[ Yuri couldn't gauge who had it harder or worse, but he counts himself blessed he had his mother. He was born dirt poor in a village so small it didn't warrant mention on maps, so what he had in the world was her, and that was enough for him. It wasn't enough to put food in their bellies though — not with her persistently frail health.

Yuri spoke of child assassins because that is what he became in order to support his mother after, by extreme good fortune, he was saved from dying of disease. Poverty is a scourge he knows all too intimately and it's the very thing he hopes to eliminate after this war and the one he was in the middle of back home.

But as the impression goes without words, Yuri's past remains with him. ]

I said nothing about choosing for them. Enabling's its own animal. Not everyone led the harsh lives we did, so they don't have the same tools needed to survive.

[ "We", because he knows the harshness of his own life, and it's clear that her own was in ways he does not know. May never know, depending on whether she ever feels talkative in that arena. Where she had to throw parts of herself away, Yuri traded his. Such is the cost of survival. ]

Kid I spoke with a while back didn't know that, for instance, throwing sand in an enemy's face is a viable tactic when you stand no chance in a square fight.

[ And if the enemy cares nothing for an honorable, fair fight, why should someone just trying to live? There's no reason to get crushed pointlessly by the powerful. ]