With a whirring sound from the giant tube in the sky, that extends far beyond sight, falls another batch of trash. As usual, man in a down jacket and a dirty boots with pants comes to check on it with his trusty carrier. His job is to clean the mess that comes from the numerous rusty metal pipes from the sky.

  This task is unachievable. One man can't handle the amount of the pipes and garbage flow here. The world around simply is the trash.

  Sky gets darker the deeper it goes in this place. The man took a habit of staring at it until the flow of junk stops. It did shortly after. Not an enormous pile. Often times these mountains include corpses in them.

  The man started slowly digging through garbage with his hands that had gloves so old, they looked fused with his hands, looking for something. His hand touched something soft. It was another corpse. A thin and pale one. A body of a child. But... It's not dead?

  There was a heard feeble breathing coming from the kid, as if struggling to breathe. It was a girl, covered in bruises, bleeding from the mouth and missing a tooth in the front row. Her neatly stitched yellow dress with a small white decorative apron was all torn in places of her bruises. This didn't look survivable for someone this small.

  The man put her softly on the carrier and continued digging through trash with his crinkly scrawny hands. He wasn't weak, however. It didn't take long. Nothing of value today. But he did find another corpse, this time dead for sure.

  Road from this pipe to the man's house was quick, that's why he mostly comes to this one each trash day, it's the closest. The second one was around five kilometers from his home in the opposite direction. And a human eye could never see the third one.

  It's home. House rather, trash is the home. An old shack made of scrap. It's not that bad looking, just really old. It was full of space inside, having a gas stove, table, chair and many more weird antics.

  First things first, the man decided to cater to the girl's wounds. She looks no older than twelve. He took out the water bottle and set a sieve to filter it. While it was filtering, he found a paper sheet on the ground, brushed it off and applied to the girl's wounds, covering one after another.

  He threw out the soaked paper and reached for the water, pouring it on her wounds to clean them. This is how he treated his own scars. Now that the girl is patched up, he can start his own routine.

  First, he sits at the table before the rudely carved alphabet board. The man's low and toneless voice pronounces each letter.

  Second, he goes out the shack and grabs the food remains in front of it. These may come with the trash and he cleans them with water before eating. They are kept in a makeshift freezer just outside the shack.

  Then he eats the food. It's a slice of black meat from an undistinguishable animal and a leaf. Maybe that's a paper or a carton, not a plant, but the man didn't eat anything else, so he forgot the taste of anything else.

  Third, the man fiddles with a scrap. He has a separate room from the so-called kitchen of this shack where he keeps a bunch of junk and his bed with a chest. This time he tries to rebuild the clean-looking watch that he found yesterday. He fails once again.

  And lastly; he goes to the back of the shack. Behind is a cemetery. There are countless gravestones, but the deeper man goes, the simpler they become, until there just becomes a garden of sticks and stones. When he prepared to bring a newly found corpse to its grave, he heard a rumble inside his room.

  The girl is awake now. She does not look good, but she can stand on her own now. Behind the curtain that acts as a door to the shack, she watches.

  The man doesn't object. He continues the preparation. Corpse is on the carrier now. It looks human enough to be buried.

  After quite some time, maybe thirty minutes? An hour? They approach the place. The girl followed the man all the way, even though she wasn't comfortable being here at all.

  After all, the face of her savior looked like a thin, crinkled crescent moon with eyes that looked nowhere, messed up grey hair and equally unequal stubble.

  The man started digging the grave while the girl watched, hiding behind the carrier. Corpse is in the grave now. The sticks and stones are placed. Suddenly, the man claps, then starts mumbling under his nose with his eyes open.

  "E-Excuse me, what are you doing?" -Asked the girl in a quiet and scared voice.

  "Praying." -Replied the man.

  "B-But you're doing it wrong."

  "Yes?"

  The girl approaches the man. She fiddles her fingers, expressing not shyness but distrust.

  "Y-You're supposed to keep hands together all time and close your eyes." -She says.

  "I didn't know."

  Now, instead of random mumbling, the girl told the man to say specific words.

  "Is that right?" -Asked the man after finishing the ritual.

  "Y-yes. You pray for the people who were dear to you. I prayed like that when my father died..."

  "I see." -Replied the man.

  The ceremony was over. It's time to head back home. The man took the carrier. Suddenly, the girl jumped on it. The man did not object. After arriving at the shack, the girl finally talked again.

  "W-What is this place, mister?" -The girl stuttered.

  "I don't remember. I call it the Dump." -Replied the man.

  "W-What is your name, mister? My mom says don't talk to s-strangers but everything here is so strange..." -Said the girl, still trembling from the pain. She didn't announce it, but it was obvious that she suffered. However, everything that gets thrown into the Dump has no use or is in no good condition, so there isn't anything that could help.

  "I don't remember." -Said the man.

  "Y-You don't remember your name? Mine... Is Yuki." -In a tender tone said the girl and smiled awkwardly.

  The man looked at her, then turned away. He said she could stay here. After all, there is nowhere to go. For her, at least. For the trashman, there is always somewhere to go. He had lived in this place since the moment he gained the ability to think. He wasn't the first one to be the Trashman; there were at least 5 people before him but he only remembers two of them. They had become his mother and father, but they didn't live long enough to meet each other.

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  Years after years, all the Trashman does is clean up the Dump. Meeting a person here is an image of a miracle. Any company pleases the man, even though he is a man of a few words.

  "Hey mister, who taught you to pray?" -Asked Yuki.

  "I don't remember. I think she did. But she never taught me. I just recalled how to do it." -Replied the man.

  The two were preparing to head out somewhere. Yuki found some tissues in the kitchen and applied them under her dress, covering her wounds. The pain has settled down, but the pulsing sensation rushing through her body from all the scars didn't go away. This girl is quite resilient, even in such a situation, she doesn't want to cry.

  They were going to the lake. Trashman has gone often there, so the road is almost always clear. But the possibility of a gigantic pile of trash unexpectedly falling on one's head is always there. The sky isn't limitless, but that means there might be more pipes that ooze garbage, just out of vision.

  Yuki was on the carrier, touching the cold empty gallons. She was impressed how the man could carry so much stuff along with her and not be exhausted. Her father was a sickly man; she had to learn to cook simple food when her mom was away at work.

  "Mister, why are you helping me?" -Asked the girl.

  "No reason." -Replied the man.

  "Are you not tired?"

  "No."

  The silence continues as they walk through the heaps of junk. This noise of nothing has become comforting for the man, but he wasn't angry or distressed when it occasionally broke. Whether it's a bad weather or a terrible wound, it's just another day to live through.

  Finally arriving at a lake, Yuki jumped from the carrier. She was terrified. While the lake itself was a humongous puddle of an unlikely clean water, there was something else worth noting. Near the lake was a colossal cone pit.

  "T-This is... Just like... The one I fell in..." -Said frightened Yuki.

  "When trash piles up too much, it slides down there by itself." -Explained the man.

  Grabbing gallons from the carrier, the man filled them and placed back. Just another task. Yuki jumped on the carrier again and they moved. Clouds slowly started forming in the sky. Perhaps other Trashman may cause them, but knowing who and where is pretty much impossible.

  When they got to home, the man started filtering water with his small sieve. There were three gallons of water and at the rate the water drips, it would take a week or two to sort it all. But he can wait. There's nowhere to hurry to.

  Yuki was sitting outside the shack, with hear head on her knees, sobbing and silently crying. The man came out with a spyglass. Sometimes the things that get thrown here can be useful for the Trashman. He uses it to see if the pipes ejected trash, but oftentimes a loud rumble from them is enough.

  "Mister, how long did you live here?" -Asked Yuki.

  "I don't remember." -Replied the man.

  "Nnngh, you never do!" -Said the girl, irritated.

  "I don't need to."

  "My father once said that the tidy house means tidy soul. He always tried to keep his room clean, but the last time I saw him, his room was messy..."

  "Is that so?" -Asks the man, trying to keep up the conversation.

  "But this place has nothing but mess. I... I don't know what to think..."

  "But what do you feel?" -Asked the man once again. He doesn't want to forget how to speak, that's why he retells alphabet to himself every day.

  "I feel scared... But... I wanted this. I just didn't know it would be like this."

  "There's nowhere to go from here. I didn't want it to be like this either. Well, maybe I didn't think it would be like this. I don't know what's with the place you came from, but you did want to run from it, right?" -Said the man.

  "You're finally talking with me!" -Diverted the theme Yuki.

  She stood up and brushed off her dress, even though the dust will collect in no time again. Hungry, she asked the mister if he has any food. All the corpses that don't look human enough don't go to waste. The man was taught how to prepare them for meals. In a world filled with trash, there is bound to be tools that can still be fixed.

  The man pulled out a chunk of meat from the makeshift freezer. It was too big for the oven in his kitchen, so he would roast it on the old-looking brazier that he pulled out only God knows from where.

  "Woah, I never ate so much pork!" -Exclaimed Yuki.

  "It's not all for you. And what is pork?" -Asked the man.

  "It's tasty meat! My dad used to make it to me when I was little."

  "You are still little."

  "Hey, that's not nice." -Replied the girl in the not nice tone.

  Seeing how the Trashman cooks the meat, Yuki couldn't do anything but doubt he was actually taught how to do it. He placed the meat on the stick, ignited the brazier, and then waited until it looked like coal.

  "That won't do." -She thought, and took the matter in her own hands. She showed the man how to actually cook anything on the brazier, since she had often seen how they do it on TV. She would always sit near the screen and smell the food her mom was cooking, imagining she was the one in charge.

  Heat from the brazier made Yuki more uncomfortable the more she sat near it. Her wounds started to give off heat along with pain to her entire body, so the Trashman continued the work alone.

  They ate the pork together. It wasn't seasoned; it wasn't well cooked either, but it was enough to keep functioning. This is the first meal the man enjoyed in a while. And the first time Yuki smiled without a thought in a while.

  There is no salvation from the endless sea of trash, there is simply no way it all can go away. But if there is occasional pretty looking gem in this sea, the Trashman's life will become a little brighter. Even though he had seen so many gems, not all of them shined; most were bleak. One thing was constant, however, it is that all the ones who shined eventually became just like any other.

  The clouds in the sky compressed even more; it's not a rare event here, but it's not common either. The broken silence never irritated the man, though. Even if it's a heavy rain of mud or an eruption of glass, it's just another thing to live through.

  Yuki was already bored. It's not a problem Trashman had to deal with before, so it was quite difficult to solve. Even though it may seem like there should be endless entertainment in the sea of trash, it is garbage for a reason. Something that wasn't worth someone's time anymore.

  First solution was what Trashman did best: making pancakes. I mean taking out the trash. With not much to think about, Trashman strived in physical activity. Morning jogs in any direction until he finds something shiny, lifting bags of junk to prepare for putting corpses in the carrier and all that kinda stuff.

  Yuki didn't like exercise as an entertainment value, cartoons are way more enjoyable. Come to think of it, they were violent, despite trying to portray good ideas sometimes. But even then, when Trashman suggested they go look for corpses, Yuki's face became pale. This wasn't something a child would enjoy and mister Trashman was quite tactless in that matter.

  "Mister, can I ask a question?" -Asked Yuki. She looked better and more joyful with each passing hour.

  "Yeah?" -Said the man.

  "Why do you like... Burying people so much?"

  "..."

  "Sorry, I shouldn't have asked." -Apologized Yuki.

  "No, I remember this one. I was taught. Humans who get here seek salvation. But there isn't one for them. That's why I should bury the ones who look human enough." -Said the man.

  "... -Yuki stood in silence.

  But what is human enough to you?... No, I shouldn't ask; I'm sorry." -Said the girl.

  The two were actively playing on each other's nerves. Yuki thought that everything "human enough" to the Trashman is what resembles him. And the man felt that he said something wrong but couldn't express his feelings. This place is a painful topic for everyone.

  To lighten up the mood, Yuki agreed to take a stroll with the man to find something useful or at least entertaining. Maybe a book? No, this isn't entertaining at all. A toy? No, Trashman would enjoy tinkering with it more than Yuki playing.

  Here and there, there and even farther. Everywhere they looked there was nothing fun but the place felt endless, so they kept looking. Here and there, there and even farther.

  Yuki got tired of all this running. And unexpectedly for the Trashman, he was completely exhausted too. Probably because he never had to deal with a child before. He felt bad for the first Trashman who had to raise him when he was a kid himself.

  It's been around seven hours since Yuki got here and it was Trashman's toughest training yet. After their stroll, he had to take the girl to the home. Both were too tired, and it seemed like Yuki's condition didn't become better even if she tried to hide it.

  And just like that, Yuki fell asleep, and the man fell on his down jacket. Slowly closing his eyes, he finally could rest. Even on the floor. It was a wild day.