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delicatemusickingdom · 7 days

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Book 1 Part 1 Chapter 2.1

Chapter 2: The Grey Alleyways

The girl stretched her hand out from the railing. In her hands was a wooden bucket, and she raised it skywards like an offering. The bucket trembled precariously in her hands.

In front of her, a waterfall the width of a fully grown adult crashed down. It was far enough from the railings that the girl could barely reach it with her fingertips. The girl stretched her arms as far as she could, trying to catch as much water as she could into the bucket.

“If you lean too far out, you’ll fall.”

Yuri’s voice startled the girl, and she quickly jumped back. The water sloshed around in the bucket as she moved.

Yuri was careful not to spill his own bucket of water as he loaded it onto the cart. Inside the cart, there lined buckets of various sizes, all already filled with water.

Including Yuri, there were five or six people surrounding the cart, but all of them were children. Some of them were even younger than him. There were no adults.

Yuri set down his load with a pant. He looked around. Their party, along with the cart, was in a small square. In front of them towered a giant wall. The waterfall cascaded down from high above, directly into a pond that bordered the wall. There was a platform that jutted out over the pond, and the children used that to draw water from the waterfall.

The wall was large, ancient, and intimidating. It stretched all the way out on both sides, extending as far as the eye could see, half-obstructed by the buildings leaning on it, until it gently curved and disappeared from sight. It was also incredibly tall. Even the tallest buildings from the lower quarter were shorter than its halfway point. The waterfall flowed out from a lofty point in the wall.

The sky was clear, but their surroundings were dim here. The enormous shadow cast by the wall covered the whole area in darkness. From above, Yuri and the others probably looked like ants crawling around.

But when Yuri looked up, he could still see a hint of greenery peeking out from the top of the wall. Yuri knew it was a roadside tree from the citizen’s quarter. As he looked up from within the shadows, the tree appeared to be shining, as though it was emitting light.

Beyond that, he could see a row of spires. They had distinctive shapes, and were spaced out at equal intervals. These were the barrier blastia that protected the Imperial Capital. According to Hanks, its main body stood right in the middle of the Imperial Capital, while the spires were devices to help support it.

‘Other side of the wall’. Those words unconsciously appeared in Yuri’s mind. The other children probably thought the same thing.

This was the great wall that surrounded the Imperial Capital, Zaphias. And, it was also the line that divided the lower quarter from the rest of the city. A ‘borderline’. For the boy who had yet to understand everything, he at least understood that the word held numerous meanings. Most of them were bitter ones.

The castle gates were never closed, probably because of the barrier. They stayed open, even to the residents of the lower quarter. But to the residents of the lower quarter, the citizen’s quarter remained a distant place, and not one they could visit freely.

Yuri once visited the place out of curiosity. He remembered the looks of pity and contempt on the people’s faces, even though he was a commoner, just like them.

Whatever. Yuri squashed down the feelings beginning to well up inside of him. It doesn’t bother me. They don’t care about us, and we shouldn’t care about them.

The girl from earlier came back, struggling to carry a bucket that was too big for her to handle.

“Thanks for the hard work.”

Yuri said as he helped her load it into the cart.

That was the last bucket. The children all nodded, and surrounded the cart. At a signal, they all shifted their weight and started to push the cart.

Weighed down by the water, its wheels creaking, the cart slowly began to move. The children carefully made their way back to the lower quarter. Occasionally they would call out to each other, or let out exhausted groans.

Apart from rain — which happened irregularly — the waterfall that flowed from the castle walls was the only water source for the lower quarter. That precious water was quite literally their lifeline. The waterfall came from the waterworks system that extended throughout the citizen’s quarters and flowed out. The decorations on the waterfall’s outlet were similar to that of the Fountain Alley’s — namesake’s — fountain. It seemed like the fountain used to be one of the many extravagant devices used by the Imperial Capital, though it had long since dried up.

Apparently a long time ago, the walls didn’t exist, and the Imperial Capital extended further beyond the lower quarter. Remains of buildings from that era were scattered throughout the lower quarter area, and Some of them were even being used as residences.

They say the artificial waterfall was abandoned when the people retreated behind the city walls. No one really cared about its origin now, though. The water was safe to drink and there was a safe way to obtain it — that was all that mattered. Most of the water that flowed through the lower quarter was sewage water from the ‘other side of the wall’. The ruins underground blocked the water veins so wells couldn’t run, and the lands outside the Imperial Capital was fraught with danger.

As a result, for the lower quarter residents, fetching water from the waterfall was an indispensable part of their daily routine. In the poorer areas of the lower quarter, not just the adults, but the children too had to perform all kinds of manual labour, but the task of fetching water was an especially arduous one.

Also, they didn’t know whether the pond that the waterfall flowed into mixed with dirty water or not, but it definitely wasn’t clean — in the summer, area around the pond was filled with a stench worse than that of the sewage water. With the abundant humidity in the shadow of the walls, no one was willing to live nearby. And so, fetching water always involved collecting it as it came down, and then carrying it all the way back to the lower quarter. Furthermore, there were fields on the outskirts of the lower quarter that the residents managed. Water had to be delivered there too.

The lower quarter was an existence half-abandoned by the Imperial Capital's government. There was no chance a new water system would ever be installed there. Anger, doubt, and even hope… those feelings of the residents had already been lost many generations ago.

****

Even as they pushed the cart, the children continued to chatter. Doing so distracted them from the pain and monotony of their work. Even if they were poor, they weren’t slaves. As long as they went about it carefully, the adults didn’t make too much of a fuss about it.

Yuri was silent, and kept to himself. As an older child, it was his responsibility to supervise those younger than him, since fetching water was an important job no matter who did it. He didn’t mean to neglect that, but his mind was occupied by something else.

A month had passed since his unexpected confrontation with Flynn.

The season for flowers had come and gone, and there were gradually more and more days where it didn’t get cold, even at night.

After that incident, Yuri had never once visited the area where Flynn was. He had no reason to. He hadn’t seen Flynn since then, either.

He wasn’t sure if he wanted to meet Flynn again, or what he would do if they did. He tried not to think about it too much.

Despite thinking that, from time to time he would find himself thinking back to that scene. He’d recall Flynn’s movements, and then contemplate how he’d respond to them. If he comes from the right, I’d do this, if he comes from below, I’d do that. Once he became aware of it he would try to focus on something else, but soon he would find his thoughts leading back to the same place.

The adults were a different matter, but for Yuri, he’d never lagged behind any of the kids in the lower quarter. Winning and losing aside, he was surprised at how affected he was by the whole thing.

When he asked around, he was told Flynn was the same age as him. Maybe that was why.

Yuri grew irritated, and the fact that he couldn’t pinpoint the exact reason why irritated him even more. The other children were keenly aware of Yuri’s moodiness, and even those older than him didn’t dare bother him.

Regardless of the various childrens’ behaviour, the cart continued to creak as it rolled forward.

Their work had its own dangers. The Imperial Capital sat on a single hill, which sloped gently — or sometimes abruptly — the farther away you got from its centre. Naturally, the road back to the lower quarter was a downhill slope, so if they lost control of the heavily loaded cart and let it gather momentum as it rolled down, it could lead to a disaster.

And even if they reached the lower quarter, their job didn’t end there. Their job also included delivering water to the elderly and those who were unable to come and collect water on their own. Anyone would feel like not doing anything for a while after ferrying heavy buckets to and fro in the lower quarter, but Yuri actually welcomed it. If he worked until he was exhausted, he wouldn’t have the energy to think about unnecessary things.

If the days continued to pass like this, eventually Yuri might stop worrying about Flynn altogether.

It looked like Jareth and the rest hadn’t messed with Flynn ever since that day either. If that was the case, good. Let it stay that way.

……Is what he thought, but he was too naive.

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As an addendum, here's a picture of what the Imperial Capital looks like in the game overworld!

The river over there totally doesn't come into play later in the novels or anything...

#Tales of Vesperia #Genealogy of the Condemned #Danzaisha no Keifu #Tales of Vesperia: Genealogy of the Condemned #delicate posts #delicate translations #love it when the narration clowns on the characters. 'boy i sure hope it stays like this' 'it in fact did not.'#this is how yuri starts to get obsessed with flynn /j #as a side note how did they manage to dig a well post vesperia if wells don't work did the adephagos earthquake destroy the bedrock or smth

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