The first thing I felt was cold. Not an ordinary cold
. something that seeps into the bones without mercy.
I opened my eyes. The air was dry, like a slap across my face.
"Where… am I?"
My voice broke; my throat rasped.
I looked around. The ground was stone
rough and hard. No blanket, no pillow, nothing. My back was stiff from the cold.
I lifted my hand with effort. It did not move at once. As if I were learning how to use my body again.
"Was I… dreaming?"
A question into the void. No answer.
My head felt heavy. Not from a blow, but from a silence accumulated inside. A faint inner voice toyed with my breathing, my heart, my memory. An old ache I can't name I don't know when it began, only that it won't leave.
I tried to sit up. Everything hurt: my back, my ribs; even breathing was laborious. As if my body had lain there for an age.
I sat. The air around me didn't nourish; it settled on my chest like a strange weight.
I scanned the room. The walls were faded and damp, beginning-less, ending-less. I whispered:
"Where did the cat go?"
A meaningless question for this place. Yet I had heard it last night its voice, its presence or had I imagined it?
Was it real? Had it vanished? Or had I lost the ability to tell dream from waking?
I looked at my palm. A small scar. I don't remember when it arrived, but I am certain it did not come from a dream.
Dreams leave no marks.
I stood. The motion was hard; my feet did not trust me. But I rose not because I could, but because I had fallen enough times that standing had become habit.
One step, then another… Then a sound from within, not from the mouth but from the hollow of me.
A gurgle.
I pressed my hand to my stomach. It was not simply hunger it was an inner scandal, as if something was about to burst.
I whispered:
"Wait… not now."
But hunger understands no pleadings.
It was more like an uprising inside me. A demand to reclaim something basic: food. Life.
I laughed a bent, broken sound:
"Even the trash is gone."
I walked. The gurgle repeated. All of it was a summons not just for food, but for dignity.
My hand slipped into my pocket, not to find anything to confirm that there was nothing.
But I found something small.
Cold copper coins. Three of them. Three small proofs that I still exist… and still lack.
I stared at them awhile. Then at the horizon, as if it asked my name, my past, my future.
I closed my fist around the coins.
Tightly.
Not because they were precious, but because they were all I had.
I muttered:
"Is this… all that's left of me?"
The answer was clear.
Yes.
I walked. The city neither welcomed nor rejected me; it only watched in silence.
Another gurgle. A sound that could not be ignored.
I rested my hand on a wall. And I spoke.
"My mother used to call me Yamibõ."
I said the name slowly, summoning the remnant of a voice, the remnant of an embrace, the remnant of a home.
I looked ahead.
"Today? The name is my nickname among the homeless."
I opened my hand and turned the coin. I whispered:
"Age? Seventeen." Not with pride, but with astonishment. Seventeen… and as if I had lived a hundred years.
I went on: "No one knows… no one cares."
Then, in a low voice: "Yamibõ… son of the Lower City."
My fingers rested on my chest. I moved toward the bakery. The smell was not appetizing; it was painful. It did not awaken hunger so much as memory.
A crowd gathered at the corner.
I approached. Not because I wanted to, but because something inside me moved.
I heard someone say:
"Did you hear what happened to Rai?"
Rai…
The man who used to slip me a piece of bread without asking. The man who did not laugh much, but always noticed me.
I whispered to myself:
"Rai?"
A reply came:
"The guards took him today… to be executed."
Everything stopped.
Then another voice said: "He didn't pay the tax."
Silence smothered everything.
Then a third voice, only sorrowful, said: "He'll be hanged today… in the center of town."
I collapsed. I don't know when or how; I simply found myself on the ground. My palms hit the stone, my head fell forward, my body ceased to obey.
I pressed my hand to my head… trying to stop something inside me from exploding, but the echo was stronger than any silence.
"No… no… no… no… no…"
I wasn't speaking to anyone, nor expecting an answer. I was only trying to convince myself that what I'd heard wasn't true. That Rai, the one who never scorned me, was still alive.
I did not convince anyone. Not even myself.
"When?" someone asked.
Another answered, low but sharp as a blade: "Today. At the big square. I heard they've begun setting up the scaffold."
My blood froze.
I rose. I don't know how, I don't know why, but my legs moved of their own accord. Hunger still gnawed, but something stronger than hunger now propelled me.
I started to run. The streets blurred; my face was pale; the air slapped me from every side. But I did not stop.
My legs trembled; my belly complained in silent pain, but I ran faster than I ever had.
Every stone I trod threatened to topple me. Every breath hurt. All I heard was an inner echo screaming:
"I won't let him die alone."
I passed walls, passersby, children playing in the dust, yet everything was fog everything but my purpose.
The square.
The great square… where executions take place.
It had once been used for bread-and-water celebrations, but since the city changed, everything changed.
Every corner now shone with fear. Every stone kept the names of those who went up and never came down.
With each step, a small voice whispered: "You're late, you're late, you're late…"
But I would not let it win.
I pressed on, though my lungs felt cut off as if the air could not reach me. My steps staggered. My feet could barely carry me.
Suddenly… I tripped. My body fell, struck the shoulder of a passerby, and I landed on the stone beside him.
A faint cry escaped me from the pain.
The man who'd been hit turned to me slowly, his eyes looking down at me as if I were filth clinging to his shoe.
With a voice thick with contempt he said: "Move aside, you filthy dog… rot."
He did not shout. He did not strike. He spat those words without opening his mouth.
They landed heavier on me than hunger ever did. The wound was not the body's, but the soul's.
I lifted my head slowly. I saw his face soft features, clean clothes, a rich cologne. He walked away without glancing back. As if he had encountered an insect unworthy even of being crushed.
I remained on the stone a moment. My hands shook; my chest heaved. I could not tell whether I was crying, or shivering, or merely trying not to break in front of all those eyes passing by without seeing me.
But there was no time to linger.
I forced myself up, though everything in me was unraveling.
"Rai is still there… he must not die."