The Destruction of the World by Fire by Shiden Kanzaki

pedestrian bridge. There was a rush mat spread out near the middle of it, and the voice was coming from there. It seemed different from a street performance, somehow. As he got closer and realized what it was, Rentaro soon regretted coming.
    The singer was a beggar girl clad in rags. Even though she had good features, they were stained, and the cape she wore was greasy, giving an overall shabby impression. The girl held out a beggar’s bowl with both hands and sang at the people who were heading to the road. On a piece of scrap wood next to her were the words, “I am one of the Cursed Children from the Outer District. I need money to feed my little sister. Please give what you can.” Standing in front of her, even though it was rude to say so of a girl, he could smell body odor.
    Rentaro became worried that Tina would be shocked, but she was unexpectedly calm. She just looked on with solemn eyes. There were surely slums in her country, as well, so other countries must have been in a similar situation as Tokyo Area.
    “Hey, you…,” said Rentaro.
    “Yes?” The girl stopped singing and smiled, lifting her face, and Rentaro thought something was strange. The girl’s eyelids werestill closed. He suspected that she was blind, but soon realized that wasn’t it. The Cursed Children were protected from disease thanks to the Gastrea virus. “Hey, what happened to your eyes?”
    “Oh.” The girl gently rubbed around her two eyes. “They were mutilated by the lead that was poured into them.”
    Rentaro was speechless. Was this part of the beggar business? Where they try to make people feel sorry for them by having their eyes mutilated or doing something cruel to paralyze their arms or legs so that they could get money? Was that something that could be overlooked in this wide world?
    The girl seemed to sense Rentaro’s hesitation with her skin and shook her head gently. “This wasn’t done to me by someone else. I did it to myself.”
    “Why…?”
    “Because I couldn’t think of another way to feed my little sister… And because the mother who abandoned us hated my red eyes.”
    Rentaro muttered inwardly, had a bitter taste in his mouth.
Gastrea shock.
The eyes that shone red and were the same in all Gastrea. During the war, there were people traumatized by fear from seeing them, and the red eyes became the trigger for attacks of convulsions or cramps or other symptoms. It became the most widespread disease of society after the Gastrea War.
    In cases where one of the Cursed Children was born to a family where someone had Gastrea shock, the family circumstances usually ended in tragedy.
    “How can you smile?” Tina asked the girl hesitatingly.
    Rentaro wanted to know, too. The girl seemed to smile persistently in the face of unimaginable adversity. Although this was a word used very rarely for a girl of ten, she was like a saint.
    The girl did not answer the question but quietly stretched her hands out to Tina. Tina was surprised at first, but once she realized the girl meant no harm, Tina let her do as she wished.
    In place of her unseeing eyes, the girl’s hands traced Tina’sfeatures, from her hair and face to her neck, collarbone, and shoulders, brushing over them, until finally the girl lifted her face slowly. “Are you one of the Cursed Children, too?”
    Rentaro looked around him hurriedly in surprise. The people coming and going on the pedestrian bridge passed quickly with indifference, and there was no sign of anyone finding fault with what she said.
    “How did you know…?” said Tina, dumbfounded.
    Facing Tina, the girl’s smile grew bigger. “You’re pretty. I’ll bet the boys can’t leave you alone, right?”
    Tina glanced for a second at Rentaro before saying, “That is not true,” shaking her head dejectedly.
    “You know, I can’t live without depending on others, so I naturally learned to smile. Besides, I don’t know what face to make other than this anymore.” After the girl’s