I am so fucking hungry. I mean, sure, I went hungry before, but now it was worse than ever. Who knew that not eating anything for several days would leave you starving, not that I wasn’t trying to fix that mind you, but the city of San Luperto didn’t exactly make much opportunities to find food anymore even searching the trash cans wasn’t enough, and if there was one thing that I can point the finger at that made it extremely difficult for me to find food, it would be COVID-19.
When the Great Virus from Wuhan, China spread throughout the world and bodies started dropping, every government in the world thought it was a good idea to keep everyone in their homes and that was a good idea but it only benefited the people who had homes but i was the exception since my parents died when I was six years old and my extended family revealed themselves to be the snakes in the grass that they always were, I have been homeless but it looked that I picked the wrong time to be homeless as when people went into their houses, that meant they didn’t go to McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Carl Junior, Fuddruckers you know the usual places, that meant people didn’t throw the food they couldn’t finish in the trash can which means I couldn’t get food and so I starved.
Not that it was all bad mind you, other than how starvation felt I learned plenty of things while on the street but two very important things I learned were how to move throughout the city and how to observe the city, in less vague words I learned parkour and as for the other skill that is a bit more complicated but hey since I am gonna die any minute now I might as well spill my guts but first I must ask a question.
How and why do you move through a city? Obviously, it is a stupid question, but please think about it for a bit and let me guess your answer. You move through a city with whatever means are available, such as cars, bicycles, skateboards, rollerblades, or even your own two feet, but have you ever considered the why? Well, obviously you move through the city because you have places to be, but have you ever noticed anything? If not, then that isn’t surprising because it is something that people do unconsciously.
People in cities walk at a snail’s pace, almost scared to bump into each other, and risk an interruption to their schedule and on the rare occasion that they bump into each other, they give a small apology and move forward barely interacting with each other. They move through the city with a single-minded purpose, to get to their destination, uncaring and unknowing about the lives of others, and when they all flock together in large masses as it is every day in a city like San Luperto, they come together in a massive blob where no one is recognizable. Men, women, children, even pets all disappear and lose their faces and become part of the blob, when i first saw the blob come together it was rather scary, and it awakened in me a fear of not being myself, of not expressing myself so I dared to be different by teaching myself parkour.
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To do that in a city like San Luperto was rather risky. You could bump into someone disrupting your flow and somebody’s life not that I gave a shit, you could get seriously injured, and you know nobody is going to give a flying fuck about a homeless child like me, you could get the police called on you because grandma saw some uppity homeless boy who didn’t stay in the homeless shelter like the rest of his filthy kind but for the sake of not joining the blob I would do anything to avoid that fate and also it was cool as I learned from Assassin’s Creed and when I say Assassin’s Creed I mean the good games, you know what I’m talking about when I say that but that aside, I moved with complete and utter freedom because nobody cares or nobody wants to deal the paperwork removing me from the rooftops of San Luperto would cause but either way I don’t give a damn.
The other skill that I developed on the streets was that of observation, no not Observation Haki from One Piece, no matter how much I wish to have that skill, this ability was more a gut feeling, know what fuck it I’ll be honest here I don’t know exactly how to put into words because it is a bit more than a gut feeling so this memory will have to suffice but first let me paint a picture. This takes place when I was fairly new to being homeless, meaning I was pretty young, so I was probably seven or eight years old at the very least. It was winter of 2017 or 2018; I know I’m being inconsistent with dates, so don’t remind me I have never really had a sense of time for stuff like school and whatever only on important stuff like my birthday (only because of the cake and gifts) and holidays, even the irrelevant ones (only because I get a treat).
Anyway, it was a truly cold winter (where I was anyway) and in my rush to join the homeless, I only had the clothes I wore and whatever food I could fit in them,and as you can guess, it didn’t look like I would survive the winter for long, but my younger self didn’t know that so he moved with the exaggerated swagger of a black teenager (god that shit is so funny and no I’m not black, maybe I have a bit of a tan but I’m not dark enough to have the Ku Klux Klan after me) confident that the scraps of food he had would last the day, it didn’t and I starved for the very first time in my life and this wasn’t like the stomach rumbling when your kinda hungry but you are so hungry that you couldn’t even move, so that was when I knew I was going to join my parents in whatever afterlife they were in and I even saw them in a hunger induced hallucination and I greeted them, but then I heard it, it was faint, I knew but it was something, so I turned away from my hallucinatory parents and despite my aching stomach went to find the source and it was the most beautiful thing I ever saw but I don’t think I have the strength to go on anymore but hey at least I’m dying thinking about something beautiful so lemme sleep for a bit and good night San Luperto.