This was one such occasion.
“I wish they’d let me live here. I really don’t see what the big deal is.”
With the sun high in the sky and the salty wind at her cheeks, Aliya arrived at a business quarter on the outskirts of the settlement, parking her trusty scooter in one of the public parking lots. She would make the rest of the journey by foot. Her destination: the food market.
For a district whose architecture consisted mostly of shacks and prefabs, the streets were fairly lively. There was the energy of a prosperous boomtown in the air.
But it wasn’t always in a good way.
Aliya frowned. “The nerve of some people to line up for that nonsense in broad daylight,” she muttered to herself.
The general goods store she had just passed by was stocked with, well, general goods of all kinds, but Aliya had caught sight of something a little less ubiquitous on their shelves. Black DVD and Blu-ray cases, unmarked and unlabeled. It would have been impossible to tell their contents if the handmade sign next to them didn’t read “18+ ONLY.” Two more signs read, “MATURE ELVES” and “NOW ON SALE.”
A poster, plastered right outside for all to see, depicted a half-naked human woman with a doll face and an alluring body, along with the actress’s name. The work’s title, if the rest of the context clues weren’t enough, was clearly adult in nature. And true to the advertisement’s word, the actress wore fake ears to imitate the appearance of an elf. She even wore a fine, blonde wig.
Someone must have pirated an old adult film from before the Evacuation. Perhaps it had been burned from a video file, or perhaps the discs had been fished out from the underwater city. Either way, it spoke to one of two things: the tenacity of humanity’s capitalistic spirit or the nature of the male gender.
Aliya took no personal issue with the existence of such material, but did they really have to advertise it right in the middle of the street? In a city built and shared by genuine, actual elvish migrants? She herself was half elf, and a growing teenage girl. She could feel the gazes clinging to her, and it made her shudder.
Determined not to let it get to her, Aliya shook the anxiety off and kept walking. But just then, she heard a metallic clack. The distinct shutter sound of a camera.
She whipped around, spinning her head left and right. There were people everywhere. Men, women. Young, old. But no one carrying any cameras. The thought crossed Aliya’s mind that she’d just been peeped on, but it was an uncomfortable one that she couldn’t stand to entertain for longer than a moment. She returned to her own business.
Or she tried to, at least.
Suddenly, every male eye, every sideways glance directed at her felt prying. And the worst part was she knew she wasn’t imagining things. One of the men at a nearby bar pointed right at her and started chatting with his friends.
“She’s cute, eh?” he said.
“The fuck, dude. She’s a kid,” his drinking buddy snapped.
“Look at the ears, dipshit! That’s an elf right there. I’mma hit on her.”
“See if she’s got any big sisters and let’s get a mixer going!” another cheered.
“They’ve got different life spans than humans, yeah? Who knows how old that chick is! Y’all owe me drinks if I put a halfy in her!”
The men had obviously had one too many drinks, and Aliya was starting to panic. “I-I need to get to Natsuki’s—”
Another camera shutter clacked nearby. Aliya could feel her heart beat out of her chest in fear. She was at her limit and tears threatened to stream down her face, when speak of the devil, she heard a familiar voice.
“Oh, jeez, I’m sorry!” the cheery voice said with frighteningly deceptive sincerity. “I was totes not even looking where I was going!”
There stood the ex-high schooler herself, Natsuki Hatano, standing out like a sore thumb in her peony furisode. She had bumped into a particularly pathetic-looking man of about thirty. Knocked flat on his butt, the scrawny man reached frantically for a digital camera that had fallen at Natsuki’s feet, which she lazily picked up first.
“This is mine now,” she said, smiling. “We good?”
The man glared at the katana on Natsuki’s back, then quietly spat a choice and vulgar insult at her before scurrying away.
“H-How did he get it under my skirt...?” Aliya murmured.
They had cracked the password on the confiscated camera with nanomachines to verify the contents, just to be safe. Aliya somewhat regretted it.
“Gotta watch your back out here,” Natsuki said. “Word’s already getting around about the pretty half-elf who likes to take walks around the outer block.”
“Wh-Who, me?!”
“Yeah, you. Listen, I’m sure most people really appreciate what the elves do and act respectfully and all that, at least in public, but they are humans. And the elves are, well, they’ve got a lot ‘going on.’ Let’s just say our monkey brains are sorta wired for ‘humina humina,’ if you catch my drift.”
“Humina humina...”
“Humina humina. Sure, a fan club or two might be cute, but then there’s the ‘yikes’ stuff like the porn and cosplay. And then you’ve got the straight-up criminals, like stalkers or the people who sneak photos to sell in sketchy back alleys. A girl like you? A cute half-elf who takes the same trip here every day makes an easy target for freaks.”
“W-Well...!” Aliya stammered. “What about Ein?! She lives here!”
“Oh, I’m sure she has her fair share of creeps, and some of them are probably other women. But Ein’s shot Anomalies dead with the militia. Girl’s good with a gun, Aliya.”
The sages rarely left Central Tower, but Ein, knowing well the risks her heritage brought, had chosen to forgo a life of safety in favor of staying closer to Yu.
“No one’s got the balls to mess with her,” Natsuki went on languidly. “Except for that one time a drunk came up on her with a knife. You know those boots she wears? Imagine getting kicked in the face with them. ’Cause that poor guy sure didn’t need to. It was great.”
“That sounds like something a queen like her would do,” Aliya admitted.
They had made it to a food stand run by Natsuki and a few of her friends, including some of the Maizuru crew—that is, Yu and Ein. By day they ran the business, and by night they lived in co-op trailer houses. That had been their life for the last few weeks. What made the shop unique, though, were the ingredients.
“Here ya go, fresh off the grill.” Natsuki offered Aliya a skewer of roasted poultry.
“Finally!” she moaned. “I swear, the sauce you use is divine. I dream about it every night. Yu’s recipe, right?”
Aliya took the skewer impatiently. The meat was special. Not because it was chicken, and certainly not because it was gull, but because it was freshly hunted from far off the island. Today’s game was spot-billed duck.
Mallard was supposedly better for stewing, but those juicy spot-billed thighs marinated in their special, one-of-a-kind sauce and roasted over a smoky charcoal fire were positively to die for.
“I’m becoming more and more convinced that stealing Yu for myself would be a wise investment towards the perpetual fullness of my belly,” Aliya said. She nibbled off a bit of her duck. “If I’m desirable enough to get creeper shots of my underwear taken, then surely I could bag one boy.”
“I like your guts,” said Natsuki, “but good luck getting past Ein. She watches that guy like a hawk.”
“Are they out again today?”
“Yep. Keepin’ that dough flowin’. We have people lined up every afternoon, and we’re already one of the most popular joints around, all thanks to those two.” Natsuki grinned wide, then nonchalantly added, “Now as long as they can actually make it back again today, we’re golden.”