An era where black smoke spewing from factory chimneys replaces oxygen to choke the respiratory system, and the lives of all human stock are piled high, each destined to be replaced by a single cog. The sound of laborers' clogs thumping and crawling over stone floors fills the streets, and the wastewater-stained river loftily bestows a curse of death upon all who dare touch it—the intertwined lives of the metropolis... and the few bourgeois who hold the strings of those tens of thousands of lives.

However, that was a slightly different story from this place, where the blue sky still unfailingly drapes itself every morning. Those who left the countryside might live forced skin-to-skin between concrete, but the misfortune of others—especially that which is never witnessed and only barely caught through rumors—tends not to linger long within an individual. The hardship of someone who reached the city was, of course, their own share of pain, and thanking the heavens that one's own life isn't like that right now was the traditional human way of survival.

Looking out from the village, a vast wilderness could be seen. The thought that the place, abandoned by both city and country, was quite pitiful occurred occasionally, but that was all. The reason for setting out that day was pure curiosity. Life in the countryside was, of course, as peaceful and monotonous as city dwellers might envy, but as someone who had dedicated a lifetime to this land, I had long since grown tired of those dreadful monotone days. If I mentioned going for a walk in the wasteland, a hundred out of a hundred strange looks would follow. Of course, there was nothing they could do, so I never hesitated.