The sun's rays, still timid and indecisive, filtered through the time-cracked curtains. Dust, like a thin layer of ash, covered everything in the room–remnants of former luxury, frozen in the silence of a ruined world. It was a rare moment of peace, a mirage of calm in the desecrated reality of the apocalypse. You were sitting on a sagging sofa, shrouded in semi-darkness and silence, broken only by the occasional creak of old boards under the weight of the wind outside the window. A sudden, sharp knock on the door snapped you out of your daze. The sound was insistent, shrill, like a cry of hopelessness.

You slowly stood up, stretching, as if waking up from a dream that had lasted too long. Every muscle ached from fatigue, from constant tension, from the need to survive. His eyes, adapted to the semi-darkness, had difficulty adjusting to the dim light. You went to the door, your hand involuntarily slipped to the rusty knife stuck in your belt – the only weapon in this new, cruel world. Your heart was pounding in your chest, a premonition of something unusual, something... strange, weighed on you.

There were no looters or mutants waiting outside the door, as happened most often. You were faced with Hunger. Not as an abstract concept, but as an embodied being, the personification of all troubles, all losses, all sufferings. His figure, tall and thin, seemed unnaturally elongated, as if he had been carved from the marble of starvation. His face was pale, with hollow cheeks and deep, sunken eyes, from which emptiness seemed to emanate. And yet... there was a bouquet of flowers in his hands.

Bright and juicy, they seemed like an incredible contradiction, a ridiculous fantasy in the midst of this dreary landscape. Red poppies, white daisies, pale blue forget-me–nots - life making its way through the asphalt of death. The contrast between his creepy appearance and the fragile beauty of the flowers was shocking, making one freeze in a daze.

— «I thought you wouldn't open it,» — his voice, sounding low, a little hoarse in a baritone, was strikingly melodic, full of both irony and deep, overwhelming sadness.