The District – 7 years before the tutorial began:


    Lan and Bo had a secret spot that only they knew. Past the edge of the District, in the boneyard, where the skeletons of vehicles are left to rot after being picked clean.


    Their secret spot was a bus tipped on its side and stripped of its engine and seats. It was a bus that would never move again, considered broken and worthless. But to them, it was home.


    The ancient glass windows creaked as Lan walked over them. There wasn’t far to fall if they broke, only an inch between the window and the ground, but Lan didn’t want to slice his leg open on shards of glass, so he moved carefully. At the back of the bus was a heaping pile of rotten blankets, pushed together to make a mouldy nest of sorts.


    In the nest sat Bo, A thin boy with short hair so pale it was almost grey. He had piercing blue eyes that didn’t look as bright as they ought to and skin so pale it bordered on see-through.


    Lan looked at his friend’s gaunt, almost skeletal frame, and his heart ached. He wanted to bring Bo food and a blanket that didn’t smell of ammonia. He would kill to let the boy even younger than he was know warmth, but Bo was like him.


    An Orphan.


    An Outcast.


    Abandoned.


    “Bo,” Lan called out softly as he got closer to their nest. He didn’t want to startle the weak boy, so he tried to keep his voice as quiet as possible. That, and it never hurt to be discrete when their next-door neighbours trafficked children for a living.


    Bo weakly raised his head from the blankets, squinting at Lan, “Lan, is that you?”


    “Yeah, it’s me. I managed to steal food from Mary again,” Lan giggled as he produced a fist-sized package wrapped in old newspaper.


    “No!” Bo cried out, “Mary needs that. Her kids-“


    “Shh” Lan hissed, “Aren’t you hungry?”


    Bo looked down, not daring to meet Lan’s gaze. His growling stomach did the talking for him, and as Lan unwrapped the newspaper and he got a better look at the baked potato, he couldn’t help but sit up straighter.


    “Don’t look at me like that,” Lan chided, “It’s not like I can return this now,”


    “Yes, you can-“ Bo started to say before Lan licked the potato.


    “Hm?” Lan grunted, taking a big bite.


    “But…” Bo shifted uncomfortably, trying not to let the steaming potato drag his gaze in with its almost magnetic pull.


    Lan sighed and walked closer to Bo, waving the potato In front of his nose until he finally gave in. By the time they were finished eating, the newspaper had been licked clean. But even then, one potato could hardly be enough for two boys.


    They lay together on the musty pile of blankets, looking up through the bus window at the fuzzy stars above. It was impossible to see them clearly because of all the dust and grime on the windows, so they let their imaginations do most of the work.


    In the distance, a looming shadow blotted out half the sky and continued on into the cosmos, but neither discussed this massive structure. It hurt too much.


    As Lan moved over to his side of the blankets, he bumped his knee against a small piece of slate.


    “Ow, why’d you leave this here?” He held up the black slate for Bo to see.


    Bo turned bright red and tried to snatch it off Lan, but his skinny arms couldn’t move quick enough. He ended up falling feebly before Lan with his arm outstretched.


    “Please give it back,” Bo said in a voice so desperate it was almost a whine.


    “Uhm,” Lan turned the seemingly ordinary piece of slate over in his hands, not understanding why Bo was so desperate. On the other side, he found a picture of a cartoonish rabbit scratched into the slate using some sort of sharp object. It was fat, with big buck teeth and an eyepatch over one eye.


    “What’s this?”


    Blushing, Bo reached up and grabbed the piece of slate, holding it tightly against his chest. “Nothing,” He said quietly.


    Lan frowned, “Nothing?”


    “Yeah…”


    He sighed, “Okay.”


    For as long as he had known Bo, the boy had secrets. That wasn’t a rare thing in the District. Most people did. Even Lan himself had plenty of lockboxes he would prefer buried. So, when he saw how unwilling Bo was to talk about the subject, he dropped it.


    “It was a good drawing, though,” He added.


    Bo looked up at him meekly, “Thanks….” His voice shook a little when he spoke, and that night, as the dogs in the boneyard howled and the strange, alien creatures rifled through long-forgotten garbage, Bo hugged Lan a little tighter than usual as they slept.Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.


    Sun streamed in through the bus window, ripping Lan from the grasp of sleep. He crawled out of their nest and tiptoed his way along the bus. To reach the door on the ceiling, he had to climb a rope they had found in a nearby heap of trash.


    The rope creaked and groaned as he pulled himself out of the bus and jumped down into the desolate boneyard. Everywhere he looked, twisted metal and rotting wood littered the cracked asphalt. While the skeletons of vehicles stripped bare of anything useful dotted the land like strange, apocalyptic museum exhibits.


    Lan dropped down from the bus and ran immediately. He knew that speed was key since only the slowest kids got caught by the roving child ‘collectors’. Weaving between mountains of rusting metal and ruined plastic, Lan darted from cover to cover, moving as though he were always being sighted by a rifle.


    As he arrived at the edge of the District, where the junkyard became a slum, he didn’t lower his guard but, instead, heightened it. He had heard enough stories about kids getting sold to brothels or unlicensed, experimental laboratories to know he was never safe in the District.


    Lan followed the same route he always did, running through alleyways when it was safe enough and clambering over rooftops when it wasn’t. He made sure to watch out for any exposed nails, after an old man he knew died of something called tetanus recently.


    He eventually came to a flashy shop with a glowing pink neon sign that read: Luxury Ladies!


    Out the front of this shop was a haggard-looking woman with limp brown hair and a stare that never looked closer than a thousand yards. She had two brats sitting on the steps beside her. One was gnawing on a stale piece of bread, and the other sewed a hole in a piece of lingerie shut.


    “Morning, Mary!” Lan shouted as he ran past, “Am I on time,”


    Mary looked up at him and smiled weakly. “Just barely,” She said, watching with a sad gaze as Lan ran past and headed deeper into the District.


    “Mummy, why does Lan go to the wall every morning?” The kid sewing asked curiously.


    Mary watched as Lan disappeared into a distant alleyway, “For the Drop, sweetie.”


    The girl wrinkled her nose, “Ew, isn’t that smelly?”


    “Yes…” Mary sighed, “It is,”


    Lan made sure to avoid the streets with open sewers as he ran. He had learned, through much trial and error, that while these streets were usually safer since nobody wanted to walk down them. It wasn’t worth dealing with the horrific stench. He would literally rather die than walk down Stockman’s lane ever again.


    As he grew closer to the wall, the streets started to fill up. People began to head towards various drop spots in their droves, thousands of grimy faces and shoeless feet stampeding to the very thing that kept them at bay.


    Lan had already picked his spot for the day. A little west of the night district, where Mary worked, was a perfect spot that hadn’t gotten too popular yet. And thanks to its proximity to a residential area on the other side of the wall, there were usually plenty of good finds. Not that Lan did any of the finding himself.


    He arrived at the Drop spot a few minutes early and hung back. To get a better view of the area, he climbed onto the roof of a nearby liquor shop and lay flat against the rusty corrugated iron. From up there, he could see the top of the wall, and the twenty or so soldiers, in their spotless military gear, rushing to get the drop bags ready.


    From up on the roof, he could also get a better look at what went on at ground level. Beneath the wall, a wide spot had been cleared, about 10 metres in all directions. And crowding around this spot were twenty to thirty people in rags, with faces caked in grime and sweat.


    These were the early birds, as Lan liked to call them. They had bought into the lie that since they were early, they would get the worm. But this wasn’t the case. From experience, he knew it wasn’t the first bird to get the worm but the most cunning.


    So Lan waited atop this roof every day and watched as the huge, black plastic bags were winched out over the wall. He watched as the bags split open and rubbish cascaded down onto the empty patch. Before the last bag had even split open, the people jumped on the rubbish like starving hyenas. Each of them desperately dived into the puddle of garbage, hoping to emerge with a catch of their own.


    Whether it be food or a valuable tool. Perhaps out-of-date drugs or, and this was only a legend, but Lan had once heard about someone finding money in the trash. The story went that since the rich family were so wealthy, they couldn’t be bothered dealing with their change and simply threw it away. Whether this was true or not, Lan seriously doubted, but he liked to hope that it was.


    As Lan watched the people fight over rubbish, he eyed them like a hawk watches a group of rabbits.


    In the past, he had been down there, like them. But every time he found something good, it was taken by an adult or someone stronger than him. Now, he was that stronger person. He would take, not be taken from.


    ‘Her,’ Lan spotted a young girl about his age, discretely hiding a stale loaf of bread in her baggy jumper. She made sure no one was looking and squeezed out of the throng, carefully backing into a nearby alley.


    Lan followed her along the rooves of buildings, waiting until she was far enough away before dropping down in front of her with a twisted piece of metal clenched In his grip.


    The girl froze, her eyes wide. “I-I don’t have anything,” She stuttered, doing her best to conceal the loaf of bread in the folds of her oversized jumper. It was so washed out and stained that the jumper’s original colour might have been beige, but Lan wasn’t sure. What really caught his attention was the faded little character on the front.


    “I saw you take the bread,” Lan said coldly.


    “My mummy needs-“


    “I don’t care.” Lan cut her off.


    The girl looked like she was about to cry, but Lan shushed her, “I’ll make a deal,” He said softly.


    The longer he stared at the character, the more familiar it became. The girl was wearing a jumper with almost exactly the same rabbit as Bo had drawn.


    “A deal,” The girl echoed, a flash of hope lighting up behind her eyes.


    Lan nodded, “Give me half the bread, and tell me what that thing is,” He pointed at her jumper.


    “Half!?” The girl exclaimed, “But-“


    “Fine, I’ll take all the bread then,” Lan said coldly.


    The girl gritted her teeth and clenched her fists. She looked up at Lan, her gaze burning, but there was something in his eyes that told her this was a fight she couldn’t win.


    In the end, she unclenched her fists and nodded, tearing off half the stale loaf of bread and handing it to Lan. “Are you happy?” She asked glumly.


    “And that?” Lan didn’t reply, instead pointing at her oversized jumper.


    The girl looked down at the little character and laughed, “This isn’t mine. It’s my mummy’s. I’m not giving it to you.” She bared her teeth, almost growling.


    “No, I don’t want your ugly jumper.” Lan shook his head, “What is that on it?” He pointed at the cartoon rabbit with an eyepatch.


    “This…” The girl looked down at the rabbit, bewildered.


    “It’s Thumper,” She finished, looking up at Lan questioningly.


    “What does it do?” Lan pressed.


    “He’s… a rabbit.” The girl answered, “He hops… I guess.”


    Lan shook his head, “No, I mean, where is he from?”


    “Oh…” The girl’s eyes widened in understanding, “My mummy said he was in a tv show she liked. I don’t remember what it’s called,”


    Lan frowned, scratching his chin as he tried to figure out what this meant. Why would Bo draw such a character and act so possessively of the drawings? He didn’t understand.


    “Can I- Can I go?” The girl asked nervously.


    “Oh, yeah,” Lan lowered the piece of metal, and the girl sidled past, continuing on down the alley.


    ‘Later,’ Lan stuffed the piece of bread down his trousers and ran off, heading back to his nest to share today’s spoils with Bo.