The night they threw me out, I started sleeping near warm places.
Vents. Restaurant exhaust fans. Anywhere heat leaked through concrete.
Every time I closed my eyes I heard her voice — my mother — hitting me and saying: You're garbage. You don't even deserve to be alive. Your death would be a relief to me.
———
The first night wasn't just a night.
I ran into a drunk man — a salaryman type, still in his work clothes, muttering about his boss to no one. Then his eyes found me.
"Get away from me, kid."
I moved. I didn't say anything to him.
He grabbed my arm anyway. Got his hands around my throat. Took me down to the ground and started hitting me.
I didn't understand why. I still don't. I'd done nothing. I was just there.
I was already in a bad enough state — and then this man materialized out of the dark and started beating me for it.
My eyes began to close on their own.
Is this how it ends? Here? In a place like this?
Will I ever get a single moment of peace?
Then something spoke from inside me — not a thought, something lower than thought:
What are you doing. Defend yourself.
I turned my head to the right. Barely. A small stone on the ground, just within reach.
I watched my hand move toward it. Inch by inch. Until my fingers closed around it.
I drove it into his eye.
He let go and started screaming, clutching his face, still furious:
"You little — I'm going to kill you —"
Rain coming down. The ground wet and unstable beneath me. I tried to run. He cornered me in an alley.
He pulled a knife out of his bag.
A knife. Why does he have a knife in his bag.
I was thirteen years old. I hadn't planned on dying at thirteen.
I looked for any way out. There was none.
He came at me — blood from his eye mixing with the rain, soaking into his collar — and I grabbed the only thing available: a large garbage bag. I didn't lift it. I shoved it into his path.
He slipped. The plan worked.
I jumped over him to run. He caught my ankle.
I looked down at his face and wasn't sure anymore whether I was looking at something human.
He was laughing.
"End of the line, you little —"
My eyes went wide. His hand went up — not like a normal movement, carrying everything bottled inside him, all the rage and hate he'd never found a place to put.
I gave him my left arm.
He drove the knife in.
I couldn't move it after that. He was trying to pull the blade free and I used the moment — turned my head right, found a bottle on the ground, grabbed it, and brought it down on his skull with everything I had left.
He dropped and didn't move.
I kicked his face.
I went for the iron pipe I'd seen earlier — wet, foul-smelling — broke it free and hit him with it. The force came from somewhere I didn't know I had.
He stopped moving. He wasn't going to start again.
The blood was everywhere. On my face, my clothes, the ground.
I didn't stop.
I hit the ground beside his head. Again. Again. Until his head was no longer a head — just ruin.
Then I stopped.
And started laughing.
A voice rose up from inside me — laughing too, and asking:
How does that feel? Do you feel relief? Do you feel satisfied? He was just a drunk. But you laughed. What would it feel like if it were your mother's husband?
The pain in my left arm arrived all at once. I couldn't feel it anymore — which meant the damage was past feeling.
The knife was still in my arm. I left it there.
I went through his bag, took his jacket off him, and left.
I took the pipe with me and moved.
———
I walked through the night toward the river, rain still falling, cold so dense I couldn't breathe through it properly. My vision started going at the edges. I fought it as long as I could.
I lost consciousness under a bridge.
When I came back, something was sitting on my head.
A black cat.
I pushed it off and looked at my reflection in the water below.
I had gotten so thin I could barely recognize myself. I looked like something that had been emptied out.
I drank from the river. Vomited five times. Washed my face.
I cut the sleeves off the man's jacket and used them to pull the knife free from my arm. The blood came out like a faucet turned all the way open. I wrapped the wound tight with the cloth and moved before I could think too hard about it.
I threw the knife and the pipe into the river.
I went through his bag properly. Found his phone.
When I saw it, my entire body went cold. I threw it into the water immediately and got out of there.
———
I walked until I found a park — about five minutes of moving through streets that didn't care I existed. I sat at the far end and searched the bag until I found his wallet.
Two hundred.
I stared at it. Didn't say anything. Complained internally, just a little.
I spotted a food cart nearby. Walked over.
"What do you have?"
"Best food around. What are you looking for?"
"Something light."
"Sandwich?"
"Yes."
He started making it. I went and sat down.
Then I heard sirens. Police cars, ambulances — moving through the streets nearby, sweeping the area.
My stomach tightened. I thought about running.
But I was hungry. So I stayed.
The vendor called me over.
"How much?" I asked.
"Free."
I refused. He made me take it anyway.
I ate. The weather had settled into something neutral — not sunny, not heavy. Just air.
Then the police arrived in the park.
I inhaled sandwich and nearly choked.
They don't know it's you. Calm down.
Two officers got out. One went to the vendor. The other came toward me.
I finished eating and stood to go wash my hands.
The officer stopped me on my way out.
"Name? Are you lost?"
I thought: If I stay quiet, will he leave?
He raised his voice and asked again.
No.
"Hi," I said. "I'm Tai. Thank you for asking — but I'm not lost." (Just thrown away.)
He looked at my arm.
"Is something wrong with your arm?"
I knew he'd ask that.
"It's a small cut," I said. "I was trying to copy my friend jumping off the swings." (I killed a man last night.)
"Are you stupid? Don't do that again. You could die."
I know that, you idiot. I'm just forced to lie.
He moved on.
I left the park and started walking.
Where am I going.
There was nowhere to return to. That was the moment I understood — fully, without being able to argue with it — that a hard life had officially begun.
———
I moved from place to place for years.
Eventually I settled near a park close to a convenience store.
Time passed. I turned eighteen.
I had been absent from school so long they called my mother. I assume she ignored them. I think they tried to look for me at some point, but she refused to cooperate.
Three students found me one afternoon. I don't remember their faces anymore. One of them crouched down in front of me and said:
"Want money? Get on your knees for it."
I looked at him with pure contempt.
"I didn't ask you for anything. I'm not weak enough to bully people."
He looked at me. Then he punched me.
I went down. They started kicking.
I lay there thinking: What's the point of killing them? I'd go to prison.
Then a girl appeared.
"Leave him alone."
I looked up at her. Young. Fifteen, maybe.
A fifteen-year-old is defending me.
The third one said: "Back off. We don't hit girls."
She walked forward and slapped him.
Time stopped.
All of us stared at her.
He slapped her back — hard. She hit the ground.
I watched her touch her cheek. A tear threatening to fall.
Something ignited.
I got up and kicked him between the legs. The second one moved in and I kicked him across the face. I went to the girl.
"Are you okay?"
The third came from behind and cracked me in the shoulder with a rock.
I turned and hit him once.
He folded into his friends and they carried him away, shouting about revenge.
I looked at the girl.
"Why did you step in for me?"
She looked like the question confused her.
"Why? Because someone needed help."
I looked at her face — the cheek already swelling — and said:
"Some help. Look at your face. It's swollen. Never mind." I paused. "I'm Tai. Thanks for nothing."
"I should introduce myself first — I'm Nino. Nice to meet you."
"What year are you?"
"Middle school. Fifteen."
"So you're a minor." I exhaled. "Fantastic. A little girl defended me."
She hit me on the head and said:
"Is that how you thank someone who saves you?"
"Saves me? I'm the one who saved you."
She looked at her watch.
"Ugh — I'm late because of you." She left.
I looked over at the three of them — limping, furious, promising revenge between gasps of pain.
Their faces were genuinely funny.
———
A man had been watching.
"I have a job for you. Interested?"
Cautious joy. I didn't show it.
"Who are you?"
"Someone who can help you. Someone who can make you money."
I accepted without hesitating. I had nothing to lose and nowhere else to be.
When I walked into the place, the atmosphere was wrong in a way I felt before I could name it — dark, pressurized, like a room that had seen things.
The man turned to me and said:
"You're going to learn how to survive. You're in a building with contract killers, serial operators, and assassins. I'm going to teach you everything about staying alive."
I looked at him.
"You want me to become a criminal?"
He laughed.
"No. You won't be a criminal. People will come to you, pay you money, and you'll deal with the corrupt. The government will protect you."
Before he could continue, I made one request.
"What do you want?" he said.
"I want to upload a video to the internet."
"Why?"
"To break the past."
He smiled.
"My name is Saka. And I promise you — I'm going to make you into something dangerous."
———
After I uploaded the video, Saka told me:
"Go kill the man who destroyed your life."
I planned it. Watched him for days. Followed his patterns until they became predictable.
When he finally left the house, I followed him to another address and put a knife in his back inside.
You think that's the whole story. Wait.
He was cheating on his wife. With my mother.
So I killed a man who deserved it. That was the first time I understood the difference.
His wife saw me. She screamed. Started reaching for her phone.
She stopped when she saw me clearly — a thin, hollow teenager holding a weapon — and couldn't process it.
I said: "Your husband was cheating on you. Watch this."
I showed her the video.
She watched it. And then she thanked me for killing him.
I hadn't expected that. Not remotely.
Then one of the bullies came out of a bedroom.
When he saw me, his face turned inside out.
"Mom — it's him. The one who hit me."
His mother looked at me.
"Is that true?"
"He started it," I said.
The bully looked at his father's body. Then at my hands. Then screamed with everything in his lungs and ran for the phone.
I threw the knife.
It found his throat.
He fell.
I looked at the mother.
"Are you going to call the police?"
She was crying. Shaking her head.
"No. I promise. You can do whatever you want with me — just don't kill me. Please."
I looked at her face. Recognized something in it. I put my hand on my head, and the floor started moving, and the walls bent inward, and I went down face-first.
———
I woke up in a bed.
Wait. Did she call the police?
I looked around. Ceiling. Walls. A room that wasn't a floor under a bridge.
She didn't.
I looked at my hands.
I cried.
She opened the door. Found me crying. Said softly:
"What's wrong? Are you hurting somewhere?"
She came close. I grabbed her and held on.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't want to make you like this."
She didn't pull away.
She put her hand on top of my head and stroked my hair.
When I finally went quiet, I found food on the table. She'd cooked.
I ate it crying.
I don't deserve this. I killed her husband and her son. And she's treating me like this.
She said: "You're not leaving until you clean up what you did."
"Fine," I said. "But I want to shower first."
"Do you want me to come with you?"
I looked at her.
"Why would you shower with me?"
She leaned against the doorframe.
"Because I see a child, not a grown man."
"How old are you?"
Her cheeks went red.
"What — are you proposing to me?"
"Marriage? Impossible. I just want to know."
"I'm joking. You think I'd marry someone who just killed my husband and my son?"
"I'm sorry for that."
"Don't be — I'm just joking. I'm forty-one. Do you want to know my name?"
"Yes."
"Hana. Nice to meet you. What's your name?"
"Tai. Nice to meet you, Hana."
"Tai," she repeated. "Like the sun."
I said, quietly:
"But the sun stopped shining a long time ago."
———
After the shower — she insisted on washing my back, and I let her — she saw the scars.
She went completely still.
"What is this? Who did this to you?"
I looked at the floor and said: "Just fights. Nothing serious."
She was crying when she answered.
"I didn't know my son did this to you."
"Wash my back," I said. "Don't remind me."
She did. Then left me alone.
I stood under the water thinking: She treated my wounds and fed me and stroked my hair. After I killed her husband and her son in front of her. What does that make me.
I looked at my hands.
Filthy. Permanently.
———
When I left, she stood in the doorway and said:
"Take care of yourself."
It was a warm sentence. I hadn't expected one of those.
I smiled.
"Thank you. For everything."
Outside, I passed the man's body where she'd left it.
I looked at it.
Laughed.
———
The video spread. My mother and the man, everything on film — from the moment he walked in to the moment he left. All of it. Timestamped.
I went back to Saka.
"Your turn," I said. "Train me."
He brought me into a large room.
"Ready?"
"I was ready before I met you."
———
Day one: two and a half hours on reaction training alone. Just reactions. Nothing else.
By the end I couldn't move.
Saka had been doing this for twenty years. I could feel it in the way he occupied a room.
I asked him: "When do I get to train with weapons?"
He came back with a question that confirmed I was in the right place:
"If you can handle a weapon — do you have the reaction time to manage your own ammunition in the middle of contact?"
Silence.
I said nothing.
I went to the bathroom and found a trap someone had set in the hallway.
I went back to Saka.
"Train me again."
He smiled.
"Now it begins."
The day moved the way days do when every hour matters.
I finished the session and fell asleep where I was standing.
———
Day Two.
I woke up to Saka hitting me.
"Saka, you —"
"I'm not Saka. I'm your instructor."
Fine. Instructor.
He kept correcting me every time I used his name. I stopped arguing.
After training he took me to breakfast. And there she was — the girl from the park. Nino. With her friends.
I started to move toward her.
Then I looked at myself. My clothes. Torn, worn out, barely holding together. The wound in my hand still pulling with every movement.
I stopped.
I stood there and just watched her from across the room.
Saka laughed.
"Youth."
"What do you mean?"
"You like her. But your clothes are falling apart and you smell."
"That sounds like an insult."
He looked at me — serious now, the easy expression gone:
"Tai. If you want to get stronger. If you want to protect the people you care about. I'm here to help you do that. But you're going to have to double your training hours."
I smiled.
"That's exactly what I want."
———
After breakfast, Saka looked at me with the face he used when things were about to get real.
"What do you want from a weapon? Specifically."
I laughed.
"I want to try everything. I can't give you a name yet."
He said: "After breakfast I'll start you on the suppressed pistol. Then we have a job together — a collection run. You're coming with me."
No objection from me.
We left the restaurant.
Screaming, from somewhere ahead.
Saka moved before I did — and the way he ran wasn't human. It was something predatory, efficient, zero wasted motion. I pushed to keep up and couldn't. That was the moment I understood what the training was actually for.
The sounds got louder as we closed the distance.
When we arrived: Nino and her friends, surrounded.
Someone behind me.
Saka's voice cut through everything:
"Tai — behind you."
I turned.
The rock was already close. I tried to move. It caught my right shoulder and wrenched it out of the socket.
My body began to shake. My eyes went wide. Every breath became a negotiation.
Six people had formed a ring around us.
One of them stepped forward — and then something happened that I'd first felt the night I killed the drunk man. A state that arrived on its own, without asking.
Before he could cross the distance, he was already taking strikes — fast, targeted, throat and face, perfectly placed. He went down choking and didn't get back up.
The others hesitated.
A second one stepped forward. Same result.
Then one of them grabbed Nino.
Knife at her throat.
My eyes moved to him and didn't leave.
End of Chapter 13