The Disillusioned Land

Chapter 2 - A Morning Stroll

The Human City - where the sun never sets. That's how they advertised it, but you could barely tell from down here. The shadows cast by the buildings blocked out nearly all of it. Once I was on the street I took a deep breath of today's air.

*Sigh*

Felt like I caught 3 more diseases just from doing that, glad that's the same as usual. Guess it was time to start my daily trudge towards my job, but I was gonna take my sweet time getting there, not like it was going anywhere

Walking by the condemned buildings and downtrodden faces, I got to my usual sandwich shop.

"Hey, there's my favorite customer!" The shopkeep greeted me like this everytime I visited here, but she says that to everyone.

"Your usual?"

"2 of them, it's gonna be a long day today." I left it at that, I didn't feel like explaining what I do to her, no matter how many times she's asked me.

"Coming right up!" After a few minutes she came back with the sandwiches.

"Here you go, it's on the house!"

"What? Why?" That was unexpected, she never gives things away for free. Hell, she's never even given me a discount.

"Your friend already paid for whatever you buy today, didn't they tell you?"

Friend? Who the hell was she talking about, I don't know anyone nice enough to buy me lunch, let alone pay in advance. Well, even if this is weird, I'm not turning down free food.

"Oh right, sorry, I'm still a bit asleep haha..." Hope I played that off well enough.

"Alright then, come back soon!"

Didn't expect buying food to leave me so confused, but hey - free food. Leaving the shop, I continued walking to my job, but of course, nothing today can go like normal.

"GAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH"

Something burst out of a window several floors up, screaming all the way down. The screams only stopped when it landed on the concrete in front of me. A youkai, probably a nocturnal one gone feral. Poor bastard died on impact, its bones piercing the skin in random places. What a horrible sight. I've heard this was getting increasingly more common recently, but no one knows why. The sun's been stuck like that for quite a while, so people think something is causing the youkai to go feral.

I, however, have no time to think about things like that, and I continue walking to my job. Surely someone else will clean that up, that sure as hell isn't my job.

But before walking away, I took one more look back up at the window where it fell from. It was quick, but I saw some sort of light coming from the broken window. It was just enough light to make something cast a shadow before it got snuffed out. Not like I was gonna walk all the way up there to check, but this will make a nice story to tell over lunch today.

Like I said before, solving shit like this isn't my job.