Two weeks after his mother stopped singing, the city stopped being quiet.
The shakes got worse. She barely spoke now - only mumbled in the early mornings, like she was whispering to ghosts only she could see. Sometimes she'd call Shimura by another name. "Takeshi," she'd say, tears in her voice. "Not again. Please, not again."
Shimura didn't know who Takeshi was.
But the word made his stomach twist like a knife in old meat.
He kept his distance when she was bad. Slept outside the container some nights, curled in an old raincoat with broken glass for stars. He watched people die from rooftops. Watched gangs pull kids from gutters and disappear. District 9 was a living organism, and Shimura was learning to become one of it antibodies - small, hidden, but sharp enough to cut.
It was during one of those nights, sitting behind the old power station, that it happened.
The first time.
He wasn't looking for a fight. He just wanted warmth. But the three older boys saw his blanket, saw his silence, and decided that was enough.
"Hey. Hey freak-bloom," one of them barked. "You deaf?"
Shimura didn't look up. He knew this pattern. Push. Threaten. Hit.
They always wanted you to cry.
One of them kicked the blanket off him. Another jabbed a metal rod at his shoulder. A sharp crack of pain. He bit the inside of his cheek.
"You think you're better than us, huh? We know about your mom. Everyone knows. Trash got trash."
The third boy spit. It landed on Shimura's cheek.
That's when something opened.
Like a switch was flipped behind his eyes.
He didn't remember standing up. Didn't remember thinking.
He only remembered splitting.
The first clone tore out of him mid-motion - mid-punch - like a bad reflection in a shattered mirror. The second came half a heartbeat later, arms failing, mouth twisted in a copy of rage. A third blinked into existence near the attackers, already screaming.
The older boys stumbled back.
"The hell?! What is this - what is this?!"
They swung. One hit a clone - crack! It evaporated in smoke and blood. Shimura felt it - like his spine being crushed, his skull caving in, his chest imploding. He dropped to his knees, coughing up foam.
But the clones didn't stop.
One grabbed a metal pipe and swung.
Another bit.
Another pushed a boy's face into the mud and just... held it.
It wasn't a fight. It was a purge. Shimura watched from behind his own eyes, trembling, as the swarm of him destroyed them.
Not killed. Not quite.
But broken.
When the last clone vanished, Shimura sat alone again. His nose was bleeding. His ears rang. The three boys were gone - dragged or crawling. It didn't matter. He couldn't move.
In the puddle next to him, he saw his own reflection flicker.
And behind it - another face. One he didn't recognize. A man with hard eyes. A long scar. Cold lips. Watching.
It was gone a moment later.
But it felt familiar.
That night, Shimura returned to the container. His mother was slumped sideway, muttering nonsense. Her hands twitched in her sleep. He sat beside her and opened the rusted box under the floorboard. The one she didn't know he'd found. Inside was a name tag from an old lab coat:
Takeshi Shimura, Project: Bloom Cognitive Clone Initiative, ACCESS LEVEL: BLACK VEIL
His hands shook.
"Not again," she'd said.
"Not again."
He didn't cry.
Not then.
But the question had already rooted in his brain like a tumor: What did you do to me, Father? And why did you leave me like this?