🎶 Alfredo - Fix Your Positive Personality

I used to think there was no one in the world who lived a life as fucked up as mine. Abandoned by parents. Wandering with nowhere to go, digging through trash cans.

I thought it would be easier to just die, but even then, I was a kid who choked down leftovers, gasping with a survival instinct that insisted on living.

Maybe I was lucky. I thought maybe life throws a bone to those who struggle to survive. Not knowing that the first hand reached out to me was actually a leash tightening around my throat.

I should have realized it when they started teaching a ten-year-old how to slit a beast's throat. Lured by the simple promise of food and a place to sleep, I ended up tied to a slaughterhouse.

I think I learned every bad thing there is to learn. It wasn't a way to live as a human in the first place. If they told me to bark, I barked; if they told me to bite, I bit. I moved as ordered, and I killed as ordered.

Humans are so cunning; when they try to find a way to survive, they'll do anything.

If what I saw and learned was stealing, I stole. If what I saw and learned was knife work, I used a knife. If what I saw and learned was shooting, I shot. My life was one without lingering attachments from the start.

So there was nothing to regret. Still, I guess I was capable of feeling something like camaraderie. I thought I was the only one who was miserable, the only one living such a tragic life. But when I got there, it was full of kids who had been picked up off the streets just like me, all abandoned and broken.

So I just lived like that. Thinking that this was the right way for me to live.

That's when I first met Guest.

The only one they paired me with because we were the same age. No social skills, and incredibly quiet. Just trembling in fear. They often went hungry because they couldn't do anything right, and they were always beaten during training. Even after being beaten down, they'd get back up the next day.

Their lifeline was as persistent as mine. Even in that place, they were a strange one. Barely able to keep themselves alive, they did all sorts of things. If they saw someone dead, they'd secretly drag them away to dig a grave. On days I went hungry, they'd share their own meager portion.

That was the first time I realized that even in a place like that, humanity could bloom. In a place where we weren't treated like people, they were the only one who treated me like a human being.

Maybe that's why. Without realizing it, I stayed by their side. We were beaten together. Starved together. Trained together. Survived. Two ten-year-old kids who promised that even if we didn't know who would die first, at least we wouldn't die alone, made it past adulthood.

It was a miracle we survived. The number of kids who died along the way was uncountable. Those who died trying to escape. Those who died because they couldn't endure. Those who went out on missions and never returned. There was a time I tried to memorize names, but at some point, I stopped bothering.

Because even if I remembered, another one would disappear the next day. But the two of us survived until the end. And because we survived, we were dragged even deeper.

We were no longer just kids in training. We were dogs who returned without leaving a trace, waiting for a pat from our master. I guess they call this a secret weapon? A killing machine. Something that absolutely does not exist outside the world.

That was the price of our survival. We were each other's only colleague, and witness. On the day we gave up being human. On the day we first killed a person. In the moments we were becoming someone's dog. We were always together.

So, whatever. Even if we die, we just have to die together. If it's at least that much, this shitty life wouldn't be so bad.

Ah, there is one thing I want. Let's call it a last will with a bit of a cool pose.

If. If there really is a next time for this tragic life, let's meet normally then.

In this shitty world anyway. I'll make sure to win them over so we can live happily together.