A boy sat alone at a bus stop. He wanted to sleep, but for whatever reason, he couldn't.
The boy was young, not a child, but no older than a teenager either. If one were to ask him his age he would be unable to answer.
The boy had never had a home, and the only memory of a family he had was at the orphanage. He had run away from the orphanage many years prior, and had been living on the streets, struggling to survive.
If you were to look at him from across the street, you wouldn't notice anything particularly remarkable. He was skinny to the point that he looked malnourished, and had ratty blond hair. His skin was covered in a thin film of dirt, the result of not having washed himself in a few weeks.
But if you looked closer, into his eyes, you could see a numbness that could normally only be seen in the older generation. The people who had squandered their lives and had now realized that they had no future. That was the look in his eyes. A look of hopelessness.
The boy's name was Cain, at least he thought it was. He had no way to be certain but that's what he remembered being called at the orphanage, although it was quite a long time ago.
He didn't remember having any last name to speak of, although he assumed he must've had one a some point.
He lived in a major city of the Holy Golden Empire, the Citadel. It was the Capitol of the Holy Empire, and therefore relatively safe compared to some cities on the outer rim of Empire territory.
Cain was not tired at all. He knew he needed to sleep, but for some reason, no matter how much he closed his eyes and tried not to think about anything, sleep continued to elude him.
Normally, if he couldn't sleep, he just got up and wandered off to try and find some food, but today was different, today he needed to sleep, because tomorrow, he would enlist in the military.
He had been thinking about it since he left the orphanage, but since you had to be 15 in order to enlist, his plans had been foiled for a few years. Although he didn't know his age, he knew that he could pass for 15. He was tall, almost six foot, which was probably the most noticeable deciding factor in telling someone's age when they are on the younger side.
He was a very logical kid. Too logical, to the point where he could be considered selfish, but it wasn't very surprising, considering the environment he had grown up in.
As Cain lay on the bench, he thought about his plans once he joined the military. He would need to prove himself and find a way to be promoted, because although he didn't really know how the army worked, he knew that if you do well enough you get better benefits.
Of course regardless of how logical and smart he was, he was still just a kid, and thus still extremely naive, although to a much lesser extent than average.
As he finally drifted off to sleep, he thought about how awesome it would be to finally have some power, and once he fell asleep, he dreamed of living in a massive house, decorated with his medals of honor and valor, filled to the brim with plenty of food and drink.
It was naive dream. The kind of dream little kids have and don't realize how foolish it is until they grow up and realize they will never amount to anything, but he had no one to tell him that, and so he kept on dreaming, like a fool.