He never dared to eat with the other children in the front courtyard, simply because they all laughed at him. Many had said they wanted to beat him to death just to get rid of the eyesore that he was.
Thus, from his very childhood, he was called a freak—slowly, everyone started getting used to the name "freak," until even the old man teaching them martial arts would occasionally call him that while giving instruction!
Latter on, when he was nine, two more children came to the courtyard, a boy and a girl.
They were about the same age; the boy seemed to be the girl's older brother.
When the boy was there, the girl was shy and reticent, hiding behind the boy every day while the old man took them to eat.
But it wasn't long before the boy left the big courtyard, and the girl ended up staying.
She was the only girl in the big courtyard; at the time, they had never seen a girl before and felt that this child was different from them.
