A sheep without a shepherd.
A cow without a cowshed.
A pig without a fence.
A child without parents.
In other words, an orphan.
The way they live is usually much the same.
Either they’re raised as slaves or attendants by high-ranking folk with bizarre tastes, or they scrape by day to day as usual through pickpocketing and begging.
In my case, it was the latter.
Well, in truth, that’s how all orphans in this line of work are.
If you grow a decent head on your shoulders, you might become an officer in the gang, but most die before that happens.
Gang. Family. Clan. Call the organization whatever you like; its structure is simple.
The oldest and strongest orphan becomes the leader, and those with similar qualifications become officers.
Below them are the children who are young and weak.
It’s pretty laughable, but it’s a kind of organization.
Of course, there’s no way we could survive in the back alleys like that, so we have someone backing us.
Who’s backing us, you ask?
They’re the same kind of thugs, just bastards who don’t want to be lumped in with orphan brats.
Even though they’re orphans too, and came from clans themselves.
Anyway. Gather up enough orphans and you’ll find some with quick, nimble hands, some with extraordinary brains, and some with bodies that aren’t quite whole.
If you’re nimble, you pick pockets; if you’re smart, you run scams or guide people through the streets.
If you’re bad at both? You beg.
If you’re not confident you can run fast, you’re better off having no legs, and if your head doesn’t work, you’re better off being crippled.
Because when it comes to begging, that’s a talent.
Well, I had a pretty good head and was quick on my feet, so I could do both—a jack-of-all-trades in the orphan world.
So I made quite a racket.
No, seriously, I was faster than the pickpockets and smarter than the scammers.
I was even pretty decent in a fight.
There was no way I wasn’t a tier-one orphan even the organization backing us kept a close eye on.
That was why I didn’t know.
People feel inferior about what they don’t have, and when someone else has it, they get jealous.
And jealousy is a rather ugly, filthy emotion—filthy enough to drive an eight-year-old kid, three years younger than them, to his death.
“…Cough.”
What. I’m talking about myself.
A swift-footed scammer of the back alleys. Stabbed to death by an eleven-year-old, jealousy-blown, incompetent, weeded-out, jobless layabout orphan.
A pretty damn stupid epitaph.
No, wait. My corpse will just rot somewhere, and they won’t even put up a gravestone, so I guess it isn’t an epitaph.
Ah, fuck.
The consciousness I’d been holding onto with stray thoughts was slowly fading.
I’m really going to die?
Me, the undisputed top earner of the Alto Clan, the orphan with the most Orphan of the Month awards?
Aah.
This is bullshit.
I lived doing nothing but shitty things, so now I’m dying in a shitty way, for a shitty reason?
Fuck, so that’s how it is, lol.
Then in my next life, I’ll live doing only good things. So I can die peacefully for a good reason.
***
“……That is all I remember, elder.”
“Wahahak! You were thinking that crap right before you died? You really are a proper madman! Wahahahaha!!”