roamed the residential areas of registered individuals, stealing and eating food, and sometimes even stealing goods to do business like this for unregistered individuals.

Their numbers dwindled each time they were seen, as they faced immediate execution by Juseong’s military if caught, but at least the owner of the black truck was still alive.

The Wanderer opened the cargo compartment and picked up a can neatly stacked inside.

It was something Yeosu recognized.
Because of that, her brows instinctively furrowed.

“Four cookies per can of nutritional powder! These were specially extracted from the horse stable’s faeces truck! You know how much protein the Human Run players eat, right? If you buy just one can, you won’t have to look for bugs for a month!”

People flocked to the truck, stretching out their hands.
They were mainly adult males.

This canned food, called ‘nutritional powder,’ was the easiest alternative food source for protein after bugs in the incinerator.

The making method was simple enough for even young Yeosu to understand.
Steal a faeces truck going to a sewage treatment plant, then extract nutrients from the human waste inside and turn it into powder.

It sounded disgusting, but Yeosu and everyone else knew that there was no other food as good as it.

The most popular was the powder extracted from Juseong’s military base faeces trucks.

However, the vendor who sold it only existed in rumors; no one had actually visited the incinerator where Yeosu lived.

Next, as the Wanderer said, human waste stolen from the ‘horse stables’ where the Human Run players resided was popular.

These were players who received high-quality meals every day for their races.
There was no doubt that their faeces contained more nutrients.

“…”

But still, she disliked it.
Yeosu tugged at the end of Cheche’s sleeve as if to say, ‘Let’s go.’
Like mother, like daughter, Cheche also shared the same opinion.

The two found an exchange counter that exchanged cookies for dried bugs instead of nutritional powder.

If one thought of them as protein dried under the sun after the moisture was removed, they weren’t inedible.
It was just that their shape was grotesque, so one wouldn’t readily reach for them.

Four cookies were exchanged for two bags of dried bugs.
They were lucky.
Fewer people were eyeing the bugs because of the nutritional powder the Wanderer brought.

‘Now we need to get water.’

Cheche gave Yeosu one bag of bugs and moved her lips.
Since the wastewater discharged from the incinerator was filtered through a purification device and then distributed, they had to hurry to get enough water.

“Uh… Mom.”

But Yeosu suddenly stopped.

Cheche looked where she was pointing.
A scuffle was breaking out in front of the truck.

“You crazy old man! What are you going to do, take it all yourself! I have two wives who haven’t eaten anything for three days!”

“Who told you to take two wives? Get out of my way before I smash your filthy face.”

To be precise, a skinny young man and an old man with a cane were arguing.
It was over the last remaining can of nutritional powder.

When the young man finally grabbed the old man by the collar, the surrounding spectators cheered.

The old man, his lips twisted, struck the young man hard in the solar plexus.
Gasp! The young man, instantly overwhelmed, stumbled and fell to the ground.

“I told you to move.”

The old man swept the remaining three cans of nutritional powder into his bag.
The cheers subsided, and sharp glares were directed at the old man.

The old man spat at the people who wouldn’t make way and moved forward.
However, before he could fully exit the crowd, a hand appeared from somewhere and snatched the cane he was holding.

The old man’s body, which had been firm until then, collapsed helplessly to the ground.
That was the beginning of the indiscriminate violence towards the old man.

While people assaulted the old man, the nutritional powder he dropped became the spoils of the onlookers.

Yeosu watched the old man with anxious eyes.

With a large physique and muscular body.
As a person of a black-skinned race whose age was hard to guess, the old man certainly looked sturdier than his actual age.
But now, he was in a state where he couldn’t walk without his cane.

“What a shame, his leg is messed up.”

Cough, spit! The young man who had first argued with the old man spat on his face.

Soon, after all the nutritional powder cans on the ground disappeared, people lost interest and left the old man.
The cane had long been kicked away by people’s feet, far out of the old man’s reach.

“Uh, Mom. That o-old man…”

The old man, whose face was badly bruised, lay motionless on the ground.
If left like that, he might die before even reaching the shelter.

However, Cheche turned her head away with an indifferent expression.
The old man moved his lips as if making a final desperate effort.

“Hey…”

Among the scattered people, the only ones the old man could see were the mother and daughter who had not yet left.

His hand, messy with dirt and blood, reached out towards Cheche, the adult.
Cheche narrowed her eyes.
A face trying to recall something.
Then she turned around.

The old man watched Cheche’s retreating back.
There was no resentment in his eyes.
Only resignation.

It was then.

“Th-this… here…”

The old man’s sunken eyelids, bruised from being hit, twitched and looked towards the child in front of him.
In the hand of the child, who was half his size, was the cane the old man had dropped.

“A-are you… alright?”

The old man’s chapped lips parted.
At the same time, thump, thump, footsteps hitting the ground were heard.
It was Cheche’s urging to the child, unable to scold her with words.

Yeosu finally placed the cane next to the old man’s hand and hurried away to her mother’s side.
The old man couldn’t take his eyes off her retreating figure.

His faded black eyes, as faded as his gray hair, suddenly recalled a memory from the past.
His eyes slowly closed.

Upon arriving at the shelter, there was an unexpected visitor.

“Cheche. Have you been to the exchange?”

Oteb, holding a scrap metal doll, smiled at Cheche.
He was the man who had promised Leroi to look at the map for her.

Cheche rolled her eyes to the side and checked the pile of firewood where the book was hidden.
It was still covered with the waterproof tarp, just as she had left it that morning.
Only then did she relax and nod.