"Please, sir? A bit of food?" I ignored the child's pleas and outstretched hands and walked on. On to the next starving child, on to deny even the acknowledgement of its existence. Why weren't the beggars ever adults? It would make this simpler. Despondently, it sank to the ground, incapable of following me, it would wait for the next passerby. I was good at ignoring them, though at first I tried wildly to assist each and every one of the ethereally thin waifs I encountered. Now I knew better, looked through them like everyone else did.

Chapter the Fourteenth

Some months later, across the East Sea