RL Chapter 3

Chapter 3 – Growing Up in the Slums (Part 1)

Prologue, Part 2

Novel Title: 共鳴劣情 オメガバース (Resonance Lust: Omegaverse)

Author：岩本薫 (Iwamoto Kaoru)

Illustrator: 蓮川愛 (Hasukawa Ai)

Translator: K (@kin0monogatari)

Protagonists: 本浄天音 (Honjou Amane) & 苅谷煌騎 (Kariya Kouki) / 首藤煌騎 (Shutou Kouki)

*Please read at knoxt.space, the original site of translation. TQ*

֍֍֍

That night, my mother was working ‘outside’. While the workers usually entertained customers in the brothel, a few times a month they would leave the red-light district and go to hotels in midtown for ‘outside business’. My mother, who had become the brothel’s top earner as the ‘beautiful and intelligent Omega’, was sent to these outside jobs.

Before work, my mother, who usually wore no makeup and dressed casually, would sit at the vanity, applying makeup and adorning herself with glittering clothes and jewellery. On nights when she worked ‘outside’, she would take extra care in her makeup and dress. Although I didn’t fully understand my mother’s line of work at the time, I loved watching her through the mirror as she transformed herself into a beautiful, almost armour-like version of herself—a ritualistic process, in retrospect.

When a staff member from the brothel would come to the room and say, “It’s time,” my mother would turn to me, lean in close, and look me straight in the eyes. “Promise me,” she would say. “No matter what, you must not follow me.” She would then hold up her pinky for a pinky swear, and we’d make a promise. Though I felt a bit lonely, I obediently stayed in the room, reading books, waiting for my mother to return from work.

But that night, I selfishly insisted, “I want to go with you.”

―――What’s wrong? You know you can’t.

Even as she gently reprimanded me, I cried, “No, no!” and threw a tantrum. I chased after her as she left the room, crying, “Don’t go.”

―――If you cry like that, it’ll be hard for me too. Please, be good. I’ll come back as soon as I can.

Though she promised, my mother didn’t come home that morning. Nor the next day.

After two full days of neither eating nor drinking and refusing to sleep while waiting for my mother, I lost consciousness from dehydration. When I woke up on the morning of the third day, I learned from the brothel staff that my mother had died.

The morning after she left for her outside job, my mother had been found dead in a room at a midtown hotel by a housekeeper. The cause of death was brain trauma from a blow to the back of her head. The man she checked in with had disappeared, and it was discovered he had used a fake name. He was never found, nor did he turn himself in.

Despite the possibility that my mother had been struck with a blunt object and killed by the missing client, the midtown police treated her as just another ‘Stray Omega prostitute’ and didn’t bother with a proper investigation. They hastily concluded it was an ‘accidental death caused by her own fall’.

As if trying to wash their hands of the situation, they cremated my mother’s body the day after she was found, without returning her ashes to me. Back then, as a powerless child, I had no means to protest the police’s sloppy handling of the case, nor the ability to solve it on my own.

When it rains, it pours. Losing my mother, the brothel’s top earner, was likely a major blow. But it seems the brothel’s business had already been declining for a few years. The owner, unable to make ends meet, fled in the night. The bank seized the brothel, and plans were made to convert it into a gaming parlour. The workers scattered in all directions.

The brothel had been my ‘home’ from birth, and suddenly, I was cast out. The workers, ignorant of the world beyond the brothel, were all struggling to survive day by day. No one had the means to take care of a seven-year-old orphan. Considering the burden of their uncontrollable heat cycles, it’s understandable that they had to abandon me.

Having lost both my mother and my home, I left the red-light district. Like the other workers, I could have sought refuge in another brothel, becoming an apprentice sex worker. For a Stray Omega, that would have been the safest way to avoid starvation. But I didn’t want to follow in my mother’s footsteps.

I refused to meet the same fate as my mother, who spent her whole life on Dragon Island.

I wanted to take control of my own life.

However, the world is not so kind as to let a Stray Omega child live on their own.

In the end, I drifted into the slums, where I joined a group of orphans—children who had either lost their parents or been abandoned by them, forced to live on the streets.

These children lived in unsanitary abandoned houses. They begged, stole in groups, and scavenged for scraps to survive. They were treated as nuisances even in the slums, sometimes spreading infectious diseases.

Just like in society at large, even among the orphans, there was a caste system. The stronger ones at the top got to eat more and had warmer places to sleep. In contrast, the weakest at the bottom were always hungry and shivering from the cold. None of the children had enough food to share with others, and those who couldn’t fend for themselves eventually weakened and died.

In such harsh conditions, to survive, you needed to have an advantage over others.

Superior physical strength. Skilled thievery. Fighting prowess.

I didn’t have any of these things. But there was one special skill that I had that other children didn’t.

The ability to read and write.

My mother was right in giving me the ability to read and write as a ‘weapon to protect myself’.

My muscles naturally developed through the survival lifestyle, where it was a matter of life or death. I gradually learned how to win fights while scrambling to snatch food for the day. I took advantage of my originally slender physique, honing my body’s flexibility and my speed.

With the advantage of literacy, and the strength I gained through training, I eventually organised the ragtag group into something more structured. I took command at the forefront.

Up until then, everyone acted as they pleased. But there were limits to what a child could do alone. It made more sense to form a plan, assign roles, and work as a team—it was far more efficient.

֍֍֍

*Translator’s Note: Life’s too unfair for him. I will forever wonder about who his father and who murdered his mother, though. But you know how life is… not all things can be resolved. -K

Next update: 2025.01.04

֍֍֍