The lonely lepin

A long time ago I had just moved into my new home with my family.
It was pretty cheap. My parents only had to give away two of my sibs to get it.
I was glad I wasn't the one used as payment, so I was able to enjoy my time there with my remaining siblings and my parents.

Life was great here. Time flew by.
Once in a while, new siblings would be born, while others would be used to pay for something.
So new siblings came and went, but I just continued to live with my family.

Whenever my new siblings were born, I tried to see them as reincarnations of my old siblings.
Sometimes they even looked pretty similar, and even acted in a similar way.
They had the same parents after all.
Sadly they never kept their memories of course. But after a while, they usually still were very similar again.

After some years life started to feel strange. Why was I the only one allowed to stay with my parents?
My parents said they loved me so much that they didn't want me to die.

But besides my family I had a lot of friends.
I played with them quite often.
It was pretty safe in this area, so I could visit them on my own.
We usually played simple games like tag.
Sometimes we also fought, and once we fought so hard that one of my friends ate two of my fingers.
But only a few months later they had grown back.

Just like my siblings, most of my friends were dead after a few years and had been replaced by new ones.
If they got hurt seriously, even if they just lost a finger, they usually got eaten only a few days later. Nobody wanted to wait for such a long time just for these wounds to heal.

After a few decades, my parents grew old.
Some of my friends had become adults themselves.
But my parents didn't want me to become an adult.
They wanted me to live forever.

I didn't understand the implications back then.
But since that's what my parents wanted from me, I would just stay a child.
I didn't know how to become an adult.
And I didn't even try to find out.

Soon, on a normal morning, my dad died.
I didn't know adults could just die. But then I knew.
I found out that adults will die when they reach a certain age.

Then I realized the significance of that.
I'd also loose my mom soon.
I didn't want to lose her, too. I had known her for my whole life, just like dad.
But I was much more attached to her.

So the next years I wanted to spend more time with my mom.
And I didn't care about my siblings.
Most of them would be used as payment anyway.

But that's not how it went.
Since dad was no more, mom couldn't give birth to new children.
So she wasn't able to use them as payment anymore.
Because of that, I still got a little more attached to my siblings than before.

Mom also wanted me to develop a friendship to them.
When she would die, I wouldn't have anybody else, who was close to me.
But I should live forever. And so would my new siblings. So when I had a good relationship to them, I would never be alone anymore.
At least that's what she was hoping.

One day when I woke up, mom was dead.
It was just what I expected.
Since I didn't know what to do with her, I just cooked her and ate her together with my siblings.

I had already helped mom with cooking before, so I thought it would work out.
When I finally got to eat her, she didn't taste like meat usually tastes. But at least she was edible.

Having to live on my own without support of my mom was pretty difficult.
In all these years I had learned enough about my culture.
This helped me understand why life was so difficult.
But it didn't really help me.
Since I still was a child, a stupid lepin, nobody would take me seriously.

Lepin like me are used as payment, just like my siblings were before.
But since I'm a lepin myself, there's no way for me to earn new lepin.
Using my siblings to buy something was possible, though.

So soon I used lepin to buy a bunch of food.
It's hard to believe how many fruits you get for just a single lepin. Eating a lepin wasn't enough for more than a few days for all of us.
But the fruits lasted around five times as long.

If I was an adult, a real lupin, I would probably have gotten even more fruits, but as a lepin I'm in a difficult position for trades.

So whenever we got hungry, I used one of my siblings as payment.
They never complained. I was the oldest one, so they trusted me a lot.
But sometimes we didn't find anybody who was willing to trade with us, so instead we had to cook one of us ourselves.

Having to take care of myself and my siblings was very difficult.
But this wasn't a long term issue.
After some years all of my siblings were dead or at least sold.

When our numbers went down, everybody knew we wouldn't have a long time anymore.
I thought it would get easier to get some food without sacrificing us, when the group was smaller. And it definitely took much longer until we had to sacrifice one of us, also because the food we got didn't need to be split among so many of us anymore.
And so there was more time to find food elsewhere. And we didn't need too much of it.

But still, once in a while a sacrifice was neccessary.
I never forced anybody, but they still wanted to sacrifice themselves for everybody.
I wouldn't have done this for any of them.
But even if we were only three, one of them sacrificed itself for the remaining two.
And my last remaining sibling also wanted to sacrifice itself when times were getting harder.

Since then I have to stay alive on my own.
It would be easier if I finally became a lupin, but I still don't know, how this works.
Besides I wouldn't do it anyway. My parents wanted me to live forever, and that's what I'm trying to do.

In the coming years I realized some things about society which made me question a lot.
I'm still not sure if it's really fair that lepin aren't seen as proper members of society.

Of course some lupin are nice, but as lepin we have to rely on their mercy.
Some will just eat us if we get too close to them.
Especially somebody like me who isn't owned by another lupin.

I had a long and happy life in this unfair system. I abused the system myself. So who am I to criticize this?
But most lepin don't get such a happy life like me.
All my siblings have been used as payment, so they're probably dead.

Am I the only lepin in the whole world who realized this?
The only lepin, who has an issue with this?

It can't be.
There must be more like me, right?

But we are too weak. A single lupin is much stronger than a lepin. Maybe even stronger than three. Maybe five?

But there are still way more lepin than lupin.
How many?
I don't know.
So for the next couple of years, I try to gather information while living mostly in the shadows.

After a while I find out some useful information.
Each family has about five to ten children at a time.
Some Lepin are also kept as slaves. Or as a reserve for hard times. Not everybody has them, but most have at least one or two, and some rich people have a few hundred.
And I didn't even count the factory workers.
That should be an average of about twenty lepin per family.
So ten lepin per lupin.

Ten lepin against one lupin. Could we win this fight?
I think such a fight could be won without much strategy.
Maybe one or two of us would still get killed, but that's an acceptable sacrifice.

Oh, and then there are also these stupid food lepin. They probably are even weaker than other lepin, but there are a lot of them.
Probably most of the lepin which exist are bred as food. So there are also at least ten food lepin per lupin, probably much more.
They might not be too useful, but if they are easy to get, freeing them will still be worth it.

If we organize well, I probably only need a small amount of the lepin.
I probably won't be able to gather ten lepin per lupin on my side anyway.
As soon as I get a few dozen, I should be able to let them attack a normal Lupin couple without too many sacrifices. And with a little strategy the number of sacrifices might even be reduced.

So as long as we can get our losses back and the lupin don't find out about us, a group of a few dozen lepin should be enough to conquer the world.

Is this what my parents wanted? A world without lupin?
I kind of doubt it. But in the end it's the best way to stay alive. Else I will spend the rest of my life in danger.
And one day some lupin will just me.
Or even worse, I'll get turned into a lupin myself.

I don't mind what my parents wanted.
I want to stay alive myself. I want to have a great life and I want to end this unjust system.

Lepin should rule the world and all lupin have to die!
At best lupin are allowed to serve us.
It will take a while, but as a lepin I have all the time I need.