Interesting. There's a two take from me:
The boy actually is alive, and the reason he think himself already dead is because everyone keep telling him that he is worthless and just die, human mind is powerful thing so when everyone keep telling him to die to then his mind itself ended up convinced that he already dead. Its the power of self-hypnosis.
Or
The boy is dead, and our Wonder Boy feels disgusted with this scenario and he reversed the fate between the townsfolk and the boy, and he basically just tell soft lie at the end to not make the boy feels guilty.
Regardless its an interesting chapter and feels a bit different than the usual format of having emotional punchline at the end, but its nice to have different chapter to keep things fresh.