Chapter 19: The Privy

Not all the factory workers could afford even these wretched tin shanties, I realized. A sudden dismissal, a lost job, an injury, and they could easily slip down the social ladder, joining the ranks of the beggars and sewer-dwellers. The line between the two slums, which had seemed so stark at first, was in fact a permeable, easily crossed membrane of misery. The workers I saw had a haunted look about them, their faces slack with a weariness so profound it seemed etched into their very bones, even at the start of the day. They moved with a listless, defeated shuffle, their eyes empty of hope, their gazes fixed on some bleak, unchanging horizon. They were the living dead, automatons of the factories. Still, their lot was marginally better than ours had been. This workers' slum had dug-out drainage ditches, a semblance of order, and a slightly better standard of safety, if only because the factories needed to ensure a steady, unbroken supply of cheap, replaceable labour. They even had a public latrine.

Though, to call it a "latrine" was a grand overstatement. It was a foul, reeking shed that served as the privy for this entire section of the slum, cobbled together from scrap wood and sheets of rusting tin. A true monument to misery. But as I stepped inside, my eyes fell upon something so unexpected, so utterly out of place in this primitive squalor, that it took my breath away: plumbing. There was a row of crude, spigot-like taps. With a trembling hand, I turned one. After a groan and a shudder from the pipes, a thin trickle of water sputtered out. A wave of profound relief washed over me. This world, for all its horrors, was not entirely mired in the dark ages. But with the good news came the bad. The water that dribbled from the tap had the same foul, chemical smell as the canal. I could see visible impurities, tiny black specks, swirling within it. They had plumbing, yes, but it was plumbing straight from hell, likely fed directly from the polluted river. The designers, no doubt, had concluded that water for flushing away filth didn't need to be clean itself.

I had no time to dwell on the irony. My own biological needs were becoming desperately, painfully urgent. I asked Jared to stand guard outside—a humiliating necessity—then slipped into one of the rickety, doorless stalls. The oversized clothes were a curse. The trouser cuffs, stiff with grime, dragged on the filthy, wet floor no matter how I tried to hold them up. Though my new clothes were hardly clean, a deep-seated revulsion to the squalor of a public privy made me try to avoid contact with any surface, a frantic, awkward dance of disgust. This was a latrine for factory workers, men and women who were only a step removed from the dregs of the slum. One couldn't expect much in the way of public decency or cleanliness. The filth was indescribable, a testament to countless miserable souls. For a fleeting moment, I almost wished I had taken Jared’s brutishly practical advice and just found a dark corner by the canal.

The ill-fitting overalls made the simple act of squatting a clumsy, entangling ordeal. Finally, in a fit of frustration, I wriggled out of them completely, letting them fall in a heap. That was much better. The rest of the process was, thankfully, uneventful. It seemed that, in this one regard at least, being a girl presented no insurmountable technical challenges, only a bit more time, a lot more awkwardness, and a profound loss of dignity.

When I emerged from the stall, Jared stared at me, his eyes wide with surprise. "Parula, why are you dressed like that?"

 "They were too much trouble," I said, handing the crumpled overalls back to him. "You can have them."

In my old world, there was a popular trope in anime and manga: the "shirt-only" look. A beautiful, cute girl wearing nothing but a man's oversized shirt, her bare legs on display. It was meant to be alluring, a symbol of playful innocence and sensuality. I was now, technically, in that very state. My entire body was clad in a single, long shirt that hung on me like a sack dress, ending mid-thigh. And yet, there was nothing alluring, nothing sensual about it. There was only a malnourished little beggar girl, with legs so thin, bruised, and grimy they looked like two twigs that might snap. No one, I thought with a grim certainty, would find any appeal in this pathetic, wretched sight. It was because of this, because of this utter lack of anything resembling beauty or charm, that I wasn't particularly self-conscious about my state of dress. My transformation into a girl had brought with it only a profound sense of physical weakness; any aesthetic differences were, in my current state, entirely negligible, a cruel joke. In fact, wearing just the shirt felt… liberating. Compared to the single, tattered rag I had worn yesterday, this felt like the height of fashion. A small, grim victory, but a victory nonetheless.