Thunder roared as it rained heavily. Strong winds passed through the corridors of the Orphanage.
An old man– in his sixties –was passing through the hallway of the boys dormitory. It was more like an abandoned apartment than an actual place of living.
Well, it was to be expected. This side of the country was always poor and war-struck.
During the Second World War, we were attacked by the neighbouring countries for our fertile land for food cultivation– since nuclear battles made most of the land on Earth infertile and inhabitable.
I was sitting in my room, reading light novels and Mangas I purchased with the little money I earned from doing work at warehouses and the Colonial lords' households. The old man, Welmore, the Orphanage's Headmaster once told me that he found me wrapped in a tattered blanket when I was an infant on his door. No mother, no father.. just an unfortunate child, pale and sickly, left alone to fend himself against the world.
I grew up untrusting and doubtful, only using my books as a way to escape my reality and the occasional anime shows I got the privilege to watch whenever someone brought some DVDs.
By the time I turned 14, I was a skinny, pale boy. I barely took care of myself. I didn't go to school. I was taught all that could be taught by the Headmaster. He saw I had a talent for learning languages and reading, so he bought me some books on the topics previously mentioned. I was grateful for it, yet I never trusted him.
All the other kids my age in the Orphanage were either in groups, had their own social circles or had a solid plan on how to leave this rock-bottom society.
Leiter– who was me –on the other hand, had no such plans. As I mentioned that I was untrusting as I grew up, I never made any friends. Always alone, I stayed holed up in my room–which looked a few days of unorganisation away from turning into a catacomb– and read books all day.
I was sometimes picked on by the other kids, insulted upon, bad mouthed about or beaten up in secluded corners of the Orphanage. They were the type of children that would trample upon one of their own if it meant rising up higher. Even if it meant killing them.
A twisted, sharpened mindset developed from years in the slums of this miserable country. I myself had a distasteful mindset. I would crush anyone who would get in my way or disturb my peace. I tried once, when this annoying kid kept bugging me and insulting me.
Can you guess what happened next?
I was beaten up by that same kid and sustained seventeen fractures in my ribcage and arm combined.
I occasionally slept. Staying up late reading books was a usual, ordinary habit of mine. I used old flashlights given to us for emergency situations to read my light novels. That was the only time I felt truly happy.
Until I was an adult, I lived my life depending on the orphanage. Even with the small jobs I did here and there, it wasn't enough money to get me three meals a day, hell, even just a proper meal would be difficult. Since books were not really valued.. They were sold cheap on the outskirts of the city.
I always dreamt of playing games like the rich kids, but it was just a distant dream, an unquenchable thirst. It would be a miracle every time the Orphanage got an Anime DVD. We all used to watch it together but as we got older, fewer and fewer actually watched. Soon, I alone sat, watching different genres of episodes. People called me a child, weird, immature and other mouthful words but I didn't mind as long as I wasn't feeling sad.
The day I became an adult, old man Welmore, the only one who treated me somewhat better than the other kids, turned a blind eye to me and kicked me out. He didn't even let me take my books with me.
"Crazy old bastard.." I muttered as I walked down the streets, all cold and starving. I had a few coins and bills to my name. For an entire year, I worked in many different warehouses, trying to add up a large sum of money so I could get out of this hell that I was stuck in.
I wanted to at least achieve a decent life. Or so I thought.
Two months after my nineteenth birthday,– which I celebrated with a little piece of bread and a small cup of warm tea that cost me more than I could afford to lose –I was walking down the street, after a tiresome day of labour at a Port near the outskirts, I was heading home through a shortcut I always took, a desolate alleyway that was thin and dark, a place no one would come in if they were in their right mind. I heard muffled screams of a girl. That's when I encountered the two men, surrounding one girl.
It was none of my business, nothing would change in the world if I just moved on and pretended I saw nothing, but the stupid, unrealistic part of me wanted to be a hero that day… And I paid the price. One of the men stabbed me. My vision suddenly red, my heartbeat over the moon, I was hyperventilating. I was dying. Sharp stings of pain in my body which was starting to burn up. A simple flaw of my sensations mistaking pain for heat. I was so afraid, but I was tired too. As I was holding my stab wound, blood falling down all over, I let out a blood curdling scream as I felt my head spin aggressively.
My eyes opened wide.
I was in my room, not as a man who was dying, but as an infant, as Artorius.