...****************...

[Fogden (2006), a small town in the southern part of the Kingdom of Valmora, is shrouded in mist year-round. There lives a boy named Airo.]

• Hello: my name is Airo (12 years old).
I am a boy with messy black hair and ink-black eyes—sometimes when you look into them you can see sadness and loneliness. My clothes are like a pile of rags: an orange shirt and a pair of torn black shorts, stained from long use. I don't even have slippers to wear.

• Most days I stare off into the distance, as if searching for something I myself cannot clearly name—perhaps food, perhaps scraps to scavenge. I have been used to loneliness since I was very small, and my eyes are the clearest proof of a life that has lacked love.

• People around me say I have the stare of someone who has been hurt many times, but no one truly knows what happened—nor does anyone really want to know.

• I don't even remember who my parents were. I'm not sure I've ever heard anything about them since the day I was born.

• The only person I ever knew was an old woman who kindly took me in when I was little. But because she grew old and weak, I left her care—I did not want to be a burden. I'm terrified of causing pain or hardship to anyone because of myself.

• So now I am like a child with nowhere to go, with no one to call my own. No one calls my name affectionately; not even knowing my name seems to matter.

• The damp, cold streets of Fogden have become the only home I know. I have no clear memories of the past or the future; the present is only loneliness and exhaustion. Everything I understand about this world is fragmented and vague, like pieces ripped from dreams that mix the real with the unreal.

• I suppose no one around me knows why I survive alone, or maybe no one wants to know.

• People whisper and keep their distance; they say I'm filthy and contemptible. Sometimes they speak cruelly: calling me stupid, saying "look at him, he's disgusting," "he's so thin he'll starve soon," and so on. The way they look at me is like they're staring at a moving pile of garbage—strange, cold, and sometimes pitying.

• But pity is just another way of saying I don't belong here. I've grown used to that feeling—yet being used to it doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. Sometimes the pain is so heavy I wish I would die.

• I know I'm not a bad person and I'm not a delinquent. Still, I sometimes wonder: is it because I'm different that people despise me?

...****************...

• Day after day, I survive on crumbs that others throw away. I drink from old, rusty cups I find, collecting rainwater—no different from a stray dog at a crossroads.

• At night I shelter in abandoned houses, moving silently like a shadow. Hunger and cold torment my body, but nothing is worse than the sense of being alone and rejected. In this society, those considered lowly, ignorant, or worthless are looked down upon and rejected even before they ask for anything.

• Even in my dreams I sometimes see the faces of someone—maybe a father, maybe a mother. But those faces are never clear; they are hazy and swallowed by the frightening fog.

• Once I cried in my sleep and woke with my face wet and wrinkled, rubbing my head and hair to wake myself. Those dreams never finish, never make sense. I feel like a lost spirit with no direction, no destination.

• I have never had a real home with a mother and father. My shelters are only cracked walls and collapsing roofs that barely keep out sun and rain.

...****************...

• Every night, in my own dark corner, I still hope. I hope—only once—that I might meet my mother and father again. Only my parents could see me for who I am. I am not an abandoned, hated child; I am a child who deserves love, not a dog people despise.

• But slowly, that hope begins to crack with the passage of time.

• One stormy afternoon, rain pouring down, I sat under an old broken tree and looked toward the distant houses lit up by warm lamps. In that light I heard laughter, felt warmth—everything I longed for. Once again I asked myself:

[Why does no one give me a chance?]

[Why does no one call me their child?]

• That is the inner voice of the boy I am about to tell you about—the protagonist of the long story I will write: Airo, "the boy without a home."

END OF CHAPTER 1