the game

the game:the price of pain

Chapter Six: The Price of Pain

"I understand with love comes pain, but why did I have to love so much?"-anonymous

    Hopes, dreams, love, trust, honesty...... All words that no longer hold any meaning to me. They're words meant for children, and fools, so it gives them some kind of hope this world is filled with happiness, hope, and good things. But to someone like me, who's seen too much of this cruel, heartless, cold world to believe those things, know it's one fat lie. It's all a lie. All a lie... This world is filled with criminals, crooks, thieves, murders. Someone's always out to get you whether you want to believe it or not. Nobody's perfect, despite what people may say about themselves. Nobody can predict how they will be in the future. Nobody can say what they will be like from one day to the next. We all live in our fantasies, and believe only what we perceive to be realty, and banish all other realities form our minds, and call them fantasies. Well, my reality is something straight from a horror movie. You may call me evil, a disgrace, or whatever it is that comes to your mind when you think of my name, but stop, and ask yourselves. Am I all that, and more, or am I product of my environment? Was I born evil? No I wasn't, I suppose. I use to be a good person, and I did the right things, or in my opinion I did. So ask yourselves, what made me into the person I am today? I could name off many things, but listen to my tale, and maybe you'll understand what happened to make me this way. Hopefully, you'll be forced to ask yourselves was I born bad? Was I born evil? Perhaps some of you will come to that conclusion. Still, others will say that this cruel, wicked, cold world made me into the person I am today... Again, listen to my tale, and perhaps you'll understand........

        I suppose I should start when I was just a mere child of five. My parent where killed off when I was four years old. I had two younger siblings, twins in fact, so it was up to me to raise them. There was a boy, named Izumo, and a girl, Fumiko. They were just two years old, and didn't really understand what was going on in the world around them. It was the middle of war, and my home had no compassion for people like us, even if we were as young as we were. Not to mention, that because of the war solders' occupied our village, and stole everything they could get their hands on. So people really had nothing to give to the poor like us. So, I committed petty crimes so that my family could survive. I stole food, and money, and clothes. Sometimes, we had no shelter, so when it would rain, we got extremely wet. Sometimes, we could go months without bathing ourselves. We would go weeks without food, and our clothes? Well, sometimes they were tattered, and barely covered us. Hell, I was in worse condition than my siblings simply because I purposely went without just so that they could have what they needed to survive. I never complained though. Surely there were people who were worse off than us, I would often think to myself. I had no childhood because I had to grow up at such a tender age, and raise my own siblings. They needed me, and I was going to protect them with my life.

        When I was ten years old, something happened that would decide the course of life I would take.

        My little sister, at the time was eight years old, was out cleaning this person's house. Normally, she came home before dusk, but on that day..... She didn't come home. I waited for hours, and hours, but she never showed up.

            "Big Brother, we need to go look for Fumiko. What if something happened to her?" Izumo was a very insightful boy, so with some reluctance I agreed to go look for her.

    Hard times had fallen on everyone, even the soldiers that was stealing everything from everyone, but what I saw that day...... It makes me shudder to even remember it.

        My younger brother and I were looking for Fumiko, and found her dead in an ally way by a house. I froze when I saw her laying on the ground like she had been asleep, and saw the blood, but my young mind just hoped she had knocked herself unconscious. Though, I knew it was foolish to believe that. I felt a pang in my heart as I drew closer to her body, and noticed the pool of blood that surrounded her body. A lump rose in my throat, and I looked down at my younger brother. He hid behind me fearfully.