The city of Solvan smelled of iron and rain that night — a perfume only the poor knew.
Leon Hark, fifteen, walked its wet alleys with shoes stolen from a dead man and a stomach that hadn't known mercy in days.
His home was a single room in the Ashlane Projects: a concrete sarcophagus that hummed with rats, cracked pipes, and the echo of his mother's cough. On the wall, a single picture of his father — a ghost with hollow eyes. A man who had folded under the debt collectors' boots and left his family to starve. Leon had watched his father's last breath, and from that moment, hunger became his only companion, teacher, and god.
That night, hunger whispered louder than fear.
---
He walked into the back of "Harker's Grill," a place that smelled of grease, stale beer, and cheap meat.
He wasn't here to beg. He had done that once and felt the acid shame burn through him. No, tonight was about survival.
He found an unlocked window. Slipped inside. The kitchen was dark except for the red glow of the EXIT sign. His heart hammered like a funeral drum, but he moved with careful steps. A loaf of bread, half a chicken left in the sink. His hands shook as he grabbed them, the smell of cooked skin making his head spin.
Then: "Who's there?"
A man's voice, hoarse, closer than it should've been. Leon froze, the weight of hunger and terror pressing into his chest. He bolted toward the window — but a hand caught his wrist, iron-strong.
Leon saw the cook's face under the swinging lamp: old, tired eyes, an apron splattered with years of grease.
"Put it back," the cook growled.
Leon looked at the bread, then at the man, then at the memory of his mother's sunken cheeks. He shook his head.
The cook's grip tightened. Leon's teeth clenched. For a moment, it felt like the man would hit him, or drag him to the police. Instead, the grip loosened.
"Go," the cook whispered. "Go before I change my mind."
Leon fled into the night, bread clutched to his chest like a stolen heart. Behind him, the city kept breathing — uncaring, unfed.
---
At home, he tore the bread and chicken into pieces, laying them on a broken plate. His mother's eyes fluttered open, cloudy with fever. She smiled — a faint, dying thing.
"Where… did you get this, Leon?" she whispered.
He lied. Said he worked late. Said a kind man had given him the food.
She nodded, too tired to question. When she slept, Leon sat by the window, staring into the rain.
---
In that rain, he swore an oath:
Never again.
Never beg. Never starve. Never let anyone see him crawl.
Hunger had taught him the first truth of the world:
> "Mercy is for those who can afford it.
And we can't."
He believed it. Deeply. Brutally. Completely.
And so the boy decided:
If hunger ruled the world, then he would become hunger itself.