Belittle

Chapter One

-Celeste-

I feel like there's a beauty to an alleyway at night; no one around but there's still the faint boom of the music from the dance halls. The buildings of the city are alight with life and the ground floors are almost always used as some form of entertainment, especially in these parts.

Of course, one of the other parts, the scholarly one, is a complete juxtaposition; large buildings of lighter colours that look similar to the pictures of old world museums. There's such a low-level thrum of noise in that part of the city it makes me uneasy whenever I visit. It's disconcerting to have my hearing be obscured by the silence while simultaneously able to hear every breath.

This part of the city though? The vibrations of lively music hum through the ground creating a wonderful background noise as it bustles with life. Not to mention how densely packed all the buildings are, it creates narrow alleyways like this one.

Despite the pleasantness of the bass, there are no sounds of wildlife in the city at all. The Capital, the part I'm in, has no animals and barely any nature. Hell, it only has enough to keep the place neutral, in carbon that is. Even then, many of the plants are kept hidden and are unseen by the residents of the city.

You have to travel a hell of a long way to even reach the boundaries of the Capital, let alone the city. The closest area of countryside and rolling nature is probably a couple of days away from here. I would know.

It's looked down upon to live in the countryside really. There's nothing but the wild expanse with barely anything to entertain yourself and absolutely no high-end fashion or anything! A miserable life truly. For me at least.

No one I'm close to is there now. Or at least, I don't care for the people there now.

Besides, the city overlooks children and runaways on the streets. They're too common for anyone to give a shit.

Everyone in the city only cares for themselves once they're here. The rich get richer and that whole shtick, yeah, that rings true here. Only the people who earn enough, the merchants, any authority and any esteemed family, can stick around here. The city's not for rough, uncouth, grubby things like me and my own.

Though, it's not like I arrived in the city when I was shoved into this place. I first arrived in the districts. Not a particularly easy place to live but it is what it is.

Everyone in the district thinks for themselves too but in another way; a survival way. No one wants to be in the districts initially, they're crawling with unresolved trauma that has no outlet. The main goal there is to become rich, something a young, naïve me tried to do, or become a barrel boss.

Every single soul in the districts is in a gang. It's a necessity, a gruesome and undesirable one but a necessity nonetheless. No one can survive the districts alone, you need someone to have your back. A rule of thumb, one could say.

But, it's survival of the fittest and while gangs are always scraping and battling for money and territory, it's not an easy game. Not in the slightest. You need them more than they need you, so you have to prove your worth, even if it means doing the nastiest, most demeaning things to gather the scraps of money you can.

Anything to get someone watching you back. It's almost always for life after that too.

The slight narrowing of the alleyway forces me from my thoughts.

Cautious, I glance around at my surroundings; the pathway is bathed in the shadows of towering buildings and each side is blocked by a wall. Not the most ideal place- can't get hints of shadows in these parts.