In a damp, dark alley, a child in tattered clothes walked slowly. His unfocused eyes rested on a dumpster twice his height as his frail legs carried him forward.

The pungent, foul odor of garbage did not bother him; his nose had long grown numb to it.

Climbing atop a heap of refuse, he searched the dumpster for food. What greeted him was a chaotic mess of decayed scraps, none of it edible.

If the child's vocabulary had been rich, he might have described the sight as something worse than vomit.

His dim eyes grew duller as his stomach grumbled, yet he found nothing. Still, he did not give up; the will to eat burned strong within him.

He climbed down from the garbage heap and shuffled further along the alley, eventually spotting a spilled plastic container in a corner. Rice, mixed with bits of meatballs, had spilled halfway onto the grimy ground.

Unbothered, the child grabbed a slightly dirty meatball and began gnawing on it. The taste of week-old refrigerated meat filled his mouth, but he didn't flinch.

Any sane person would have thrown such a thing away, but to the child, it was the best thing that had happened to him in the past five days.

He didn't know how or when it had happened, but five days ago, he found himself alone in an alley. Scared and crying, he called out for his mumma and papa again and again, but no one answered.

The lost child, who had yet to develop a true sense of self, wandered aimlessly, driven by instinct. Over time, harsh reality forced him to mature—no one was coming to help him.

No adults stopped to aid him. To them, he looked like a beggar, reeking of the dumpsters he scavenged. They averted their eyes, leaving him to fend for himself.

Days passed slowly.

The child never stayed in one place, roaming the city in search of food and water. He slept on cold, hard cement and covered himself with rags salvaged from dumpsters.

On the tenth day, his suffering eased—he was found by the police and taken to an orphanage.

In the orphanage, the child received three warm meals a day, clean clothes, and a proper bed to sleep in. He no longer had to fear rats nibbling at his toes while he slept. For the first time in what felt like forever, he slept soundly.

A month later, the child began to feel at home. He had companions—brothers and sisters in the orphanage—and a kind caretaker. Slowly, the horrors of those ten days started to fade. He even began attending elementary classes.

But this fragile peace was short-lived.

A fire broke out in the orphanage one night, caused by a gas leak. The firefighters arrived late due to traffic, and the flames consumed much of the building. Many children lost their lives, their cries and screams echoing in the chaos.

Somehow, the child survived. Horrified by the nightmarish scene, he fled into the darkness, once again condemned to a life in the dumps.

This time, the trauma was worse than the ten days of wandering. The memory of burning screams left him shaken to his core. For two days, he couldn't eat a single bite.

But as time passed, he adapted once more. He learned that different parts of the city had different kinds of waste. Near restaurant dumpsters, he could find discarded vegetables, meat, and occasionally, food that was still edible.

He also learnt that if he stood in front of a food place late at night, someone was bound to give him something. 

The child adapted himself once again and learnt about the various types of garbage disposal. At a very young age, he learnt about making money when he saw a person selling scraps and imitated him. 

Gradually, the trauma of the orphanage was being forgotten as he had other things to worry about. 

A year passed. While roaming around, the child was outside a fertility clinic where a couple who couldn't conceive found him. He seemed pitiful to them and in need of a child, they adopted him. 

His new parents were lovely and took good care of him. The aloof child learnt to speak properly and with manners. He learnt to write as well and now knew how his name spelled.

Five years went by. The orphanage's trauma seemed like a distant past. The boy's life was turning for the better, but like before, this happy time came to an end as well when his parents died in an accident. 

They were coming home from a trip when a truck that broke the signal rammed them from the side. 

The boy was not as injured by some stroke of luck and taken to the hospital. He was given insurance money and inherited his dead parents' property.

He lived alone in a major city and went to school with what little amount of money he had. The money was sufficient and the boy knew how to use it well. Living in the dumps had taught him things that no one ever could. 

The boy soon turned eighteen. He was an aloof child who did not talk to anyone. He was afraid of hurting the people he talked to, and for some reason, developed an idea that wherever he went, bad luck followed and destroyed the lives of the ones he cared for.

Being alone taught the boy many life skills, but the loneliness was slowly catching up and deteriorating his mental health. 

One fine day, while alone in his room, the young boy discovered porn after going through a series of sexual content. 

The gratification he found from it was nothing he had ever felt before. And thus… from this fateful day onwards… he became an addict. 

The boy had university entrance exams which he could've aced, but did not do so due to his porn addiction.

He joined a third-tier college and just passed his days until his funds were exhausted.

Due to being broke, the boy took a part-time job. He had his adoptive parents' house as his, and being smart when it came to money, he put it up for rent and had roommates. 

This turned out to be a horrible decision as his roommates bullied him and used his house as if it was theirs. They did not pay rent either and eventually threw him out. 

The boy got his house back after a series of lawsuits and police complaints, but the condition of it was so bad that to accumulate money to renovate would cost him an arm and a leg.

The boy's mental health worsened completely and he lived in this dumpster of a house while working a part time job.

His university finished a year later, but he was so dead from the inside that he did not have the motivation to do anything. 

In a weeks' time, the boy's house was in worse condition than a dumpster in an alley. He did not seem to mind it as he watched porn, ate junk, and slept. 

He stopped going to the part time job as well once he felt he had enough money to survive for a few months before needing to work again. This… was another huge mistake…

This time, it cost him his life.

The boy's physical health deteriorated along with his mental health, and in only a fortnight, he died due to severe dehydration and cardiac arrest. 

The suffering had finally come to an end. 

Or so the boy thought…