All of the characters belong to Hidekaz Himaruya and the theory was written by deviantart's SailerInfoerno12908, so credit for this sad, but wonderful, theory must be given to them.

The Hetalia Theory speculates that all of the countries once lived as humans, under their human names, and died at their age of something. Based on each nation's characteristics and personality, the cause of death and life differs for each.

Now, we hear the story of Wang Yao, a child laborer in a restaurant in Shanghai who died in a structural fire, which explains his uncannily delicious cooking (okay… I love Chinese food, if you hadn't figured that out already).

When Yao was seven years old, his father hit him for the first time. It wasn't as though he was surprised, his parents fought constantly and he knew that their violence would eventually turn on him, but it didn't stop tears from welling up in his eyes. He remembered clutching his cheek, where small pinpoint blossoms of blood began to erupt under his skin. At first, he thought he saw a passing look of guilt over his father's face, but then the alcohol took over again.

His mother had simply sat and stared.

When Yao was seven years old, he left his house one day and began the grueling thirteen-hour days at a small restaurant near the center of Shanghai. It was his choice; anything to get him out of the house. His parents did not care what happened to him, only that he gave them every Renminbi he earned for booze and who knows what else. But he was all right with that. He always managed to sneak away a couple of Renminbi anyway. He hid them under the shelf in his closet in a little box from when times were happy.

October tenth had been a normal day for Yao. He left at the crack of dawn, before his parents' shouting matches started, and began to make his way though the heavy city air to the restaurant. The place was relatively simple on the outside. It glowed with a warm yellow light, with peeling paint and slightly rotting wooden trim on the outside. The scent of fish, not terribly clean burners and cooking oil made its way into the street this early in the morning. As the day progressed, the smell got better as the actual food started cooking.

When Yao walked in, he was met with a familiar sight. The owner of the restaurant, a short and rather rotund man named Cheung, was having a quiet argument on the phone, probably with his wife, who had never been happy in their marriage. This world was filled with unhappy people.

Cheung's name was entirely ironic. The man was perhaps the unluckiest alive. When he was a child, he was nearly run over by a car three times, he almost died from some rare illness that has yet to have a name, his brothers all became successful bankers and he… well, he owned a low quality restaurant in the red light district. His wife was barren, he lost checks like the normal people lost pens and buttons always mysteriously popped off of his shirts. What sort of bad luck would it be today? Yesterday, it was the fact that their supplier had lost every single chicken foot that they had ordered for the week.

About ten feet from him sat Cheung's neighbor, an elderly women by the name of Wang Xiu Ying. She jokingly claimed that she was only forty, but she was most likely a ways into her seventies. She filled her name well, for she was one of the most brave and elegant people Yao had ever had the pleasure of meeting. The woman was a walking history book. She lived through World War II and had managed to get past the tragic loss of her son in his teens. Why she hung around here of all places, Yao had no idea.

"You there, brat, get to work!" Cheung snapped at him as he walked past.

"Yes." He responded, dipping his head in submission.

Yao made his way back to the kitchens. When he had first come here, desperate for any sort of employment, Cheung was kind enough to let him wash dishes all day for five Renminbi. It wasn't a great wage, but he didn't mind. As long as he was away from home. And the people were nice enough. The cook was a quiet, but considerate older man from a remote village deep in the southern countryside. The other hands were mostly from other poor families in the inner city, like Yao. However, no other children worked there.

His day started out as it typically did; he polished the platters and silverware that would be set out on tables when the customers came in, he made sure that all of the dishes that he had washed yesterday were free of particles of food and then he cleaned the glasses again. He went on with all of this for about two hours until there wasn't a speck of anything on any tableware. Although he may have been a child, Yao was quite good at what he did.

Lunch wasn't for another two hours, so that left Yao a very exciting option. When he finished early, the cook sometimes let him make spring rolls. It turns out that Yao was quite good at that, so his superior sometimes let him cook.

"Deshi?" Yao climbed on top of a stool that was typically reserved for his short stature. "Can I help you cook today? I finished early."

The older man laughed, a small smile etching the wrinkles in his face. "Of course, Yao." He pushed a basket of cabbage, carrots and bok choy toward him. "Chop this up for me."

"Thank you." Yao dipped his head and began to get to work.

He chopped the vegetables into fine slivers and segments in about twenty minutes. He presented his full cutting board to Deshi, who told him to go get the pastry out of the storeroom in response.

Yao traveled back to the large back room where all of their ingredients were kept. When he opened the heavy metal door, his eyes widened. It was an absolute mess. Crates of vegetables and coolers with fish and meat piles high were spontaneously placed throughout the room, instead of on shelves. It looked as though someone had attempted to organize the typically messy room and hadn't completed the job, leaving boxes everywhere.

Yao sighed and went to the place the spring roll wrappers typically were, hoping that they were still there. Unfortunately, they were not, so Yao began to search. He examined what seemed to him like mountains of bags of rice, rows of jars of seasoning, heaps of vegetables and piles of cuts of meat.

To no avail, he could not find them. The thought of that they might be on a top shelf occurred to him, and he decided to go get one of the cooks, who were far taller than he was. That was when, still inside the storeroom, he noticed an unusual amount of noise. It was foreign. It was a sound that had what sounded like cracking and shattering and almost a roaring life to it. Yao opened the door, only to be confronted with something shocking.

The entire kitchen was bathed in warm light, but not from the lamps. No, it was from fire. Walls or hot orange ate way at walls and wooden supports. Yao's eyes widened, hands dropping to his sides.

Suddenly, he heard his name being called. "Yao! Yao!" It was distant, but he could hear it clearly nonetheless. It sounded like Deshi. "Where are you? Yao!"

Yao could suddenly see his face faintly behind the tongues of fire. He looked frantic almost, which was a rare look on the typically calm man. "Come on!" He extended a hand, which was bitten by tendrils of fire.

Yao tried to get to him, he did, but the air was too heavy with smoke and the fire was too thick to go on. He collapsed in coughing fits, doubling over. His eyes stung, tears desperately trying to wash out the irritant.

Deshi's face could no longer be seen, and he was glad for that. He didn't want a man who had a family and love in his life to die for the sake of a lonely, abused child. Now that he sat on the floor, flames quickly moving toward him with no escape route, he saw that fire had a life of its own. It twisted and turned, lapping at the air with fervor. Starving for fuel, it devoured pieces of wood and cloth, but its hunger was still not satiated.

Yao watched. He sat and stared, nothing else left to do. Although the air was so unbearably hot, and his eyes stung, and his lungs burned, it was still beautiful. He supposed it was still a somewhat nice way to go, despite the fact that he knew it would be painful.

He wondered if his parents would even notice if he was gone. They would probably only notice the thirty-five Renminbi that were missing each week, not the one who was earning it. If he did have a funeral, he supposed that the cooks would come, if they all made it out okay, that is. But he was fine with that.

A tongue of flame licked at his foot. But he didn't flinch. He didn't move. He didn't shy away. At least his life was ending in the one place he actually felt happy.

China had been born with a gift. Cooking had been a trait genetically woven into the fabric of his hands from the heel to the tips of his fingernails. When Japan was younger, he used to break his demure mold and devour his cooking, always demanding seconds. Yet, the boy remained thin. He honestly had no idea where that food went.

Although nowadays, the food modeled after his cooking that was served outside of his own house was far from what is was supposed to be. And what America had done to his recipes… he didn't want to think about it.

China's restaurants were far superior. However, because there tended to be so many in tight quarters, structural fires so often burned down the good ones. They raged through, fueled by cooking grease, and turned anyplace to ashes within minutes. It was a shame, really, but because of the sheer mass and populous of his cities, it could not be avoided. He wondered how many good cooks he lost every day to those flames…

That's it for this chapter. Oh god, Russia is next... His will be certainly interesting to write...

Also, I'm almost at 2,000 views! Thank you so much everyone!

One last note: I'll be updating this on Sundays (I'm actually going to stick to a schedule this time around).

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