"I want to die, but I have to live," said Remond Dol as he was starting his day as a construction worker.
Remond prepared his water that he got from the river yesterday to be boiled, using the branches he collected from the woods and an old pot he found. He then takes out a stale bread he got a few days back to eat with the water. Remond had nothing to eat with all the debts to be paid.
Remond was lucky this time; the bridge near his village had broken and had to be fixed, and he wouldn't have to stay somewhere else. When there was construction work in the nearby city, he had to stay under a bridge for several months to not walk ten kilometers back home.
When he was at the site, the workers had just begun to come to work. During lunch he went to the woods to find any edible mushroom but was unable to find any, as the winter snow had covered the ground.
While all the workers had a fulfilling day working hard and heading home with their salary, there was Remond taking his hard-earned money to the man behind a building for the money to be paid.
As the man asked for all the money Remon got, he begged the man to spare him a little for food.
The man lashed out, saying, "Why do you have to do this every time, man? Fuck off." Remond was desperate, as now he had nothing to eat now that the last piece of bread had been eaten before, and at this time the forest near him had nothing to give him to eat.
Desperate Remond grabbed his legs and begged him to give at least the money for a piece of bread. Then suddenly the man punched him in the face and started to kick him recklessly in the stomach. When trying to block the man's leg, Remond broke his finger. As Remond cried while getting hit, he thought to himself again, "I just want to die."
Face bruised, broken finger, limping towards his old cabin he built using the wood from the forest, the cabin was built under a tree using its roots as its base.
As he lay on his bed, he was thinking about the time when he was 10 and was happily living in his home with his parents and sister, playing with his sister and parents. Then suddenly an earthquake hit the city they were in. The building crushed his parents and sister. He was devastated. Then when the rescuers arrived, the parents had died, and the sister was alive but needed immediate care and was admitted to the ICU.
He was shocked as a child, but he had no one to rely on. The house in which he lived was destroyed during the earthquake, so he has no place to sleep; he slept on a bench in the hallway of his sister's room. His sister was in a coma and was not responding to anything, so the doctors tried everything they could but were not successful.
The disaster fund was given to everyone involved, but most of the money was taken by a gang that was ruling the area. While others were not happy about it, they can do nothing to the Red Devil gang, so they kept quiet. Remond was also silent, as he was just a child.
The bills of the hospital were paid directly to the hospital by the government, so his sister was safe, but this only covered a maximum of two years. So, Remond had to work hard for his sister in case she needed more time.
One evening when Remond was 11 and doing odd jobs at different places, he was picked up by a man in a red suit and taken to an abandoned factory with a few others to do the Red Devil gang's jobs for them. Remond was scared, as they were the ones that took his money from him.
The group of children were selected into two groups, one into muscle and one into skinny. The children with good physiques were the muscles that would be trained to do the groundwork for them, and the skinny ones were the ones with the task of spying and collecting information from other gangs, cities, and businesses. Remond fell on the latter side, as he was scrawny and weak.
The muscles were trained and hard to replace and were treated well, whereas the skinny were a dime a dozen; they were treated poorly and were often extorted by their supervisor. Remond was a victim of that; the man who took all his money was his supervisor's lackey. He was tasked to look over Remond and take his money.
Remond is crying under the tent thinking about his sister and how she is, as it has already been 6 years since he last saw her. She istent, the only reason he is living and working and has to save money.
It has also been 6 months since he last sent any money to the hospital. Remond was paying in 3-month installments from a loan he took, so that was another thing he was worried about.
As he was worrying about his sister, he drifted to sleep.
The next day, when he woke up, he couldn't move properly, as the beating from the day before was too rough this time. He had work to do; otherwise, the gang would come for him again, so he forced himself to stand up and head to work.
While walking slowly towards the construction site to work, he was struck by a strange red lighting. As he was losing consciousness, he heard a voice saying
"The required condition has been met, booting up the system."
[Ding]
The system has been unlocked, integrating the system into the user.
[Failed]
The user is dead...
Reviving the user...
Revival successful
[Ding]
The system is fully interlinked with the user.
As Remond opened his eyes, the system welcomed him as the user for the survival system.