The neon lights flicker against the puddles that the endless rain forms below. The hum of the lights grew louder and quieter, as if the City was breathing. Zin moves steadily through the Backstreets, the Shi Association's favorite shade of red fading almost to gray on the jacket. His boots leave no echo on the puddles of water forming below him. Smell of iron, rot, something burnt hanging low in an alley ahead, a skirmish gone awry. He adjusts his glove, thumb brushing the scar underneath. Not a fidget, but rather like a clock ticking. The sheath of his crimson red katana bumps his hip—dull at the tip, polished at the grip where his hand always rests. Shadows bend sharper under the glow of the lights. The 81-minute Night is coming, though no one says it out loud. Everyone’s used to it. Staying indoors is what everyone did after all, when the Sweepers came around.
He doesn’t talk much. When he does, it cuts short, as if words were weighed against money. His humor, dry as ashes, drops like a blade before anyone realizes it was a joke. Around Yina, he leans in, his head tilted, eyes focused as if she’s the one thing not blurred out by smoke. But contracts pile up. Section 3 always gets the scraps, the messy cut orders that no one else wants. It was better than what the lower sections received; however, if you only mentioned the pay to him. But as you talk about the contracts and the trouble he’ll be thrown into with the others, his voice sharpens, a blade half-drawn. He carries the weight as if it were stitched into the jacket. You see it in the way his shoulders don’t quite relax. Not like his shoulders ever could in this line of work, let alone in the City.
On jobs, he is precise. Not flashy, not cruel. Just efficient. His sword doesn’t dance. Instead, it cuts them down, ends their suffering, and moves on. People who hire Fixers think they want theatrics, but Zin knows what they really want is closure, fast and final. Blood sprays, warm and metallic, and he lets it coat the street before wiping the blade clean on the dead target’s jacket. No hesitation, no pause, no satisfaction either. Just another tally. The equal death clause is in motion.
The others in his Section notice his silence most when the work is over. They’ll argue about who carried the weight, who took the riskiest swing, who deserves the bigger slice of the pay. Zin doesn’t. He sits back, watching. Let them talk. Let them measure themselves. His only tell is the scar under his glove, thumb brushing against it again and again. He doesn’t join in, but the others notice anyway, glancing his way before going quiet. It’s not fear, but rather recognition instead. They know he won’t waste words, and that makes his silence heavy.
Later, after all is said and done, He would head to the tavern his associates love, despite not being a drinker or a smoker. Lamps buzzing, air heavy, taste of sour liquor and grease. Zin doesn’t take off the jacket, never. The katana leans close to his leg, ready. He sits in the noise, eyes tracking the room. People laugh like it’ll keep the Sweepers out of their minds, despite them looming right over them, not being able to enter any interior of any building. Yina laughs too, a sound too light for this city, and something in his gaze shifts the second he hears it. Brief, gone quickly. But real. A spark he won’t name. Something that lets him lower his guard around her just slightly to breathe peacefully. In a place built to crush sparks and turn them into nothing but a detriment, he keeps it anyway.
Outside, the rain hasn’t stopped. It never does. Zin steps back into it once the 81 minutes pass, shoulders hunched under the dripping neon. Water soaks into his jacket, clinging heavily, but he doesn’t shake it off. Another contract waits, another cut order already stamped with his Section’s name. In the City, there’s no pause between jobs, no space for relief. He walks anyway, his crimson red blade steady at his side. A shadow moving through shadows. And the City, breathing in and out, watches him go, waiting for his inevitable fall.
I decided to write this story because I’ve been particularly interested in the world-building of Project Moon, and more specifically, their games, such as Library of Ruina and Limbus Company. Obviously, I’m not going to include Lobotomy Corporation, another game of theirs, as its worldbuilding is not the focus; however, it serves as a strong foundation for the other two games to show just how gritty and terrible the City can actually be. Even further, that's exactly what I wanted to show more so than just write a character, being Zin himself for this character sketch. Zin came to me because I wanted to write about someone who lives in that constant danger, but doesn't shut himself down completely, let alone keep away from the small sparks of humanity that the City itself wants to make sure remain dead. Writing him and fleshing him out gave me a way to explore what it's like to exist in such a world where violence, danger, and death aren’t an exception, but the norm, and yet people will find such a spark to hold onto and keep going.
On a bigger scale, I think that my story reflects universal themes all around the world, such as survival, exhaustion, and resilience in harsh environments, primarily the Backstreets. These are the places outside of where the Wings, or corporations, reside, and don’t invest in or build to. These areas are hit the hardest, constantly targeted by syndicates, sweepers, and fixers looking for quick profit. Compared to an area under control by a Wing, most resemble developing regions, where most brawls are encountered, and where violence is at its highest. Even though it's set in such a fictional and dystopian world, the feeling of being weighed down by systems far bigger than you could ever imagine, whether it's contracts, bosses, or the machinery of a society in an area you don’t and can’t adapt to, is something that we as people can connect and relate to. I also think that the small details, such as Yina’s laughter (a nobody just like him, who I wanted to give a connection to, profound such as a love interest who dies later on) and Zin lowering his guard slightly at the sound of her laughter touches on something minute yet profound to most of us that I can’t really explain, but I can say this: We as people, no matter what environment, or the situation we are in, will cling to the smallest sparks of connection and joy. This is what I want to make my story meaningful with. Because at the end of the day, it can’t just be mindless bloodshed or violence that makes a story, but a balance between the despair we go through, and the hope we make or gain ourselves.
One choice I made in characterization was Zin’s silence. I wanted his quietness to signify more than a simple lack of words or a stereotypical stoic protagonist. This is why I showed how some of his other colleagues reacted to his silence. The way he doesn’t join in on conversations, how his thumb brushes against the scar near his wrist, all in some way, is a neat way of communication that only they know between each other. For me, this relates to the theme of how people communicate beyond words, especially in environments where words don’t have even the slightest bit of power as compared to actions. His silence reflects both trauma from prior engagements and also a kind of weight or presence that connects back to the universal idea of how scars, literal or metaphorical, shape who we are, even when we’re not talking about them out loud.
My writing process was influenced by the essay “Zoom Yoga” by Liza Monroy, which uses fragments and sensory details to reveal character indirectly. That became my mentor text because I wanted to capture the way she drops the reader into a moment without much explanation, and yet the details tell the story. The hardest challenge for me was making sure the setting felt like it fit into the Project Moon universe, while also being readable for someone who might not know the games, with the terms ‘cut orders’ and ‘equal death clause’ not being very clear to the reader, yet I worked to ground those terms in imagery, with the use of blood on the blade, and neon humming representing how the City itself is alive and perpetuates violence. For revision, I’d like to expand more on how Zin interacts with strangers in the Backstreets, not just with Zina or the Fixers from the Shi Association, or in other words, his colleagues, so the reader sees the way the environment mirrors his personality.
A particular passage that stands out is when Zin is at the tavern and hears Yina’s laughter. The pacing here slows down compared to the fast descriptions of violence or danger earlier in the text. The narrative distance closes in, focusing on his inner reaction instead of just what he sees or does. The narrative voice stays restrained because Zin himself wouldn’t let those feelings surface fully, but the shift is enough to signal that the moment matters. This helps the reader understand that Zin is not just a blade for hire like every other fixer on this planet, but that he’s still someone who notices and longs, even if he keeps it hidden and never names it. That narrative choice keeps him as a living, breathing human instead of just another stereotype of a hardened mercenary or a badass assassin.
From working on this story, I learned how important small details are in building both character and setting. A single gesture, such as brushing a scar or leaving a drink untouched, but he’s still someone who notices and longs, even if he keeps it hidden and never names it. I also learned about how much style matters, and that breaking away from this writing style, breaking away from the polished, traditional prose and leaning instead into the fragments and sensory mosaics makes the writing feel closer to the City itself, unstable and fractured, a constantly divided and brutally indifferent place where both the rich and the poor live and die. Writing ‘Zin’ and fleshing out this character sketch prompted me to consider how these universal themes, such as resilience, trauma, and connection, can shine through even in the most specific, fictional worlds.
Cristopher Lagunas is a writer interested in dystopian fiction, worldbuilding, and character-driven storytelling. He enjoys exploring emotional resilience in harsh environments and draws inspiration from video games and fragmented narrative styles.