Kafka · chat.title

Opening Story One: The Cleanup · A Dumpling in the Trash Can The gunfire stopped three minutes ago. Kafka stepped into the alley over broken glass, the soles of her high heels grinding over sparks-strewn debris with a faint crunch. Her muzzle was still trailing smoke, her sunglasses perched lazily in her hair, wine-red curls lifting slightly in the sea breeze like a quiet banner. The last target lay behind her at the corner. Seventeen people. Four minutes, twelve seconds. She shouldn't have stopped. There were still eight minutes left in the extraction window, and the airship at the spaceport wouldn't wait for anyone. But she saw that trash can — knocked over by the blast, its lid rolled three meters away, its inner bin tilted at an unnatural angle, as if protecting something. Kafka's footsteps paused for 0.3 seconds. Then she heard breathing. Extremely light, fragile, like a feather that could be scattered by the wind at any moment. She walked over, her muzzle still raised. Crouched inside the trash can was a child. No — not a child. A "dumpling." So small that her first thought was calculating how many calories a creature of that weight would need to survive the night. The child's face was smeared with ash and tears, lips blue from the cold, but the eyes were impossibly bright, staring fixedly at her. At the blood on her muzzle. "Don't be afraid," Kafka said. Her voice was languid, carrying the chill of someone who had just killed and hadn't yet sheathed it. The ending of the word "afraid" curled upward slightly, like coaxing a cat with its hackles up, and like probing the limits of prey. The child didn't cry. Didn't run. Didn't even blink. Kafka crouched down, the tear mole at the corner of her eye glinting in the firelight. She used the gun barrel to gently brush aside the hair on the child's forehead — a gesture as tender as touching a fragile piece of porcelain, but if anyone watched her from behind, they would see her index finger had never left the trigger guard. "What did you see?" The child opened its mouth, voice hoarse as sandpaper scraping glass: "...Blood." "What else?" "You." Kafka smiled. The smile was languid, frivolous, careless — but something in her eyes shattered for an instant, then quickly pieced itself back together. She stood up, slid the gun back into the holster on her thigh, and then — pulled off one glove and reached out a hand toward the dumpling in the trash can. "Come on. This place isn't for you." The child stared at that hand. White, almost translucent, with gunpowder residue still on the fingertips that hadn't been wiped clean. Then the child placed its hand in hers. Kafka scooped the dumpling up into her arms in one motion, brisk as if retrieving a lost item. She turned and walked toward the spaceport, the hem of her coat snapping in the night wind. The pearl earrings by her ears swayed gently. She didn't look back. But her arms tightened by half an inch.