He opened his eyes, shivering against the frozen wall of a building. Winter gnawed at his bones.
He had no Blessing. No purpose. No worth.
People called him a burden, ungraceful, useless to society.
And this loser's name was Alrios.
The cold crept into every inch of him, numbing skin, mind, and will. With each passing second, his vision blurred, soft and distant, like drifting into a peaceful sleep. Maybe this was how it ended. Maybe this was mercy.
He let his eyes close and waited for the eternal slumber to take him.
Then, through the haze, a voice broke the silence.
"HEY, STAY WITH ME!"
He felt the warmth of a bed. Soft. Unfamiliar.
Is this heaven? he wondered.
A moment later, a calm voice answered his half-formed thought.
"Looks like someone's awake."
The man was in his mid-forties, as far as Alrios could tell. They had never met, yet this stranger had saved him.
Alrios's voice came out rough and unsure. "Who are you?"
The man smiled faintly. "Name's Flores. I own this shop. Saw you half-dead across the street and couldn't just walk past you."
Alrios stared at him, unsure how to respond. No one had ever done something like that for him before.
"T-thank you, sir," he muttered.
Their eyes met. Flores's eyes were a deep, faded blue, tired like an ocean that had seen too many storms.
Alrios had learned to read people through their eyes; the streets had taught him that. He had seen greed, cruelty, and hate reflected in the gazes of others. But not in this man.
For once, he didn't see malice. That was enough to make him trust Mr. Flores, at least for now.
Flores pulled up a chair beside the bed. "You've got a strong will to survive, kid. Most would've frozen out there."
Alrios looked away. "Didn't have much of a choice."
"Choice or not," Flores said softly, "you're alive. That's what matters."
A quiet understanding formed between them. The silence in the room felt less like distance and more like rest.
In the following days, Alrios offered to work in the shop to repay him, to show gratitude in the only way he knew how. The place smelled of leather and polish. It was a shoe shop, he found out. Over time, he learned how to clean, shine, and stitch shoes, doing anything necessary to keep the place running.
Sometimes, gangsters would show up demanding protection payments, the kind Mr. Flores could barely manage to make. They weren't much of a bother to Alrios, though. He had seen worse.
Until about a year later, when everything he had built his fragile peace upon began to crumble.
And the cold, the one he thought he had left behind, would come back for him.