His life
01
I was an orphan.
Ever since I could remember, I had lived in an orphanage.
But the elderly director told me that I had only been brought there at three. The grandmother with whom I had depended on for survival had died, and the authorities had found me wandering around, too young to understand.
Apparently, even the city lord had broken out in a cold sweat that day.
Under imperial law, he bore considerable responsibility for the oversight.
The city I lived in was not very large, and naturally, its finances were not particularly abundant.
But that did not matter. The orphanage was not funded locally; it operated through a dedicated fund.
When I was five, a group of neatly dressed people arrived at the orphanage in cars bearing a phoenix emblem.
They met every child. My turn came somewhere in the middle.
I remembered that when I walked in, there were three people inside: two men and a woman. I could no longer remember their faces clearly.
The gentle woman soothed me, then asked me many questions.
For example, whether I had ever been beaten, whether anyone often yelled at me, and whether any adults had done strange things to me.
Finally, the woman left the room. I took off all my clothes, and they wrote some things in a notebook.
Only later did I learn that they were recording whether I had scars, needle marks, or other signs of abuse.
In my memory, these people came once every year.
They had actually visited before I turned five, too. I simply did not remember.
The director of my orphanage was a very good person, and I lived happily there.
Those memories came to an abrupt end when I was seven, because I was adopted.
I remembered