123 Nightlife 3

"Are you serious? So your parents don't care if their child is taken away to this kind of place?"

She stared at me as if I was the most naïve person in the world. She picked up one of the many daggers on the floor and stabbed her left arm. Instead of bright red oozing from every human being, viscous sparkling lilac poured onto the ground. The original colour of unprocessed mana crystals on my blouse before dyed with mana.

"Beings such as her aren't human beings," Jules pointed out.

"But this is too cruel!" I pushed to give her my ribbon.

"Please take this. You can probably feed the children and purchase some lovely clothes." I pleaded while stuffing it into her hand when she stood there, frozen.

I started taking off the ribbon on the other side of my leggings and ripped out some buttons to be stopped by Alex. He gripped my hand and tugged me away from the girl who bled liquidated mana crystals that glowed alongside the stars. If not for her eyes that melted under the sight of young children placed under the same situation, she was almost like an object.

She had feelings even though her blood sprinkled powdered glitter into the air. The dust ate up the tiniest amount of mana present in the air as it lightly seemed harder to breath than before. As seconds passed, the few drops of blood started to harden into the empty stones I was familiar with.

"People without mana aren't human beings," Alex muttered loudly enough for only me to hear.

Was this the fate of all the children here? If this was where the mana crystals that decorated Luke's weapons or our clothes, I could hardly wear them while being ignorant of where they originated. I felt disgusted with myself who didn't know about the truth until now.

Those children were placed there intentionally with all these weapons that littered the floor for this exact reason. Their limited lifespan wasn't a reason to treat them so awfully to the point the children begged for food to the people they met for the first time. The second district who didn't use mana crystals, but energy stones appeared more humane in my eyes.

"Then how about the people in the third district? Most people there don't possess mana. Are they human beings in your eyes?" I tried to shake his grip off me.

Both Alex and Jules stayed disappointingly silent after my question. I did explain many of my questions before. Luke never considered my family as his family too and I waved it off, knowing that I was only engaged to him. But if the reason behind it was that he never even considered them as human beings in the first place, it made sense.

I threw the buttons onto the ground, not willing to hold them in my hands anymore. My blouse opened, revealing my tank top under it. I suddenly wondered what material the fabric of my leggings was made of as I was tempted to rip them apart as well.

"Maybe the authorities in the second district can help." I tried to show her the way we came from.

However, at the edge of the open area, she couldn't pass through like there was a barrier that prevented her from leaving. I was on the other side, unable to hear any of her words like she never existed in this world. But as soon I walked over to where she stood, I knew she lived and existed in this dreadful place where she would die to be processed into more mana crystals.

She awkwardly tried to smile for the first time to thank me for my efforts. She lightly squeezed my hands before letting me go back into Alex's grasp. And she waved to show her farewells to the people who existed outside of their closed cage where only death waited to free them.

By the time I could not see her figure, I was back on the main streets where the second district was filled with energy and noise of the nightlife that strived with brightness. It was as if the abandoned planetarium was another realm inside a nightmare. The streetlights that buzzed around the city like annoying flies covered the night sky, void of stars.

'I'll free you someday and I'll save you before you die in that cage.' I promised to myself.

"What the heck?" I turned to Alex who teleported us in front of the two skyscrapers.

"It's almost time for the concert," Jules tried to intervene between us while Alex studied me.

The concert was the leading point to see the extent that Lilika Yuri could block communications from the first district. Even though the rebels and I didn't get along, they were at least better than the people in the first district who created a prison for innocent children who had done nothing wrong. I was starting to think this blocking communications thing wasn't so bad.

I wondered if they knew about this aspect of the first district too. Jules immediately teleported us in front of the same shopping mall we were in this morning. He pulled out our tickets in front of the security guards that meticulously checked the tickets like investigators.

It was time for the concert to start.