Mr. Lee's car – a sleek, silver BMW – beeped as it unlocked, startling Leon from his daze. Not being in a car before, he slid into the passenger seat.
The leather groaned softly under his weight, the new-car smell clashing sharply with the decay of his neighborhood clothes.
Mr. Lee drove across a high-arching bridge in silence. Through the tinted glass, the city unfurled like two separate worlds.
To their left, towers gleamed with wealth—buildings adorned with anti-gravity platforms where floating gardens bobbed gently in the breeze.
To their right, crammed into the river basin like an open wound, was the Dusthollow. Leon's home. A tangled mess of crumbling concrete, rusted metal, and washing lines strung between leaning towers.
The sight from the comfortable, elevated perch filled him not with familiarity, but with a fresh wave of anger and shame.
A sudden movement in the back seat made Leon jump. A man was already there, shrouded in dark hoodie, seeming to have materialized from the shadows. Leon hadn't seen him get in.
"This is my nephew, Wang," Mr. Lee said, noticing Leon's alarm. "He's catching a ride."
Wang leaned forward, his presence imposing despite the confines of the car. His eyes, what little Leon could see of them in the rearview mirror, seemed to hold a strange, faint light. They scanned Leon, assessing, judging like a hungry lion.
"So, this is the boy?" Wang's voice was a low rumble. "He looks… frail."
The comment wasn't meant to be malicious, just a clinical observation. But it landed on Leon's raw nerves like a whip. 'Frail.' 'Weak.' Just like his father had been. Look where that got him.
"We're here," Leon whispered as Mr. Lee began to slow near the outskirt of the Dusthollow.
"Here?" Mr. Lee and Wang said in unison, their heads pivoting to take in the squalor.
"I… I didn't want to say I lived in the Dusthollow," Leon admitted, his face burning with humiliation.
Mr. Lee's face softened with a pain deeper than pity. "This is where they dump the wretched," he murmured, more to himself than to anyone else.
Wang just grunted. "Let's hope the boy has some fight left in him."
Leon got out, the weight of their stares heavier than the basket an old woman handed him to carry to her door.
"Thank you, son." She hissed, untied her cloth as she pulled out her key. "Don't be too generous; people aren't what they seem. Remember the world only favors the wicked."
The woman's voice cut so deep, his fingers began to scratch on themselves.
As he turned toward the narrow alley that led to his street, the sounds hit him first. Not the usual shouts and radios, but a single, piercing sound that lanced through the humid air.
It came soft and distant at first, but as he walked deep in the alley, it wrapped itself around him like the wind before a storm.
[Cats!] Watching black-colored cats crawling towards his direction, he hissed, placed his hand in his pocket and continued like the old days.
Their mewing sound echoed until Leon vanished from sight.
But as he reached about few meters away from his house, another sound lanced through the humid air.
It was his mother. Wailing.
The sound tore the last of his composure away. He broke into a run, the silver car and its mysterious passenger forgotten. He burst onto his street and saw his little sister, Lily sitting on their crumbling doorstep, her face buried in her knees, her small body shaking with sobs.
The door to their shack was open. From within, the sound of his mother's unbearable grief poured out, a raw, agonizing echo of the emptiness now devouring his own soul.
He had arrived home. And the full, devastating weight of the tragedy finally, completely, crashed down upon him.
---
The next two days passed in a fog of grief. The cramped shack felt cavernously empty. The silence where his father's laughter should have been was a constant, aching roar.
Leon moved through it like a sleepwalker, mechanically making tea his mother wouldn't drink, holding Lily when her cries turned to whimpers.
Mr. Lee came by on the second evening. He didn't offer empty platitudes. Instead, he sat in their one good chair and handed Leon a thick, black envelope sealed with wax the color of clotted blood.
"The results from your first exam came back," Mr. Lee said quietly. "You didn't qualify for the standard scholarship track."
Leon's heart, already a lead weight, sank further. Of course. He'd failed. Nothing would change.
"But," Mr. Lee continued, his voice intensifying, "your written score was off the charts. It flagged you for this." He tapped the envelope. "A second exam. A different kind of test. It's your only shot, Leon. It's a long shot, but it's a shot."
Leon took the envelope, his fingers trembling. [A second exam?]
As he held it, a memory surfaced, vivid and sudden – a flashback to his father, just a week ago, his hand on Leon's shoulder, his paint-stained fingers firm.
"You're meant for more than this, son," his father had said, his eyes holding a strange certainty. "Don't let this place tell you who you are. Your strength… it's in there. It'll show itself when the time is right."
At the time, Leon had thought it was just a father's hopeful lie. Now, holding this black envelope, it felt like a prophecy.
The next day, walking home from school, the world seemed sharper, more menacing. Tiger's gang had trailed him for a block, throwing taunts and stones, before veering off, laughing.
Leon's new, fragile resolve hardened. He would take this exam. He would change this.
His route took him past an overflowing trash bin, the stench thick in the air. A scuffle sounded from a side alley. Instinctively, Leon shrank back behind a collapsed wall, peering over the rubble.
A well-dressed man wearing a suit worth more than everything in Leon's home stood over a crumpled figure in Dusthollow rags. The wealthy man wasn't just beating him; he was toying with him.