「 CHILD SUPPORT 」 Minsung

Ｃｈａｐｔｅｒ １

9:30 pm, a calm and cloudy night, a tepid wind and a navy blue haired boy crouched behind a bakery, red neon lights in the alleyway.

He had dark clothing, and a huge black hoodie was engulfing his frame with ease. A backpack was hanging low on his spinal chord and mask was covering half his face. "Black Lives Matter" written in bright bold letters on the mask, his eyes shining with the feral and nihilistic determination his generation had running down their boiling veins and a powerful wish, yet uncertain of the future was burning in his very core. He was part of Gen Z. He was dangerous. Not dangerous alone, but together with all the strength and raw energy people his generation had. He was fearless. Dangerous.

"- Hi kitty!" A highly pitched voice, baby-talking to a ball of fur—brown, perhaps? Too many colours—. And that was the final touch of Gen Z. Baby talking to pretty much anything sort of alive—not really minding if said thing has rabies—, in a shady looking back alley with a shady looking outfit.

"- Aw, who's the prettiest of them all? Yeah it's you! Yeah you're gorgeous!" The kitten had uneven hair, and a complete patch of fur was missing. A black substance was stuck on their forepaws, one eye was closed by something that was definitely not the kitten's will, their bones were protruding through the skin. It was cadaverous. And ugly. But somehow, somehow, the boy had been able to see the will to live sparkling in the kitten's eye. Or maybe it was just his imagination, and that he was really just hoping that something out of the ordinary would happen in this uneventful day and what he saw in their eye was just hunger.

But either way, he liked this... Living thing. And damn it, how sorry he felt for it and it's skeletal frame .

"- Hey buddy, I think I have something for you!" The navy haired boy took his backpack, fiddled messily with the zipper and grabbed a crumpled paper bag. The brown wrapping was already growing patches of grease.

"- Listen, I don't know if it's good for you, I've heard some stuff is poisonous for the ones of your kind, but it's all I have right now," he started unwrapping the Vienna bread. He then stopped himself before grabbing his phone, and entered "is Vienna bread good for cats?" on Google. A few seconds of diagonal reading and he had all the informations he needed; so, if he wanted to kill a kitten, giving it bread could actually be a great thing to do, but who the fuck kills cats for fun, especially with Vienna bread? (Spoiler alert: not him.)

"- Ah, damn, sorry little bud, but I won't be able to give you food," he started, "cuz like, the bread I got is kinda really great for killing a little sweetheart like you, which is definitely not in my plans. But I'll come back tomorrow morning anyway, so could you wait a bit for food?" He asked rhetorically, wrapping the bread in it's brown paper bag again. As he was putting it back in his backpack, he felt something quite squashy being mushed by his fingers. A loud "EW" echoed on the walls of the alley. He then remembered he never really took the time to take out his uneaten sandwich—three days old, mind you—, and that the spongy thing was most possibly it. He grabbed it, took the cellophane wrapping off and opened the sandwich.

"- Eheyh, little bud, looks like I do have something not that poisonous for your tummy!" He triumphantly brandished the slice of ham he had just retrieved from the BLT delicacy, three days of age.

"- I won't eat it myself, firstly because I'm not a terrific fan of ham, secondly because it's been in my backpack for three days unrefrigerated, and lastly because you look like you need it way more than the trash can I was going to feed it," he approached the slice of ham from the kitty, crouched on the floor, with his backpack hanging dangerously on one shoulder. The kitten slowly approached him. It sniffed wearily the fingers of the navy haired male, licked a bit the ham, before opening wide and—