1 Rescued

A small boy lay in an alley in the middle of the day. They were many bloody injuries across his body and his face was covered with so much blood that you couldn't tell who it was.

At the far entrance to the alley were some men with cold looks in their eyes as they walked out onto the street while taking one last glance at the body with an evil smile.

The body lay there for hours... Unmoving as people constantly passed by the alley.

A few people did stumble into the alley and their eyes were filled with pity as they stared at the child's bloodied body but not a single one of them stopped to help the child.

However, after the five-hour mark, the chest of a previously dead child suddenly began to rise as he began to breathe again.

'Ugh... It hurts so much...' the child thought as his consciousness slowly began to return to him with the first thing he felt was a pulsating pain all over his body. However, the pain soon subsided after a few minutes as a wave of memories was recalled by the boy.

He was a seven-year-old boy named Kiyoshi Kega who had been raised in an underground experiment lab where we has intensively experimented on from as early as he could remember. However, a few days ago, his body was deemed no longer stable enough and was ordered to be killed. But upon hearing about his impending death, Kiyoshi escaped and managed to run away from the lab to a small desert town. It was here that he was caught in the pursuit of some bandits that were working under the lab scientists. He was severely beaten to death and was thrown away in an alley.

'I didn't die...' Kiyoshi thought as a strange sense of empty relief washed over him.

He slowly began to move his hand and found that he was able to do so but with a somewhat lack of control. He found that while he was able to move his arm without any pain, he did not feel a complete sense of control over his arm. It was as if his nerves were damaged.

'Crap!' he thought, 'I hope that they slowly get fixed soon.'

Nevertheless, he was not perturbed by his current situation. He began to move his body as he slowly got up to his feet, a strong sensation of soreness following each movement that was made.

However, as he got up to his feet, he heard the sound of hurried footsteps and a loud shout, "THIS WAY!"

Following the shout, he was greeted by the source of the voice. Two young boys, each holding a large bag on their left hand, suddenly turned into the alley that he was in. They were both panting as they ran, wearing extremely ragged clothes and messy unruly hair.

As they saw him in their line of sight, a worried expression appeared on their faces as they shouted, "Run!"

Despite hearing this, Kiyoshi stared at them in confusion as he did not clock that what they said was for him.

Tch!

An annoyed expression appeared on one of the kids as they arrived at where Kiyoshi was.

He had expected them to just run past and run past they did, but Kiyoshi found that his view was suddenly flung backwards as he saw the entrance of the alley slowly becoming smaller and smaller.

The kids had grabbed him by the arms and were dragging him along as they ran past the alley and into the sandy street.

"Holy moly it's hot!" Kiyoshi shouted in shock as he looked down and saw that he was not wearing shoes. The ground that had been subject to the extreme shining of the sun was currently making his feet feel as if they were currently stepping on coal.

"STOP THEM!" he heard the voice of a man shout as a middle-aged man in merchant clothing appear from out of the alley, pointing towards him.

Looking left and right, he saw that he was surrounded by houses that seemed to be built of mud which was further brown-ified by the sand flew with the wind across the streets. People were walking along the street but no one came forth to stop them at all and instead, they all seemed to be staring at them with pity and left them alone to fend for themselves.

For a whole two minutes, he was dragged by the kids and by the end, he had gotten a whole view of the landscape of the place that he was in.

Eventually, they arrived at a small worn-down shack that had been abandoned. The two boys immediately let go of Kiyoshi and fall flat on their backs as they pant desperately for air.

After a few seconds, their breathing began to calm down and one of them, a boy with dark brown hair and hazel eyes started at Kiyoshi with an angry expression as he got up began to shout at him, "WHAT THE HECK WERE YOU DOING? WHY DIDN'T YOU RUN!"

"IF WE WERE CAUGHT THEN WE WOULD NEVER SEE DAYLIGHT AGAIN!"

"Haru!" the other boy shouted, gaining the attention of the two of them. He was lightly panting now while sitting on the floor, holding himself up with his hand, his black hair still containing traces of sweat as he calmly stared at the other boy with his calm orange eyes.

Hearing the other boy say this, Haru let out a tch as he began to collect up the grain that had fallen out of the bag that they had just collected.

"Why did you guys drag me along?" Kiyoshi asked curiously as he stared at the other boy.

The boy's eyes suddenly deadpanned at Kiyoshi in disbelief as he spoke, "You don't understand? That man would have thought that you were with us and taken you with him instead of us."

"Oh!" Kiyoshi spoke as he realised what had just happened, he immediately bowed, "Thank you for saving me I gue-"

Rumble!

A short silence came right after that rumble before the other boy laughed, "Hahahaha! You must be as famished as us. I'm Ryuuya. Have some bread with us."

As he said this, he picked up a loaf that had fallen from his bag and threw it over to Kiyoshi who raised his hand to catch the incoming loaf.

Thok!

The bread landed straight onto his face and onto the floor.

"I'm Kiyoshi Sega," Kiyoshi spoke as he embarrassedly picked up the loaf of bread before furiously chomping down on it.

"Nice to meet ya!" Ryuuya smiled before pointing towards Haru, "That's Haru by the way."

After eating that one piece of bread, the feeling of starvation left Kiyoshi's mind. Feeling that he should not extend his stay here with the kids any longer, he stiffly got up and bowed again, "Well then, thank you so much for the food and for saving me. I should get going..."

Saying this, Kiyoshi turned towards the entrance of the shack and began to walk towards it when he heard, "Where are you going to go?"

Hearing this, Kiyoshi found that he could not come up with an answer at all... Back then, he had escaped because he wanted to live and not die. Now that he had successfully escaped with his life, what was he going to do now?

"I don't know..." he replied, "I'll find something."

"Wanna stay with us?" Ryuuya asked.

"You took his food. You need to pay him back now," Haru added.