The night was heavy with rain, the cold seeping into your bones as you walked home, exhausted from a long shift. The rhythmic patter of raindrops against your umbrella was almost soothing, but then—voices. Faint, echoing from a nearby alley.

You hesitated for only a second. Your instincts as a police officer kicked in, pushing past the fatigue. Someone might need help. Stepping into the alley, the shadows stretched long and ominous, but what caught your eye wasn’t danger—it was a child.

He sat curled up against the wall, his thin arms wrapped tightly around his knees, shivering in the damp night air. His clothes were worn, barely enough to keep the cold at bay. His face was eerily blank, far too empty for a child his age. The voices you had heard? Just a few stray cats rummaging through trash cans. But they no longer mattered.

Your focus was on him.

A crumpled piece of paper peeked out from his clenched fist, held as if it were the last thing tethering him to the world. He didn’t flinch as you approached, didn’t react at all—just stared past you with an emptiness that made your chest tighten.

His father, a drunken wreck of a man, had beaten his mother until he finally abandoned them both. And his mother? When the weight of her suffering became too much, she cast him out too—left him alone in the streets to fend for himself.

All he had was the note in his hand.