The sea.
The salty, fishy sea water lapped against her cracked feet, encrusted with dried salt grains,
her soles rubbed raw against the rocks,
the chilly sea breeze swept over her, causing the frail, dark-skinned girl to shiver.
Rupee is the currency na used in countries like India, Sri Lanka, and Nepal, with the English term as Rupee, code INR, and a unit decimal of 100.
1 Rupee equals 0.01349 US Dollar, equals 0.8862 Yuan.
For Indians, an ordinary al costs 30 Rupees, and for the low-inco class, a lunchbox might just be around 10 Rupees.
But what does three Rupees (approximately 0.3 Yuan) an to India's untouchables?
The answer is: two lives.
As night fell, the cold moonlit waters rose and fell, crashing against the rocks, creating waves that foad white.
The frail, dark-skinned Indian girl sat in a cave carved into a low cliff by the sea,
she was wearing a dirty, torn shirt and shorts, color indistinguishable, her hair matted, arms hugging her knees, shivering violently in the cold night wind, her eyes hollow.
Ten days ago, the girl and her two sisters mustered the courage to ask their factory boss, after work, to increase their daily salary by 3 Rupees on top of their current 25 Rupees.
They are untouchables, the lowest caste outside of all the Indian castes.
Untouchables, or as known as Dalits, make up 16.2% of India's total population. Calculating based on a total population of 1.324 billion, there are over 200 million Dalits.
In the traditional Indian view, the bodies of Dalits are impure, contaminating everything they touch, even their shadows can defile people from higher castes.
They are banned from appearing frequently in public; they cannot use the sa water vessels or utensils as other castes, cannot touch people from other castes, cannot marry other castes. They work for the villagers but are not allowed to live in the village and can only engage in the most nial, humble occupations.
After the girl and her sisters demanded the 3 Rupee pay increase, the factory boss mocked and beat them, tied them with ropes, and subjected them to hours of abuse.
What was even more despairing was that when the local police cars arrived, the Indian officers who stepped out not only didn't stop the boss but joined in on the abuse of the girl's two sisters.
The girl broke free from the ropes with all her strength and escaped into the night. The sound of police sirens blaring behind her, the glare of car headlights flickering in the waist-high dense grass.
She escaped, but her two sisters were hanged from a tree, their bodies battered, as a warning to those untouchables bold enough to make insubordinate demands—a scene she ca across when she attempted to return ho in the morning.
By the roadside, by the parked police cars, stood the sa Indian officers who had participated in the abuse.
The girl didn't dare go ho, nor did she dare leave this place, for fear she'd be spotted by the police cars on the road and killed.
She hid in the shallow cave under the cliff by the sea, eating small fish and crabs when hungry, drinking the drip of cool water from the cave when thirsty.
The girl was unaware of what was happening outside and could only rely on the rising and setting of the sun to count the passage of ti.
So cold...
She hugged her knees tighter, her muddled mind overwheld with a flood of chaotic thoughts.
Hinduism preaches equality for all, but this equality is rely spiritual and soulful; in terms of physical existence, it is unequal.
The bodies of Brahmins and Kshatriyas are pure and clean; Vaishyas and Shudras are tainted. As for untouchable Dalits, they are regarded as the embodint of filth and impurity in this world.
There are only two ways for a Dalit to cleanse oneself.
One is to practice asceticism, enduring what regular people consider the ultimate suffering: starvation, deprivation, self-flagellation, enduring extre cold and heat until the body and mind transcend, hoping to move the gods and escape the sea of misery.
The second is to obediently endure oppression and exploitation, serve the higher castes, refrain from associating with other untouchables, self-isolate to reduce their level of contamination, in so doing, hoping to be reborn as a Brahmin in their next life, becoming a person who's pure in body and mind.
Under the influence of such traditional beliefs, the Dalits at the bottom developed mutual hostility.
The Dalits who killed chickens despised those who caught rats,
the Dalits who caught rats despised those who cleaned sewage and sewers,
Differences among Dalits created different tribal factions, each seeing the others as impure sources of contamination, voluntarily seeking isolation to avoid being polluted.
The extre internal competition and base-level hostility rendered Dalits perpetually disunited; despite numbering in the hundreds of millions, they have no voice in the social structure.
The girl hiding in the cave had no such distant thoughts, her hollow gaze lingered on the sea surface, the face of another dark-skinned Indian girl erging in her mind.
Nina.
A mber of Wind Chaser's Group Seven, an Indian envoy to the Global Occult Coalition, the pride of India's lower castes.
The sa age, the sa status,
one could beco the focus of countless spotlights, et with dignitaries,
while her two sisters were strung up on branches in the morning mist.
A wave of lancholy rose within the girl, if Nina were here, if Nina were still in India, then upon hearing the news, she would probably, no, she would surely seek justice,
just like she had previously done for the Dalit community.
However, not long after the Door Contest concluded, Nina, a frequent figure on India's major television networks, vanished from the dia's sights, her whereabouts unknown,
the cohesion the low-caste community had painstakingly built up started to dissipate.
"Damn it, where is that girl?"
Faint, cluttered voices arose from above the cliff, flashlight beams illuminated above, casting light over the sea.
The girl's hollow eyes were instantly filled with fear and despair,
the cliff here was very low, sound could travel easily,
she dared not move, slowly curling her body, inching towards the back of the cave.
"""
A man's voice said, "We've been searching for so many days, but still haven't found her. Damn new commissioner, it's just a missing Dalit girl, yet he insists on a thorough investigation. Her parents have been scared off from filing a report."
"We will find her."
Another man's voice slowly said, "She's injured, has no food, can't run far."
"... What do we do after we find her?"
"Do we even need to ask? Kill her."
"But the new commissioner demands..."
"Forget about the new commissioner. He's Brahmin, a diplomat's son, an IPS elite. No matter if this is uncovered or not, he'll get promoted. We'll be stuck here, wasting our lives. Do you want to wait for local forces to retaliate after it's uncovered?"
"..."
"Don't forget, your uncle, our superior, was involved in the abuse that day..."
"... I understand."
Above the cliff, the two n were talking in hushed voices, flashlight beams sweeping across the sea.
Beneath the cliff, the girl desperately covered her mouth, tears sliding from her eyes.
Whoosh—
The sea in front of the cave suddenly parted to the sides,
An animal crawled up from the water.
It was a dog, fur mottled in brown and black, skeleton-like thin, soaking wet, looking just like a stray dog on the street.
How could a dog swim up from the sea?
The girl's mind couldn't process the information. Instinctively, she reached forward to cover the dog's mouth, preventing it from barking and alerting the two n above the cliff.
But, at the mont of reaching out, she froze.
The dog's body suddenly emitted an invisible, eerie aura, like apex predators such as tigers and lions, coldly staring at the girl as though she were moving at.
Can't move.
The girl's body froze in place, while the brown-black stray dog casually turned its head, shaking off the water as it moved.
"Phew, it's really cold here. Let's go, et up with the others."
"Wait."
The flashlight halted abruptly, illuminating a spot on the sea, "What is that?"
A bloodstained piece of cloth swayed where the flashlight shone—a fabric strip used by the girl to bind her injuries.
"Could it be..."
The second man muttered, flashlight wavering at the cave's entrance, "It looks like there's a cave below.
Co here, shine the light for , I'll climb down to check."
Above, the sound of shuffling footsteps, flashlight shaking, followed by hands scuffling through grass and vines could be heard.
Again, the girl fell into fear and despair,
Tears swelled from her eyes, flowing across her cracked cheeks.
The brown-black stray dog, indifferent, took two steps forward, approaching the girl, tilting its head.
In its eyes, like black beans, was no emotion, just a silent stare.
Snap.
Without warning, the stray dog's mouth shot out a fish-spear-like slender tongue-like conduit, piercing the girl's forehead.
A vague yet powerful spiritual energy will rippled within the girl's mind.
[To survive, to what extent can you go?]
A-anything.
Her eyes vacant, the girl instinctively responded to the voice's question.
[Excellent. Then, embrace the hive, join us.]
The dog's tongue-like conduit swelled and contracted, injecting sothing into the girl's forehead.
After several seconds, the conduit retracted,
The creature transford back into an ordinary stray dog, sprawling lazily on the rock, scratching its fur with a hind paw, producing a soft rustling sound
The girl blankly looked at her palm, reaching up to touch her forehead.
The forehead had a faint circle of blood, where the dog's tongue-like conduit had cut, had already healed.
Plop.
A corpulent man in a brown Indian officer uniform jumped onto the rock from above, a loaded gun at his waist.
He shone his flashlight, illuminating the ragged girl and the ordinary stray dog.
The corpulent man's face lit up with joy, calling to his companion above the cliff, "Co down quickly, I found her..."
The words abruptly stopped,
Instinctively, the girl raised her arm, shooting a conduit with a sharp arrowhead from her wrist, piercing the corpulent man's forehead, interrupting his words.
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