One hit.
Then another.
A third.
"Breathe in. Breathe out. One and two and three.
Slow. Don't pass out. Not now… not yet."
The ground beneath Kai was cold and damp, the smell of rust and blood tangled in the rain.
Voices echoed inside his skull—voices from old memories he'd buried years ago.
Voices that once made him feel alive.
He thought only one thing:
"You felt this every single day until you finally died, huh, Yuto?
What did you think about every time they hit you?
Was I in your head?
Your family?
What did you feel?
Pain? Rage? Sadness?
I don't feel any of it. Not a damn thing."
And there he lay—wrapped in himself, silent, like always.
He counted in his head.
One. Two. Three. Four.
You'd think he was counting the hits, but no—he was counting the breaths his weak body could still give out.
Each one sounded the same.
Each one hurt just as little.
Then came the kicks—heavy and precise.
Left ribs. Right ribs. Arm. Leg. Temple.
"LOOK AT HIM! HE'S NOT EVEN MOVING!" one of them screamed.
"SCREAM, YOU WORTHLESS PIECE OF SHIT!" their leader yelled.
A kick slammed into his shoulder. Something cracked.
The sound startled the birds in the trees that were waiting for morning.
Light from a flickering street lamp brushed across Kai's face—
a thin boy, blood all over him, eyes far too calm for someone getting beaten half to death.
A boy who'd long since killed his sense of pain and shut off his mind.
His face didn't twitch once.
He was ice.
So cold that even the concrete beneath him felt it.
"Same shit every time. I'm lying here again, and I feel nothing,"
he said quietly, voice flat, detached.
The boys started to lose interest.
One spat on his body before turning away.
"Forget it, Marko. Waste of time. We'll get him again before school and teach him what pain really feels like."
Their voices faded with their laughter, swallowed by the rain.
Kai didn't move until the water on the ground touched his cheek.
Slowly—no shaking, no groaning—he pushed himself up.
The calm inside him bled into everything around him.
Only the sound of the rain remained, like a slow, steady rhythm.
He listened to it.
In his head, it turned into a melody—
the melody of a near-death experience.
He started walking.
Didn't even know why.
Lying there was useless anyway.
Left foot.
Right foot.
Left again.
That's all he could do.
Every step hurt, but not really.
It wasn't pain.
It was… weight.
Like something pressing down, but never reaching inside.
He passed an old kiosk, windows covered with wire.
The air burned his nose.
Smelled like smoke, piss, and cheap alcohol.
Two men stood outside, drunk.
They laughed, then coughed until one spat blood into his hand.
He wiped it off on his jeans like it didn't mean shit.
Guess it didn't.
Not here.
To stay alive in this city,
you had to throw your fear away.
Everything soft had to die.
Further down, a trash container was on fire.
Three kids were standing there, warming their hands.
One lit a plastic bottle,
laughed when the flame turned blue.
"Where do we sleep tonight?"
"Where you think, dumbass? Same place as always."
Half the kids here were orphans.
The rest were just waiting to be.
The houses were old.
Concrete walls.
Graffiti everywhere — gang signs, names, insults, love.
All in the same spot,
like scars stacked on top of scars.
Just like his body.
On the other side, blue lights.
Cops again. Another dead body.
Same thing every night.
And where there's crime,
there's women waiting in the cold.
Guys in cars watching them like animals.
People doing things that didn't even look human anymore.
Behind every second window, a TV flickered.
In some apartments, someone screamed.
In others, there was just music.
This city never slept.
A place where kids grew up because they had no choice.
Where people looked for something to feel alive.
Violence. Sex. Pain. Whatever worked.
A city where nothing lasted,
and everything that did… was already dead.
Neokura.
The city that replaced itself.
He knew every street.
Every corner.
Who sold what,
which doors you didn't touch,
which lights never went out.
Everyone fought here.
Not to win.
Just not to drown.
And somewhere under all that concrete,
under the rain and the noise,
there was a place where people left their old lives behind
and came out as something else.
The Pit.
People from all over came to fight there.
Some for fame.
Some for money.
Some because they didn't have a damn choice.
Kai had never been there.
But sometimes he thought he could hear it —
deep below the streets.
Like the city's second heartbeat.
He pulled his hood lower.
Rain mixed with sweat on his face.
Each step echoed empty.
Like he was walking through someone else's dream.