2
The Imperial capital, Harkenweltz.
Eleventh Avenue, an area of many multi-tenant buildings.
The large street was littered with a mix of residences made of wood, prefab constructions made from flimsy steel, and even brand-new steel-framed buildings. In one corner of the road, the young black-haired Crossweil held a map in his hand as he walked.
…Plit.
Something felt sticky on the sole of his shoe—he must have stepped in some discarded gum. Or perhaps some paint or furniture glue? He couldn’t tell, which only showed how chaotic the main thoroughfare was, especially with the crowds and clamor common all over the Imperial capital.
“…And the smell of the smoke.”
He could trace its origin to the smokestacks of the factories. They were quite literally everywhere as they were needed to process the iron extracted from the ground, so the smell of chemicals and smoke was thick in the air.
“I knew it would be like this, but is this dirty town really going to become my home?…”
He adjusted his backpack and continued on.
His destination was the residential district. He wasn’t heading to any of the large estates or luxury condos. The neighborhood was filled with prefab houses—the type that could have been constructed overnight if needed. This was the gathering place, and temporary residence, of the young hopefuls who had traveled to the Empire for work. And once he was in the right area…
He found the house that he would be staying at to be mind-boggling—in a bad way.
“…What kind of rubbish heap of a house is this?”
The prefab structure was simple—in the sense that they had done nothing but bend flimsy sheets of metal to construct it. In fact, it was made of a single sheet of metal. The walls were discolored with rust from being exposed to the elements.
“Can you really call this a house? It looks more like a shed or a storage place. I feel like I could find a nicer doghouse in the countryside…”
From this day forward, this would be his home.
He hesitantly knocked on the door, still struggling to accept his reality. He received an answer immediately:
“Nobody’s home.”
“……Huh?”
“No one’s here.”
It was a young girl’s voice. Though her voice sounded sweet, it was also sharp, and she did not hide her annoyance.
“Oh, come on! There’s definitely someone here! You just answered me!” He knocked once more. This time he pounded on it with his fist. “Come on, open up!”
“Nobody’s home.”
“Liar!”
“If you’re here for the bills, our paycheck comes in five days, so come back then. If you’re here to sell something, we haven’t got the money to buy anything, but you can come back in ten years.”
“No, I’m not…”
“Oh, shut up!”
The door burst open.
A girl with tan skin and straw-colored hair had kicked open the door with the force of a rocket, and her blows were hurtling at his face with the same momentum.
“Gah!”
Crossweil collapsed as she sent a barrage of kicks into him. The girl, who had landed straddling his face, was looking down at him. She cocked her head to the side quizzically.
“Hm? I feel like I’ve seen you before.”
“…”
She had beat him so thoroughly that he was still writhing in agony.
She stared him in the face.
“Oh, it’s just you, Crow.” The tan girl started to laugh.
Eve Sofi Nebulis. His fifteen-year-old, distantly related adoptive sister hadn’t changed in looks or personality since he’d last seen her two years ago.
“Really brings me back. You’re so lanky, but you’ve gotten bigger. When we used to take baths together, you’d run away because you didn’t like the shampoo.”
“…My nose hurts” was his only reply.
“Well, good job finding your way here. The roads in the capital are so messed up, you almost got lost, am I right?” Eve cackled. “Well, looks like it’s the three of us starting today. Let’s make this fun, shall we?”
The junk house (according to Crossweil, at least).
Eve invited him in.
“…It still hurts.”
“Ah-ha-ha, don’t be so mad. Your nose just had a reunion with my knee, is all.”
“Guess all my memories of you being nice were fake…”
“I am nice. Here, have some water.”
Wouldn’t one normally serve tea in this situation?
But Crossweil stopped himself from making that quip. They didn’t have luxuries like tea. Coffee was also out of the question. It was plain as day when he saw the inside.
“Uh…”
The cup Eve thrust at him was on the ground.
“You don’t even have a table?” he asked.
“That would just get in the way of sleeping. The room’s small enough as it is.”
He sat on the floor, which was bereft of even a cushion for guests. It was hard and cold. There was no furniture to speak of except a washing machine and fridge. No tables, no shelves. Since the space also lacked a closet, the occupants’ clothes were neatly folded and laid in a corner. As a maturing lad, Crossweil had a hard time figuring out where to direct his gaze when he spotted what looked like undergarments. Eve herself, on the other hand, didn’t seem concerned in the slightest.
“Well, this is pretty normal for the young people coming to the Empire for work.”
“I thought the Empire would be a little more glamorous.”
“You have to be above middle class for that,” she told him, not missing a beat. “But we do make a lot more as miners here than we would in any other country. That’s the whole reason why we came to work in the Empire, and why you made your way here, after all.”
“But if the pay is so good, what’s up with this house?”
“We send half our pay home each month. What’s so bad about it, though? Living in a run-down place like this can be fun in its own way. Oh, right, so about the work.” Eve clapped her hands together.
She made her way over to a corner of the room where there was a pile of food and other junk. After pushing her way through the mountain of things, she produced an electric saw and nail gun.
“There you go.”
“…What?”
After thrusting the appliances at him, she pointed up at the ceiling, again without missing a beat.
“We’ve had leaks recently. Ahh, I sure am glad we’ve got another set of hands to help out now.”
“Could I head back home…?”
The largest nation in the world, with beautiful city streets, was a civilization with dazzling sophisticated machinery. It was the best place in the world for young people to find employment.
So he had been taught and so he had believed.
The youth all over the world likely believed in that image of the Empire.
“It was all a lie…”
Those actually enjoying the prosperity of the Empire were in the middle class and above. The lower stratum, which comprised about forty percent of the population, lived to work and had nothing to show for it but frugal prefab abodes.
“I came here to make more money. I can’t believe we’re living somewhere smaller and more run-down than back home.”
He looked up at the clear gray sky. Though that seemed contradictory, he didn’t know how to describe it otherwise. It was both of those things. Because of the eternally spewing smoke from the factories, the sky was a constant gloomy shade.
“The toxins in the smoke rise and come down with the rain. So we really need to patch those leaks…there.”
They were hammering down metal plates over a large hole in the roof. Ultimately, it was just a stopgap solution. Even though they’d covered the hole, the acid rain would still continue and corrode the metal—he was sure of it.
“Oh? Is that…?” A voice came from the entryway.
A girl holding a supermarket bag looked up and, upon catching sight of him, beamed.
“I knew it was you, Crow! I knew you’d be here any minute!”
She waved a hand dramatically at him.
“It’s been so long,” she continued. “You’ve gotten so big!”
“Alice! It has been too long.”
Alicerose Sofi Nebulis—Crossweil’s other adoptive sister. Eve and Alicerose were twins, and Eve was the older of the two. He remembered them looking exactly alike, both in features and in stature, but…
“…? What’s wrong, Crow?”
“Uh…no, it’s just um…”
He got down from the roof and faced Alicerose. The girl in front of him had grown up in the last two years, maturing into a lovely adult. Her dazzling golden hair was silky as it fluttered in the wind, and her ruby eyes were imposing and dignified. Her sculpted profile and blood-red lips were elegant and alluring.
Then there was her figure. The swell of her developed chest under her dress was far from what could be called underdeveloped. To be blunt, she didn’t seem like she could possibly be Eve’s twin, much less her younger sister.
“Uh, are you sure you weren’t the older one, Alice? And that Eve is the younger one.”
“Huh? Oh, Crow, what are you talking about,” Alicerose laughed in response.
“Eve will be mad if she hears that, you know. She’s already—”
“I HEARD that.”
The door burst open, and the other sister poked her head out.
“You, Crow!” Eve stood next to Alicerose. “That’s not the reaction I got when you first saw me. Why’re you acting so giddy to see Alice?”
“Huh? Uh, I think you’ve got the wrong idea…actually I seem to recall you greeting me with a kick straight to the head when we met. Of course I acted differently.”
“Shut up! I’m the older one here. You’d better show me some respect!” Eve shouted, placing a hand on her hip.
Out of the two twins, Eve hadn’t grown significantly in the past two years, while Alicerose had matured so much she looked like she was the older one.
“Sheesh. So what if I’m short and look more like a kid?” She pouted sulkily. That made her seem more childlike, but if he told her that, he knew she would be even more upset.
“Eve, you can’t put Crow on the spot like that…”
“This is all your fault!”
“Eep! Wh-what are you doing, Eve?!”
Eve had latched on to Alicerose’s back—and had just so happened to grab on to her sister’s voluptuous breasts to stabilize herself.
“What are these?! What are these giant things I’m holding? I bet they’re sucking up all the nourishment that’s supposed to be going toward my growth!”
“E-Eve?!” Alicerose turned bright red from being groped. “Y-you need to stop…Crow can see!”
“You’re the one showing them off! Everybody calls me a terrible older sister. They think I’m underdeveloped because of you!”
“S-stop…please, Eve!”
They weren’t hiding their fight at all.
“Looks like you two are living it up…,” Crossweil said in a monotone.
This was the start to their life together in the Imperial capital.
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