The boy looked at the baker one final time.
In that instant, the kind image he had constructed—the venerable benefactor who occasionally showed mercy—shattered like glass. What remained was the truth: a merchant protecting his profits, willing to use violence if necessary.
The boy turned away.
The spring rain intensified, drilling through his tattered cloak as though the fabric didn't exist. Water soaked into his skin, into his bones. The frigid cold became a physical presence inside him. His robes and matted hair whipped violently in the wind, snapping like war banners.
He walked with widened eyes and lowered head, his every step mechanical.
And as he walked, something deep within him began to unravel.
All this time, he had told himself he understood. That he could sympathize with those who refused him. That if their positions were reversed, he would do the same.
It was a lie.
A comfortable delusion he had constructed to make the cruelty bearable.
The truth was simpler, uglier: he didn't care about their struggles. Why should he? They didn't care that his siblings had perhaps three days left before starvation claimed them.
They didn't care that a twelve-year-old boy bore the weight of three lives on his skeletal shoulders.
They cared about their profits. Their comfort. Their survival.
So why should he care about theirs?
The resentment he had bound tightly and locked away—the resentment he had convinced himself didn't exist—suddenly exploded outward. It unfurled like a rope cut free, and rage flooded through him in a scalding wave.
His pace quickened. He moved through the crowded streets with his head down, knowing that a single glance at the wrong person might cause him to snap. His hands trembled with the urge to violence.
He knew he shouldn't return home. Not like this. Not with this rage consuming him from within. He was too ashamed to face his younger siblings, too disappointed in himself.
He had failed at his one duty: being an older brother.
Love was all he could offer them. And what good was love? Love didn't fill empty bellies. Love didn't keep the cold away. Love was worthless in a world that demanded strength, demanded resources, demanded ruthlessness.
It was his responsibility to shelter them from the world's malevolence, to protect them from everything. But he couldn't even secure moldy bread.
Before he realized it, the boy had left the marketplace entirely. He was running now—sprinting headlong into the wilderness, unafraid of getting lost. Perhaps getting lost was exactly what he wanted.
He ran using hatred as fuel. Resentment as sustenance. Grief as his only companion.
When he finally reached a clearing partially sheltered by dense foliage—a place where the rain lessened to a drizzle—he collapsed.
And then he screamed.
He screamed at the world. At the Heavens. At fate itself.
But mostly, he screamed at himself.
He cursed his mother for dying when he was nine, for leaving him alone with two even smaller children. He cursed his father for abandoning them before the boy was even born, for fleeing the moment he learned his wife was pregnant with a second child.
He cursed himself for being useless, incompetent, weak.
For a brief, terrible moment, he even cursed his siblings for existing.
The thought came unbidden, and he immediately recoiled from it. He silently begged them for forgiveness, even though they couldn't hear. It wasn't their fault the Heavens had been unfair from the moment of their birth.
The boy lay down on the cold earth, clasping his arms around his body in a futile attempt to preserve warmth.
For reasons he didn't understand, memories surfaced for him to reminisce Old memories, from a time that felt like another life entirely.
He remembered his mother's embrace—soft, warm, safe. Her sweet fragrance. The beautiful smile she wore when looking at him. Her lovely voice singing bedtime hymns and ancient legends to soothe him to sleep.
The nostalgia lasted only minutes before darker truths clawed their way up from the depths where he'd buried them.
There were other nights. Nights when the woman beside him seemed like a stranger who happened to share his mother's face.
Nights when she held wine in one hand and formed a fist with the other. When she drunkenly mistook him for his father, screaming that he was an exact copy of that bastard who'd abandoned her. When curses turned to beatings, and she disfigured his face with her rage.
And on the rarest, coldest nights—when loneliness consumed her entirely—she sought her absent husband's love and company from the only substitute available.
But even remembering these things, the boy felt nothing but love for her.
Was that strength or weakness? He didn't know anymore.
The boy tilted his head back, letting rain fall directly onto his face, into his open eyes.
"Why did you make it so difficult for me?" he whispered to the uncaring clouded sky.
"What did I ever do to deserve a fate like this?"
"What did I...I"
His voice cracked.
"What even is my name?"
The question hung in the air, unanswered.
By now, all his resentment and hatred had burned away, leaving only confusion. Why him? Out of all the wicked, terrible creatures in the world—the truly evil ones who deserved suffering—why had he been chosen to bear this burden?
He felt his strength draining away like water through a sieve. His arm, which had been raised toward the sky, slowly crinkled back toward his body like a dying insect's leg.
As his eyes began to close for what he sensed would be the final time, he noticed something odd.
Dried crimson stains covered the palm of his hand.
"Hmm... must be from running through the forest," he thought distantly. "The thorns and branches..."
"Well... maybe some animal will find my scent appetizing. At least then my body will serve an actual purpose."
The thought brought him strange comfort.
The boy finally released the last thread of life he'd been clinging to. His arm slammed against the dirt-covered ground with a dull thud.
What he failed to notice—what his fading perception couldn't grasp—was the small, circular object his hand had landed upon.
The boy's chest rose and fell one final time.
An antique mirror.
It lay half-buried in the mud, appearing utterly ordinary. Nothing about it seemed conspicuous or special. Just another lacquered piece of forgotten refuse swallowed by the wilderness.