“How am I different?”
“When you stand on the stage.”
Clemenceau said.
“I have watched your performances from the audience.
Not once, but many times.
Do you know what I saw?”
Furina shook her head.
“I saw those people—people who are usually as numb as stones—their eyes would light up when they looked at you.
Just for a moment, just for that single instant, they seemed to have a bit of life in them again.”
He walked back and sat down, his gaze warm.
“I am not praising your acting.
I am saying you have something innate.
When you stand there, without needing to do or say anything, people just want to draw close to you, to believe in you.
This kind of feeling cannot be faked, nor can it be learned.”
Furina fell silent.
She recalled the audience members who would wait at the theater’s back door after every performance.
They wouldn’t say much, just staring at her.
Some would cry, some would smile, and some just stood there, as if catching one more glimpse of her was enough.
She had always thought it was because she acted well.
But thinking about it now, it seemed to be more than just that.
“So you mean you want me to give them hope?”
“Yes.”
Clemenceau did not beat around the bush.
“France right now needs someone who can give the people hope.
This person doesn’t need to understand politics or know how to govern a nation.
They only need to stand there and make them believe that there is still a possibility.”
He leaned forward slightly.
“And I understand a bit of politics and a bit of governance.
If you are willing, I can help you.
I will be by your side to handle the things you do not understand.”
Furina looked at him.
This was the first time she had met this old man today.
Yet the way he spoke did not seem like he was trying to persuade her, but rather like he was stating a fact.
“You believe I can do it just like that?”
“I don’t know.”
Clemenceau said frankly.
“But I do know that if we do nothing, this country is finished.
Since things have already come to this, why not give it a try?”
He paused.
“Do you know about the war twenty years ago?”
Furina’s heart skipped a beat.
“The one where the German invaded?”
“Yes.”
Clemenceau’s voice grew low.
“That year, I was the mayor of the 18th District.
When the Titans of Bahas invaded, I was organizing the evacuation of the citizens.”
“I secured the women and children in the church basement, then took the men—armed with shotguns, shovels, and wooden sticks—to guard the street corners.”
He lowered his head, looking at his hands.
“Those Titans were four meters tall, pitch black all over, with runes flashing red.
Our bullets couldn’t even leave a scratch on them.
They rolled over us like they were crushing ants.”
“I watched with my own eyes as the people around me fell one by one.
Old Henry, the bakery owner whom I’d known for twenty years, died right next to me, half his body blown away.”
“Little Pierre, only nineteen years old and married for just three months, was trampled into a pulp by a Titan.”
His voice was calm, but Furina could hear the emotions suppressed for decades beneath that calmness.
“Then the fires started.
All of Paris was burning.
I stood in the ruins, looking at the corpses, listening to the screams, unable to do anything.
I could only watch.”
He looked up.
“Do you know what that feels like?
Watching the city you love burn to ashes, watching the people you couldn’t protect die before your eyes, while you survive.
I survived, but I felt as if I had already died.”
Furina’s fingers tightened slightly.
The war twenty years ago, the day Paris fell, was the very day she was born.
That great fire, the silhouettes of those Titans, and the old man who had picked her up…
She was also a survivor of that great fire.
“From that day on, I changed,”
Clemenceau said.
“I swore that I would do something with my life.
Not just for revenge, but to make sure nothing like this ever happens again.”
He paused.
“It’s been twenty years, and I’ve done a lot of things.
Criticizing the government, forming political parties, writing articles, shouting slogans.
But did any of it help?”
“I don’t know.
Maybe it helped a little, maybe not at all.
But there is one thing I am certain of.”
He looked at her.
“Just criticizing won’t change this country.”
Furina remained silent.
She thought of the day she was born.
If Grandpa Pierre hadn’t found her, where would she be now?
“Mr.
Clemenceau,”
she spoke.
“You came to find me because you believe I have what you want.
But have you ever considered that what if I only want to be an actress, what if I simply cannot shoulder this responsibility?”
“I have,”
Clemenceau said.
“But I’ve thought even more about: what if you can?”
His gaze was calm and sincere.
“I am not asking you to carry this alone.
As I said, I will be by your side.
And those who are willing to follow you, we will all be by your side.
You don’t need to understand everything, and you don’t need to do everything.
You only need to do one thing.”
“What is it?”
“Stand there.”
Clemenceau looked at her.
“You stand there, letting those people see you.
Let them see that someone still cares about them, that someone is willing to do something for them.
Just this one thing is enough to give them the will to keep living.”
Furina lowered her head, looking at her fingers.
She thought of her past life, of that distant Earth she could never return to.
Back then, she was just an ordinary college student, attending classes, watching anime, and going to conventions every day.
Her biggest worry was not having enough allowance.
She had seen those suffering people and impoverished places in the news and scrolled past them in videos.
She would feel sad, sympathize, and donate some money.
But those people were very far away from her.
So far that she could simply close her screen and go on with her life.
But what about now?
Those people were right beside her.
Just across the streets she walked every day, in the corners she had never visited.
They weren’t people on a screen.
They were living, breathing humans, just like her.
She remembered Grandpa Pierre’s words on his deathbed.
He said, “There is light in your eyes.”
She had never understood what that meant.
But now, she seemed to understand a little.
“Mr.
Clemenceau.”
“Yes?”
“I want to go see.”
“See what?”
“See the people you spoke of.”
Furina raised her head.
“The people for whom me’standing there’ is enough to keep them alive.
I want to see them with my own eyes.”
Clemenceau looked at her, fell silent for a moment, and then nodded.
“Alright.
I will go with you.”
The carriage crossed the Seine River, passed through the city center, and then went further and further into the outskirts, the roads growing narrower.
The scenery outside the window began to grow unfamiliar.
Furina recognized some street names, all of which she had only ever seen in newspapers.
Those names were always associated with crime, fires, collapses, and the like.
“We’re here,” Clemenceau said.
The carriage stopped at the entrance of an alley.
Furina got out of the carriage and caught a strange scent.
It smelled like rotting matter, mixed with coal smoke and sewage.
She frowned.
“This is the Saint-Marcel District,”
Clemenceau said.
“One of the poorest districts in Paris.”
Furina took a few steps into the alley.
Then she stopped.
The alley was filled with people.
Some were sitting against the walls, some lay on the ground, and others curled up in piles of rags.
Their clothes were tattered, their faces sallow, and their eye sockets deeply sunken.
Some were still moving, while others lay completely still.
She saw an old man lying at the base of a wall.
His gray beard was a tangled mess, his eyes half-closed, and his lips dry and cracked.
She didn’t know if he was still alive.
Beside him was a child, looking about seven or eight years old, as thin as a matchstick, crawling on the ground to pick something up.
Furina stepped closer and saw it was a piece of moldy bread crust.
The child stuffed the bread crust into their mouth, then looked up, meeting her gaze.
Those were hollow eyes.
No curiosity, no fear, no expression whatsoever.
Like a pool of stagnant water, without even a reflection.
Furina instinctively clutched her skirt.
She continued forward.
At the end of the alley was a small square, crowded with even more people.
Some were selling scrap metal, some were selling old clothes.
Someone crouched on the ground with a sign in front of them that read, “Selling myself to bury my mother.”
She saw a woman in her thirties, wearing worn but relatively clean clothes, standing in a corner.
A man stood in front of her, counting money.
There was no expression on the woman’s face; she just mechanically took the money and followed the man into a low shack nearby.
Another man sat at the doorway of the shack—a man who had lost both his legs—stuffing money into his pocket.
Seeing Furina looking, he grinned, revealing a few yellow teeth.
“That is her husband,” Clemenceau said.
Furina’s footsteps halted.
“Many couples are like this,”
Clemenceau’s voice was calm.
“The woman sells her body, the man collects the money.
There is no other way to survive.”
A wave of nausea rose in Furina’s stomach.
She turned around and quickly left that place.
Clemenceau took her to a factory.
It was a low brick building with high, small windows, pitch black inside.
Before they even drew near, Furina heard a massive, rumbling roar.
Stepping into the factory, a wave of heat rushed over them.
She saw rows of machines spinning—belts, gears, flywheels—emitting a deafening noise.
Weaving through the gaps between the machines were small, thin figures.
They were children.
Seven or eight, maybe around ten years old, both boys and girls.
They wore tattered overalls, their faces and hands covered in black grime, some even stained with blood.
A boy stood in front of a machine, feeding something into it.
His movements were incredibly fast, almost a blur.
Furina saw his hands darting like small birds along the edges of the machine, dodging the sharp gears with every movement.
“Be careful!”
An adult walked past and shouted.
“The one who got punctured last night hasn’t even healed, and if another gets hurt today, the boss is going to dock our pay!”
The boy did not answer, his hands only moving faster.
Furina’s gaze fell on the pinky finger of his left hand.
It was missing a section, the wound still fresh and wrapped in a filthy rag.
She saw another child nearby who was missing half of his right palm, leaving only a bare stump of flesh.
Yet he was still working, using his left hand to feed things into the machine.
“These children…” Her voice trembled.
“Most are orphans, or from families who can’t afford to feed them,”
Clemenceau said.
“Factory owners like to hire child laborers because they are cheap and obedient.
They work sixteen hours a day for two meals, and sometimes a tiny bit of pay.”
“Isn’t that illegal?”
“Illegal?”
Clemenceau smiled, a smile more painful to look at than crying.
“Ms.
Furina, this country does have laws.
But the law doesn’t reach here.”
Furina fell silent.
She looked at those children, watching their mechanical, repetitive movements, and their numb, vacant eyes.
She thought of when she was fourteen.
That was the year Grandpa Pierre passed away, and she went to the theater troupe to find work.
Though it was hard and exhausting, the troupe leader, Margaret, treated her very well, never letting her go hungry or cold.
But what about these children?