Suguru learned that effort did not equal value.
The city taught him that without raising its voice.
It did not mock him. It did not explain itself. It simply let him work until his hands split, let hunger twist beneath his ribs, let his back ache from carrying loads meant for men twice his size—and then offered him nothing more than another morning.
That was the cruelty of it.
Morning always came.
Whether he had eaten enough or not.
Whether his body was ready or not.
Whether he wanted to stand or stay curled beside the stable wall until the world forgot him completely.
The sun had not fully risen when Suguru returned to the tannery. Mist clung to the river beyond the yard, turning the water pale and ghostlike. The smell reached him before the building did: rot, wet hide, ash, old blood, and the sour bite of chemicals he still did not know the names of.
He paused outside only long enough to wrap the cloth tighter around his cracked palms.
Then he went in.
The foreman stood near the vats with his arms folded, his thick neck bent as he counted barrels by lamplight. He looked up when Suguru entered.
Not with surprise.
Not with approval.
Just recognition.
A small nod.
A gesture toward the work.
That was all.
Suguru lowered his head and obeyed.
Scrub.
Lift.
Turn.
Carry.
Again.
Again.
Again.
The day became a series of motions his body performed while his mind sank somewhere quiet. He dragged hides from one vat to another. He scraped hair and filth from stiff leather until his wrists burned. He hauled buckets heavy enough to make his shoulders tremble.
No one thanked him.
No one needed to.
The work did not exist to be fair. It existed to be done.
By midday, the heat inside the tannery had grown thick and damp. Steam rose from the vats. Sweat ran down Suguru's temples and stung his eyes. His arms felt hollow, like they belonged to someone else and he was only borrowing them until they failed.
That was when it happened.
A wooden bowl slipped from his grasp.
It should have been nothing.
A small mistake.
A tired hand losing hold of something cheap.
But the bowl struck the edge of the table, tipped, and overturned. Thick stew spread across the wood before spilling over the side. It hit the stone floor with a wet slap, splashing across another worker's boots.
The room seemed to notice all at once.
The scrape of tools slowed.
A few heads turned.
Suguru stared at the mess, his heart dropping faster than the stew.
"Damn it!"
The worker shoved him hard in the chest.
Suguru stumbled backward and nearly fell into one of the tables.
"You blind?" the man snapped.
Suguru bowed before he even fully found his balance.
"I'm sorry," he said quickly. "I'm sorry. I'll clean it."
The man looked ready to hit him.
Suguru braced for it.
Not because he wanted to.
Because he had learned that flinching too early sometimes made people angrier.
The foreman's voice cut across the room.
"What happened?"
The worker pointed at the floor. "Boy spilled food everywhere."
The foreman looked down at the stew.
Then at Suguru.
For one long second, Suguru forgot how to breathe.
This was it.
One bowl.
One mistake.
One stupid slip of his fingers, and everything he had endured to keep this place would disappear.
He saw it clearly. The foreman ordering him out. The door closing behind him. The stable wall waiting for him again. Hunger returning with its patient teeth.
Suguru lowered his head further.
"I'll fix it," he said.
The foreman stared at him.
Then he looked away.
"Clean it," he said flatly. "Then get back to work."
That was all.
No beating.
No forgiveness.
No anger worth remembering.
Just continuation.
The room returned to motion.
Tools scraped.
Buckets dragged.
Men cursed under their breath and went back to surviving their own day.
Suguru knelt and wiped the floor with a rag that had already seen worse than stew. His hands shook as he worked, but not from fear.
From understanding.
In this city, mercy did not look like kindness.
Sometimes mercy was simply being allowed to keep working.
Here, a person was only worth what they could still do.
By evening, his body felt scraped empty.
The foreman paid him three coppers.
Suguru stared at the coins in his palm longer than he meant to.
They were dull, ugly little things. Worn smooth by hands that had needed them before his. Three pieces of metal for a day that had taken skin from his palms, strength from his arms, and something quieter from his chest.
Still, his fingers closed around them.
One copper bought bread.
The loaf was hard around the edges, but he ate it slowly, forcing himself not to devour it in the street like an animal.
One copper bought a bowl of thin porridge from an old woman near the market road. It tasted mostly of water and smoke, with a few grains drifting at the bottom like they had been added out of pity.
The last copper he kept.
He held it as he walked.
It pressed into his palm with each step.
Proof.
Not that he was moving forward.
Not that he mattered.
Only that he had survived one more day.
That night, Suguru followed the sound of steel.
He found the training yard by habit now. It sat behind a row of low stone buildings near the inner wall, where lanterns burned late and men with weapons tried to become harder to kill.
The yard was quieter than usual.
Only a handful still practiced. Their movements were slower now, their breaths heavy, their tunics dark with sweat. Wooden blades cracked against one another. Metal whispered from sheaths. Boots shifted over packed dirt.
Suguru stayed near the edge.
Always near the edge.
Close enough to see.
Far enough to be ignored.
He watched the way the fighters moved their feet before their arms. The way they kept their weight low. The way the older ones did not waste motion. They did not swing like angry men. They cut like men who understood that strength meant nothing if it arrived late.
Suguru tried to memorize everything.
A turn of the wrist.
A shift of the shoulder.
The moment before a strike.
He did not know what he hoped to do with the knowledge.
Maybe nothing.
Maybe watching was just another kind of hunger.
"You come here every night."
Suguru went still.
The voice belonged to one of the older men in the yard.
He had seen him before. Broad shoulders. Gray at the temples. A scar running from his jaw down into his collar. He moved less than the others and still seemed more dangerous.
The man did not look at him at first. He was wiping down the edge of a practice blade with a cloth.
Suguru lowered his gaze.
"I'm sorry," he said.
The man glanced over. "For watching?"
Suguru did not know how to answer.
In his experience, people could decide anything was an offense after they noticed you doing it.
"I don't mean to disturb anyone," he said carefully.
"You don't disturb anyone." The man set the blade aside. "That's the problem."
Suguru frowned slightly.
The older man turned toward him fully.
"You watch every night. You stand there like a ghost. You don't ask questions. You don't hold a blade. You don't train." His eyes narrowed. "Why?"
Suguru's fingers curled around the copper in his pocket.
"I don't have a blade."
"That is not what I asked."
Suguru fell silent.
The answer sat in his throat, heavy and embarrassing.
Because I want to learn.
Because I do not want to stay weak.
Because I am tired of being moved by other people's hands.
Because if this world only values what I can do, then I need to become capable of more.
But those words felt too large for someone like him.
So he said the smallest truth instead.
"I don't want to die like this."
The older man studied him.
The yard grew quieter around them, though Suguru knew the others were still moving. He felt their attention pressing at the edges, waiting to see whether this would become a joke.
The older man did not laugh.
Instead, he reached beside a rack of practice weapons and picked up a stick.
It was crude. Uneven. Barely shaped. More branch than sword.
He tossed it at Suguru's feet.
"Pick it up."
Suguru stared at it.
For a moment, he could not move.
The stick lay there in the dirt like something dangerous.
Not because it was sharp.
Because it was permission.
"Pick it up," the man repeated.
Suguru bent and took it.
It felt wrong immediately.
Too light.
Too awkward.
The grip was rough against his torn palms. He held it the way he had seen others hold their weapons, but in his hands the shape looked foolish.
The older man's mouth flattened.
"Stance."
Suguru moved quickly, trying to copy what he had watched so many times.
His feet slid apart.
His knees bent.
His arms lifted.
The man sighed.
"That stance will get you knocked over by a child."
Heat rose in Suguru's face.
He lowered the stick. "Sorry."
"Stop apologizing to the ground. It isn't listening."
Suguru stiffened.
The older man stepped closer and tapped the inside of Suguru's ankle with his boot.
"Wider."
Suguru adjusted.
"Not that wide. You're not trying to split yourself in half."
Suguru adjusted again.
The man tapped his shoulder.
"Loose."
Suguru tried.
"Not limp. Loose."
Suguru tried again.
The man looked at him for a long moment.
Then, without warning, he shoved Suguru lightly in the chest.
Suguru fell backward and landed hard in the dirt.
Pain shot through his spine.
A few men nearby chuckled.
Suguru's face burned hotter.
The older man stood over him.
"You see?"
Suguru pushed himself up slowly.
"Yes."
"What did you do wrong?"
Suguru looked down at his feet, replaying the moment.
His balance had been high.
His weight had shifted back.
He had held the stick too tightly.
"I was standing like I expected the ground to save me," he said quietly.
The older man's expression changed.
Only a little.
But Suguru saw it.
Interest.
"Again," the man said.
Suguru stood.
He fixed his feet.
Lowered his weight.
Loosened his hands.
The older man shoved him again.
This time, Suguru stumbled but did not fall.
The man nodded once.
Barely.
"Tomorrow," he said.
Suguru blinked. "What?"
"Come back tomorrow. After work." The man picked up his practice blade and turned away. "If you are late, don't come at all."
That was all.
No promise.
No praise.
No grand beginning.
Just an opening so narrow Suguru could barely see through it.
But it was there.
Suguru bowed deeply.
"Thank you."
The man did not answer.
That night, Suguru returned to the stable wall beneath the broken lip of a stone overhang. The air was cold. The ground was harder than he remembered. Somewhere nearby, a horse shifted in its sleep.
Suguru lay on his side and stared at the copper still resting in his palm.
His body hurt everywhere.
His hands throbbed.
His stomach felt too empty.
Tomorrow would come too soon.
Work would take what it always took.
The city would not become kinder because one man had tossed him a stick.
And yet, beneath the exhaustion, something stirred.
Small.
Foolish.
Dangerous.
Expectation.
Suguru closed his fingers around the coin until its edge bit into his skin.
He wanted to crush that feeling before it grew.
Hope was expensive.
Hope made hunger sharper.
Hope made disappointment cruel.
But no matter how tightly he held his fist, the feeling remained.
For the first time since waking in this world, Suguru had not only survived the day.
He had been allowed to reach for something beyond it.
Morning would come.
The tannery would be waiting.
The vats.
The hides.
The foreman's cold nod.
The city's old stone and older rules.
But after that, if his body did not break first, Suguru would return to the yard.
He would pick up the stick.
He would stand again.
And if this world demanded that he earn even the right to try—
Then he would earn it.