I'm already going to talk about the period before the Reaper by a few years, before The Reaper happened so that you really understand the why and the how.
I was someone who lived at the time in Miami in the famous upscale areas of Palm Springs, in luxury, pageantry and lust.
Far from the idea you have of me today, I was someone deeply despicable who considered himself the king of the world to whom the floodgates of immorality were opened without consequences.
I was so involved in bad deeds that I think the difference from the me now is so big that you would think that the me I was, was not me.
I always tell myself this deep down honestly when I see my past actions.
I couldn't even tell you everything I did wrong, just imagine someone with a fortune of several hundred million dollars, the currency of that time, doing whatever he wanted without limit whether moral, financial or legal.
I was extremely wealthy but a waste of the worst kind until the arrival of the woman who was my wife for 10 years, Kimiko.
I know, it may surprise the fact that a Japanese woman was able to be in a relationship with me knowing all the traditions that existed in Japan in terms of puritanism, kindness and respect for others.
She wasn't even a depraved woman like you might think just because she wanted to have a relationship with me.
It was rather me who tried to approach her at the very moment when I was able to meet her, in the street with still a narcissistic and naughty personality.
As soon as I saw her, I fell under his spell and I told myself that I was going to make her my next partner with whom I would have relationships filled with perversity, alcohol and drugs of all kinds.
In this regard, to tell you how crazy I was, I was able to test more than ten different drugs at that time and drink everything you can imagine in the way of expensive alcohol.
I purged all that today but the after-effects remain, well that's not the subject.
I wanted to make her my next object of desire as I had been able to do with several women in the past.
But when I finally took action and asked her if she was interested in coming to spend a hot day with me in beautiful cars, a luxurious house and lots of other joys that I won't describe, she refused.
You have to imagine that this was the period during the decline of the United States as a major world power and that most average citizens were living well beyond their means with unpayable debts.
Which meant that precariousness had exploded.
During this period, many women in the middle and poor classes sought by all means to earn money for their children or for themselves, even if it meant prostitution.
Do you have heard about the widespread prostitution that occurred after the collapse of the United States?
Victor:
No, not really, I have to say that I'm not very old to have known that and that I remember not reading any books that talked about it.
Ludo:
It's normal, it's a shame that the government of the time never got rid of and which tarnished its image throughout the world until its end.
Since the democratization of Internet, people have become increasingly accustomed to seeing that pornography exists and is extremely popular.
For certain profiles of people, a career could even be launched in this environment, with all the deviances that it brought into society silently in the shadows.
It wasn't new, but no one expected the culture of hyper sexualization to go this far with Internet.
By curiosity, you know what Internet is?
Victor:
Yes, people also begin to learn what is Internet with the new newspapers sent everywhere now.
It's still quite difficult to fully understand it, but I have a idea of what it was.
Ludo:
So maybe you've already seen in books that documented the fall of certain values of Western men and women, that the United States was not the only country to consume this kind of content.
There were plenty of others, it's true, but the United States went far, very far.
Victor:
Not really, this is the first time I hear this story of hypersexualization.
Ludo:
You can't imagine how catastrophic the situation was.
Hyper sexualization was a global phenomenon, but the United States plunged into poverty the American middle and low classes so badly that something that had never been seen before was unfolding before the eyes of the whole world.
A democratization in large scale of pornography within the home with a lot of families where it is no longer rare to hear that most of the members of the same family regularly post pornographic content on sites created for this purpose.
It's what I like to call it, making the wildest and most primal animal instinct of all seen in nature normal and mundane, like a scheduled day.
Drink, eat, copulate and sleep.
Of course, there are also many citizens who have not adopted this kind of mentality but that has not stopped countries around the world, some of which consume pornography, from rebelling against it.
Tell yourself that it has gone so far that even the government has started to completely want to ban pornographic sites to drown out the fish.
Unfortunately, the companies created on the basis of the pornography sector have pressured and bribed elected officials of the United States Congress to put in place gimmicky and useless measures that have changed absolutely nothing about the basic problem.
Anyway, as a former US citizen talking to you, I can tell you that this type of destabilization of public order by private companies carrying out lobbying has been commonplace for decades.
Strangely this time, it was not forgiving.
Victor:
Lobbying?
Ludo:
Sorry, I didn't tell you what that meant.
This is what I just described to you, companies that exercise influence in the internal politics of a country so that a government passes laws that suit one or more companies.
Don't worry too much about this, I just talked about this to explain why Kimiko was not an average woman due to her puritanism and the fact that she was a woman from the middle class.
Enough about politics, maybe I'll talk to you one day about the end of the United States, but here I prefer that we get to the heart of the matter, my relationship with Kimiko.
After accosting him she of course did not say yes to my advances and even ignored me.
For me, who was used to easily convincing women eager for money and ephemeral pleasures in Palm Springs, it was a shock, a total incomprehension to understand what had happened.
Far from dwelling on this failure, during this moment when I approached it, I insisted more and more on what she could feel by living an extraordinary experience through luxury but nothing helped, she was insensitive.
Anger began to build more and more in my head, which resulted in a raised voice on my part.
I even said sentences like that because I was annoyed.
"I do you the honor of offering you things that you will never be able to relive in your sad life and you decide to remain as you are, a worthless poor woman!"
Or something like that.
Of course, it only irritated her inside too but unlike me, she didn't show it and remained impassive, gentle and courteous in the way she spoke without bad ulterior motives.
Which irritated me even more.
At the end of my nerves and completely disgusted by my encounter with her, I ended up asking this question,
"What would make you come to me if all the wealth I have doesn't interest you!"
I still remember that moment very well as the one when I finally woke up, she told me, "Become a good man who does good."
This simple sentence completely twisted my brain and made me question myself for weeks on end.
After she left me and disappeared from the alley, all that was left was me and my thoughts to process what I had just heard and sort it all out again.
It worked on me for a while, as I said, so that in the end the result was the person you see here in the flesh.
Following that and the change in mentality that followed, I was able to meet her again months later in a modest cafe where I would never have set foot if I had remained the dark scum that I was.
I was able to talk to her again and tell her how much what she had told me changed my life.
No more alcohol, drugs or one-night stands.
I had given most of my money to poor people without house, living outside due to the increase in real estate prices which were putting more and more citizens on the street and penniless, to get rid of the temptation to start all over again.
I had kept the minimum to maintain my luxury life but without organizing a single party and without buying expensive objects as I was used to doing.
Normal clothes, a normal car and a house that was still luxurious but which at least prevented me from falling into poverty knowing my professional skills were of the order of 0 and which could not have guaranteed me a stable job.
When I told her that, in return she hesitated to speak to me, still reluctant to even look me in the eyes, I made her understand that I would no longer try to harm her and that I thanked her for to have brought back on the right path.
Of course I apologized and that's where it should have ended.
But fate decided otherwise, she decided to give me a chance when she saw how much I had changed by no longer having this execrable personality from before I met her.
Then you see what happens next.
I then spent three years with her, during which time we decided to move in together near her parents' house in the old town of Anderson, this future village.
After having sold my old house in order to cover my needs, during this time, I decided to create a hostel in the city.
For those who would come from outside the city and who would seek accommodation during a trip or an in-depth visit into the city for a not very expensive price.
Of course, after that the Reaper came and the mess you know ensued with all the death and heartache that it caused over time.
Me and my wife, fortunately, were very little subject to attacks from infected, since most of them tried to destroy large cities instead of small towns or villages.
Victor:
Fortunately also that you were in the east coast of the United States, otherwise I would not have given much of your skin when we see the number of infected still present in the center and west of the United States.
Which have completely annihilated everything through and through.
Ludo:
It's true, the finality remains that we survived several years even if unfortunately Kimiko's parents did not survive until today, having died of old age.
Victor:
Mr Cryzim, I have a question.
Ludo:
Yes, go ahead, tell me.
Victor:
I know it's indiscreet but I noticed that you haven't talked about your parents since a while ago, is there a reason?
Ludo:
There is indeed one, I never knew them, the only thing they could give me in this world is a will where they bequeathed me all their fortune.
Other than that, there's nothing else, because I lived in an orphanage where I didn't know who my parents were, or if I even had any close family.
A whole mystery remained unsolved even after I left the orphanage with an immense fortune in my pocket.
I can only recognize that I was really not in the right conditions to be able to have an awareness of good and evil as I have now.
Victor:
I see, I'm really sorry you had to go through so much traumatic things.
Ludo:
Not everyone is necessarily born with all the cards in hand, that's life, well I should hurry up and talk about the secret because otherwise I risk not cooking.
After the events of the Reaper, me and my wife continued to live with the same kind of routine that I might have today.
With hunting, the gathering of edible fruits in forests which did not exist before and which were able to develop thanks to the decline of humanity and the cultivation of vegetables and fruits.
Nothing new was expected except a feeling of loneliness which was becoming more and more felt but we fought valiantly against it.
As we moved forward despite our uncertainties about the future, without looking at the despair present before our eyes.
It must be said that the occasional visits to other villages and towns helped us to appreciate life in general much more, with the different friends we made, like Terry and Andrea.
It really helped our morale.
We continued our routine every day until my wife, already suffering from an illness, was becoming more and more exhausted.
Years after years, months after months, weeks after weeks, day after day before taking his last breath seven years after the Reaper.
In front of me, helpless and desperate to live in this destroyed world without the person I love the most.
It was after these events that, consumed by despair for several weeks, I decided to often walk around the village hoping to find something new, which does not exist, perhaps comfort, love, kindness, I couldn't tell you.
The memories I have of that time are quite vague, I only remember that everything happened in slow motion, as if time were freezing, until one day.
That's where I first came across a girl in the street, very thin and visibly thirsty, digging through long-empty trash cans in the hope of finding something to eat.
This girl is Rebecca as you guessed.
Victor:
Is that the secret, the fact that Rebecca is adopted and that she doesn't know it because of vague memories or her wandering life that she would have forgotten over time?
Ludo:
I'm coming.
Rebecca once had parents who also lived in this same village but who for some reasons died.
Leaving Rebecca orphaned and on the street without being able to find warmth in a house and without being able to feed herself properly or drink to her thirst on her own.
The reason why no one let her live in her parents' house and feed her is that the residents wanted to use the house for themselves.
Because they saw that she lived in a house that, compared to theirs, which had suffered the ravages of vegetation, was much more beautiful and warm than theirs.
It was a common agreement between the residents, these same residents who had taken over this house could take advantage of it to party there as they had been able to do before the Reaper.
You remember when I told you that the United States had sunk into mass pornography?
Victor:
Yes I remember that but what's the relationship bet..., wait, don't tell me that's what I think.
Ludo:
It is, I'll let you imagine what sordid things could have happened in this house where an innocent child like Rebecca once lived.
It disgusts me and there is not a day when I do not curse with my eyes all the inhabitants who accepted these things thanks to the agreement of this kind of demon that is the village chief.
Because of this, Rebecca may have had to live several years on the street as if she were considered a stray animal in the village, as if she did not exist.
The truth is that, I blame myself for not having been there when I had to be there.
All because of the fact that I lived my life in my area without speaking to the other residents for all these years and that I was not looking to live in the hostel with anyone other than my wife or my parents-in-law at that time.
It was only after I found her that I started trying to find out why no one was trying to help her when I wasn't there for her, leading me to these disgusting discoveries.
Of course Rebecca has no memory of the period when she lived outside, she just knows she had parents, that's all she knows for the moment.
I didn't plan on telling her all that, afraid that she will become the public enemy for the entire village.
If she knew all this, she would not seek to argue but to take revenge on all those residents who allowed this.
Sincerely, as her adoptive father, I cannot allow my daughter to walk such a dark path, I simply want her to be able to live happily without sinking into hatred and being mentally destroyed by this oh so cruel world.
The life she is going to lead, I know, will be extremely complicated and dangerous, but I do not want her to lose herself like I was lost in the past when I had no parents to count on and where I had to make bad choices that I bitterly regret.
I just want her to be happy and not despair at all the difficulties the world will throw at her.
This is why I never told her this secret and also the reason why I trained her and would continue to train her.
Victor:
I noticed, she seems to be someone who is sensitive to the cultivation of void power.
She has enough developed muscles that I can guess she's had some intense training for this purpose, from what I've seen.
Ludo:
It's that I helped her ah ah!
After my wife, herself a wielder of the power of the void, helped me to awaken him and understand him.
It's thanks to this that even if Rebecca finds herself in front of an infected person, she doesn't risk death, and that's all the better.
Victor:
Um sir, thank you for telling me all that and everything but don't you think we should cook now?
Ludo:
Thanks to who seriously, rahh!
I'll tell you that then I'll cook, if I'm no longer alive protect my daughter from dangers okay.
Victor:
But how could I do that, I'm not strong
enough.
Ludo:
You will only have to treat her if she is too close to danger, in any case make sure to protect her whatever the cost, promise?
Victor:
I promise sir, you can count on me.
Ludo:
Well, me cook, you wait.
Cappiche?
Victor:
"Victor smiles embarrassed."
Yes sir.
"Victor victor turns around to leaves for the sofa on the ground floor, when on the way he remembers."
"When he remember a thing, he can't stop clenches his fists for a unknown reason, revealing a face full of despair."