There's Something Strange About My Water Magic ~ Before I Knew It, I Was a Slum Orphan Thrown Into the Trash Bin ~ - Episode 3: Half-Eaten Bread

Episode 3: Half-Eaten Bread

*BANG!* – A loud sound startled me awake with a jolt.

Something fell down with a *thud thud thud*.

What rolled in front of me was a piece of bread with someone’s bite marks on it.

I picked it up and sniffed it.

…It’s not rotten.

I bit into the edge of the bread where the bite marks were.

It was as hard as biting a rock. But I slowly shaved it down with my teeth and swallowed it.

It’s been a while since I had proper food that didn’t stink.

While collecting water drops in my palm, I gnawed on the bread.

I gave up on the part just before the bite marks.

Someone’s half-eaten bread didn’t taste good. But I endured it because I was hungry.

I drank the water gathered in my palm over and over and slightly filled my stomach.

When I looked around for anything else edible, I found a wooden skewer with a piece of meat still on it.

I put it in my mouth—it was really salty, but edible.

I washed down the saltiness with the water from my palm.

The wooden skewer I finished… I stuck it into the sleeve of my torn clothes.

It’s not reliable as a weapon, but it’s all I’ve got.

Then, I found scraps of leafy vegetables and fruit peels and ate them too.

I drank plenty of water gathered in my palm, got sleepy, and fell asleep just like that.

After that, I flinched several times at the loud *BANG!* sounds. I was sleeping lightly in fear.

Every time I woke up, I ate the half-eaten bread and meat-on-a-stick that had rolled within reach.

Around the time the pain in my body had started to fade little by little, the chunk of meat I ate didn’t seem to have been properly cooked through. And after swallowing it, my stomach started to hurt badly.

I endured it for a while. But I couldn’t hold back the urge and crawled to the corner of the trash bin to relieve myself.

With the stabbing pain in my gut, I thought, “Am I going to die like this…?”

I placed my hand on my stomach and strongly wished in my mind: “Pain, pain, go away~~”

Why am I even doing something like this?

There’s no way the pain would go away just from that…

But little by little, the pain in my stomach started to ease. And I must have passed out from exhaustion.

Someone is saying something…

That’s what I thought, within my fading consciousness.

But more than that, I was filled with the thought that if I lost consciousness, I’d be free from the pain—so I didn’t remember it.

I don’t remember it, but a voice said:

[Acquired: Minor Poison Resistance]