Anomaly

Chapter 423 – From despair, hope is born [4]

When Victor stepped inside the community center, saying he wasn’t expecting even a remotely welcoming scene would’ve been a massive understatement. Considering the condition of the other community centers he’d visited before, he already had a pretty clear idea of the decay that had taken over places like this.

After the recent events involving the insane priest who, for some twisted reason, seemed obsessed with turning himself into an anomaly, people’s morale had completely collapsed.

Anomalous incidents were becoming more and more frequent, showing up almost daily on the news and in whispered conversations throughout the streets, while death had started becoming a disturbingly normal part of everyday life.

In the end, the community centers had become something entirely different from what they were supposed to be. They were no longer just shelters, but gathering points for traumatized survivors, people who had come face-to-face with impossible anomalies, incomprehensible phenomena, and experiences capable of destroying any sense of normalcy.

Most carried hollow expressions, exhausted faces, and an unmistakable sense of hopelessness. That was why Victor had walked in expecting a heavy, silent, suffocating atmosphere.

Yet throughout his visits, including this one, what he found ended up being far less depressing than he’d imagined. The exhaustion was still there, written plainly across people’s faces. Suspicious glances and the marks of sleepless nights still lingered. But surprisingly... there was life, too.

Some people talked quietly in small groups while holding cups of lukewarm coffee. Others tried distracting children playing in a makeshift corner filled with old toys and worn-out books. Volunteers moved back and forth carrying supply boxes, and every now and then, small bursts of laughter somehow managed to emerge through the oppressive atmosphere. It was undeniably strange.

Even so, it still felt like those people were trying to pull themselves back up by clinging to whatever scraps of hope they could find for tomorrow. Victor considered that a good sign. Honestly, he didn’t want to find out that the number of people taking their own lives had skyrocketed because of the appearance of anomalies.

And if he was being truthful with himself, Victor knew he’d be a complete hypocrite if he decided to hate every single anomaly outright. Hell... his own sister was one of them. That thought alone was enough to stop the sigh threatening to escape his lips.

Because of that, Victor wasn’t even sure how he was supposed to react to the situation inside the community center. Part of him had expected despair, hollow eyes, and people completely broken by the horrors of the past few weeks. Naturally, he felt some relief realizing that at least some of the dozens of people taking shelter across the community centers actually seemed okay.

Some spoke softly among themselves, while others even showed small, tired smiles as they tried to move forward. The place carried a strange sense of forced normalcy, as though everyone was desperately trying to pretend there was still something resembling an ordinary life left.

However... that was exactly what bothered Victor. Everyone seemed far too okay. Too okay for people who had gone through so much horror in such a short amount of time. This wasn’t like the other community centers Victor had visited before.

In those places, people still looked lost within the wreckage of their own lives, trying to piece together fragments of routine while carrying the silent weight of what had happened in their eyes. There had been hesitation, exhaustion... a constant feeling of unease hanging in the air.

But here, it was different. Strangely different. The place was full of movement. People walked back and forth with quick steps, conversations happened in excited tones, and even the faces around him carried an unusual energy, almost vibrant.

It didn’t feel like a place filled with survivors recovering from a recent tragedy, but rather with people who had already found a clear purpose and were now moving toward it without any intention of stopping.

Victor slowed his pace slightly as he observed everything around him. His brow lifted in obvious confusion: (What the hell is going on here?) The thought echoed through his mind as his eyes scanned the crowded hall, trying to make sense of the almost absurd atmosphere.

It wasn’t like he was against seeing all these people getting back on their feet. Quite the opposite. After everything that had happened, maybe this was exactly what they were supposed to do. Still... Wasn’t this way too fast? It had only been a few weeks since the latest events.

A few weeks since the chaos, the fear, and the deaths. Normal people didn’t just get over something like that overnight. So why did everyone here seem so... normal? Worse yet, why did they act as though the events of the past few weeks had already been buried in some distant past? Naturally, Victor wasn’t the only one who noticed how strange the place felt.

Rupert casually approached him, shoving his hands into his pockets while his eyes slowly wandered across the interior of the community center. The place was busy, yet surprisingly calm.

Quiet conversations echoed through the hall, some people smiled faintly while helping organize supplies or handing out cups of hot coffee, and even the air itself somehow felt lighter than it should have.

“Incredible... is it just me, or is something seriously weird going on in this place?” Rupert muttered under his breath, keeping a careful eye on the surroundings. There was a faint tone of intrigue in his voice, mixed with almost instinctive caution.

Rupert had been through other community centers before, but this was the first one he’d visited that felt so... harmonious. There was none of the suffocating despair that usually dominated places like these.

In the other centers, people had seemed broken, clinging to the last scraps of emotional strength they had while trying to convince themselves life was still worth living. But in this community center... things were different.

The expressions on people’s faces carried neither exhaustion nor fear. There was something close to hope moving through the crowd, a quiet sense of stability that clashed completely with the reality outside. And that was exactly what made Rupert uncomfortable.

Victor naturally shared thoughts similar to Rupert’s. Still, something else about the place caught his attention in an even stranger way. A little farther from the entrance, deeper inside the community center, someone was handing out bowls of soup to the people gathered around the tables. The detail, however, wasn’t the soup itself.

It was who was serving it. A girl, probably around fifteen years old, moved naturally between the tables, handing out steaming bowls while casually responding to comments here and there. Her appearance, though, felt completely out of place compared to the environment around her.

Her clothes practically screamed “teenage rebel” She wore a slightly oversized dark jacket over a plain T-shirt, ripped jeans with intentionally styled tears around the knees, and a pair of sneakers visibly worn down from heavy use.

A cap sat lazily on top of her head while her platinum-blonde hair, tied back into a loose ponytail, swayed gently with each step. There was something about her that immediately gave off “troublemaker” vibes.

Not necessarily because of the way she acted, but because of the combination of her relaxed posture, sharp eyes, and the constant trace of disinterest lingering on her face, like someone who’d normally be causing problems instead of volunteering to serve soup at a community center.

And maybe that contradiction was exactly what caught Victor’s attention. That said, Victor couldn’t fully explain why, but watching the girl hand out soup while wearing genuinely warm, hopeful smiles stirred an odd feeling of discomfort inside him. She seemed... out of place there.

Like a piece placed on the wrong chessboard. Maybe it was just his imagination. Victor slightly raised an eyebrow at his own thought, looking away for a brief moment as he let out a nearly inaudible sigh. Maybe he was overanalyzing the situation again, like he always did.

After all, being suspicious of a little girl who clearly just wanted to help people in need was, at the very least, ridiculous. But then another question naturally surfaced in his mind: since when had his life been surrounded by anything that could be considered normal? Victor had spent far longer than he cared to admit dealing with strange situations, impossible coincidences, and unexplainable events to simply ignore the uneasy feeling crawling through the back of his mind.

It was precisely because he’d grown so used to absurdity that Victor could recognize when something felt wrong. And irrational as it was to admit it, every time his eyes landed on the girl, that feeling only grew stronger.

Keeping that in mind, Victor lightly nudged Rupert with his elbow, drawing his attention without taking his eyes too far off the movement around them. Rupert subtly frowned and turned toward Victor, giving him a clearly questioning look, silently asking what the hell he wanted now.

Victor, however, didn’t answer. He simply kept his eyes fixed on a specific point ahead. Following his gaze, Rupert finally noticed the girl.

At first glance, she looked completely ordinary: small frame, simple slightly worn clothes, messy hair bouncing around as she busily handed out soup. Even so, there was something... strange. Something that didn’t fit. Rupert instinctively narrowed his eyes.

At first, he thought it was ridiculous that Victor was drawing his attention to some random kid, but the longer he watched her, the more an uncomfortable feeling crept into the back of his mind. It was hard to explain. It wasn’t exactly a visible aura or some obvious supernatural phenomenon, but there was something radiating from her.

Something absurdly out of place within that setting. Happiness... maybe. Hope. Perseverance. Emotions so intense and pure they almost seemed visible, spilling out of the girl in subtle waves that filled Rupert with a strange discomfort. It didn’t make sense. Not in a place like this. Not in the way he was perceiving it.

Rupert shot Victor a quick glance, realizing from the other man’s calm expression that he’d noticed it too. Whatever this feeling was... both of them immediately arrived at the same conclusion. The little girl might be a clue to exactly what they’d been searching for.

Rupert let out a long breath through his nose, his shoulders sagging slightly as he shook his head in obvious discouragement. The dim lighting only emphasized the exhausted look spread across his face: “When exactly did our job stop being about hunting dangerous, incomprehensible things and turn into interrogating little girls at community centers...?” Rupert muttered quietly, almost to himself.

There was a kind of silent melancholy surrounding Rupert, not intense enough to draw attention, but noticeable in the small details: the distant look in his eyes, the relaxed posture, the exhaustion hidden beneath his indifferent tone. Even so, Rupert buried those thoughts before they could sink any deeper.

Whatever was happening, it wasn’t as if overthinking it would change anything. Over time, he’d learned that some situations simply unfolded however they wanted, completely indifferent to anyone’s wishes. Questioning things too much only wore the mind down.

So he shoved it all into the back of his consciousness, like he’d been doing with nearly every problem lately. In the end, Rupert had already come to terms with this distorted reality. And honestly, part of him believed that was probably the best way to survive in the insane world they lived in now.