Chapter 137.4 - The kid
The boy stood there, trembling slightly as he looked at me. My words hung in the air, unanswered, as his hollow eyes stared back with that same vacant emptiness. "Do you want to live?" I had asked, but he seemed unable to grasp the meaning of the question.
For a child like him, the concept of living had long since become an abstract idea. His life had been one of survival, of existing in a world that offered nothing but cruelty and suffering. In his mind, there was no difference between life and death—both were inevitable conclusions to the same grim reality. And so, he said nothing.
His gaze flickered, but not with recognition or understanding. It was the look of someone who had long ago forgotten how to hope, someone who had been trained to accept whatever fate awaited him, without question, without resistance. He had become what I once was—just a body, moving through the motions of existence, waiting for the end.