The first thing Leonhart learned about the world was that it never looked at you in the eyes when it used you.
It looked past you, over your shoulder, through you, at the skyline that you help raised with your hand and it called that "progress."
He woke up before dawn,not because he was disciplined but because his body had been trained by years of alarms that felt like threats. The room was small, air stale, the ceiling closed enough that he could almost imagine the building itself pressing down on him, reminding him that space was expensive and comfort a luxury sold in brochures and never delivered to people like him.
A thin mattress, a single chair with a cracked leg, a kettle that had been boiled so many times that it had turned the metal dull and tired, everything in his life looked like it has been used by someone else first.
He lay there for a moment, staring at the darkness, listening to his own breathing. Somewhere outside an engine coughed awake, somewhere else, a pipe creaked. The city was always waking. It always woke up hungry.
Leonhart sat up slowly, feeling the familiar ache in his lower back, like a hand had been gripping his spine all night and had only just let go. He rubbed his face with both palms,dragging sleep off his skin, and the stubble scratched his hands. He hadn't shaved in days. It wasn't a rebellion. It was simply that some habits belonged to people who had time.
He got up, splashed water on his face and stared at himself in the mirror above the sink. The glass was slightly warped,making his features look subtly wrong, as if even his reflection couldn't fully commit to him.
He had a narrow jaw, tired eyes, hair that refused to stay neat no matter how often he tried. He looked younger than he felt and older than he was. That was the curse of labor — you aged in places no one praised.
He poured instant coffee into a chipped cup and watched the powder dissolve, watch the blackness bloomed like ink. He drank it too hot, because it had to work fast, and he ate two pieces of bread because he couldn't afford to pretend he didn't need fuel. Every swallow was a calculation, enough to last, not enough to waste.
On the table near the kettle sat a folded paper with a sketch he'd done the night before. It was nothing special, nothing that would impress architects or win awards. A simple layout. A building corner corrected. A drainage angle adjusted. The kind of thing that made the difference "it looks good" and "it lasts."
He'd stopped dreaming of being a real engineer years ago, stopped believing in the ladder that promised to lift people with talent but was secretly built to keep them climbing forever. Yet his hands still drew lines in the dark when his mind couldn't sleep.
He folded the paper and tucked it into his pocket as if it mattered. Not because anyone would ask to see it. Not because his supervisor would care. He kept it the way people kept photos of loved ones they rarely saw, proof that something inside him still wanted to build for reasons other than survival.
Outside, the morning air was cold enough to bite. The city wore its early hours like a mask, pretending to be clean and quiet before the noise and dust arrived. Leonhart walked to the bus stop with his hood up and his hands in his pockets, shoulders slightly hunched, moving with the steady pace of someone who had learned not to waste energy on anything that didn't pay him back.
The streetlights were still on. The sky was bruised purple and gray.
A few other workers stood at the stop. They didn't talk much. Men and women in cheap jackets, boots worn at the soles, faces that looked like they'd been carved by fatigue.
Everyone knew everyone in the way people knew strangers who suffered the same routine. There was a silent brotherhood in exhaustion but it rarely turned into friendship. Friendship requires time and softness. They didn't have that either.
When the bus arrived, it wheeled like an old animal. The doors opened with a hiss. Leonhart climbed in, paid and found a place to sit. The bus rocked forward, carrying them toward the part of the city that wasn't awake yet but was already profitable.
The construction site appeared like a skeleton against the morning sky, cranes standing tall like long necked creatures. Half-finished floors, exposed beams, concrete columns that reached upward as if trying to grasp the clouds.
It was meant to become something beautiful, a modern tower with glass walls that reflected the sun, a place where important would live and work, a place with clean walls and private security and quiet elevators that smelled like sweats.
To Leonhart, it was already what it would always be: a beast that ate bodies and spat out buildings.
He passed through the gate, scanned in, put on his helmet and joined the flow of workers moving between sack of materials. The ground was uneven, littered with debris. Dust already coated the air, catching sunlight and turning it into jutting glow. The noise began early, metal clanging, forklifts reversing with beeping warnings, the distant grind of saws cutting through wood and steel.
His supervisor, tall and loud, always carrying a clipboard like it was a weapon, walked past without greeting. Leonhart didn't expect one either. He'd been here long enough to understand his position in the hierarchy. Not invisible, exactly. More like....replaceable.
"Move those blocks to the east side," the supervisor shouted, pointing with his pen. "And don't stack them too high. We're short on space."
Leonhart nodded once and was already moving. He'd learned to speak with his hands, with efficiency. Words on site were wasted breath. Breath was stamina. Stamina was money. Money was survival.