My eyes snapped open before the crack of dawn.

  I hopped up on my feet, fending off the aches and sores.

  I had gotten better at waking up at a set time recently; a side effect of actually picking a place and time to sleep instead of just randomly passing out wherever.

  I couldn’t afford to just wander around wildly anymore.

  That was irresponsible, and it would result in someone’s death.

  My head turned to look down back towards the ground.

  The little girl I picked up a while back was sleeping soundly.

  Her sandy hair splayed across a makeshift bed of layers of torn fabric, insulating her body from the dirt beneath it.

  I had gotten lucky around a week ago. There was a house nearby that had laundry hanging out in the open to dry.

  It was daytime when I first saw it, so I couldn’t take it immediately. Too many eyes watching.

  Instead, I made sure to take mental note of that place’s exact location and circled back to it when the sun fell.

  I only managed to steal enough for one person’s use before the homeowner spot me and chased me away, but that was fine.

  I was lucky to have gotten away with the loot intact and my body uninjured. It was unreasonably selfish and unrealistic to expect anything more.

  One set of clothes was all I needed anyways, that would be enough to keep her from sleeping on the dirt and make sure she was warm throughout the night.

  I shivered lightly. Instinctively, my hands clutched my upper arms, rubbing up and down to spread some meagre warmth through my body.

  I didn’t pay much attention to the seasons before – that information wasn’t really of any use to me – but I had to now. It was definitely getting close to winter; I had seen the husks of leaves floating in on the breeze scattered on the roads and the nights were getting longer and longer.

  The little girl groaned in her sleep, turning over.

  I bristled, my pupils dilating as a small bit of panic rushed through me.

  My gaze snapped back towards her, carefully analysing her expression.

  It was nothing. Good.

  She wasn’t uncomfortable, or cold, or in pain, or sick, or anything like that. Her brow wasn’t furrowed, her lips weren’t wobbly, she wasn’t curled up more than usual – she didn’t exhibit any of the habits she usually did when she wasn’t sleeping well.

  I let myself breathe a sigh of relief, going back to rubbing myself for warmth.

  Maybe I was cold and slept like shit, but that was fine. I could handle it; I had the lived experience and survival instinct of a person maybe three to four times my physical age. I could deal with a small bit of pain and discomfort, and I had the mental fortitude to push past not being well-rested or having a full stomach every day.

  The little girl, however, couldn’t. If I had to guess, going by her physical condition and the growth of her body, assuming she was well-nourished unlike me – which was a fair assumption to make, those orphanages, even if they were shady, had to make sure their kids were properly fed in order to be appealing to clients – she was probably no older than five years old.

  I wasn’t going to prioritise my own safety over that of a five year old little girl’s.

  I had already lived and died once. I had already grown up and seen the world and what it had to offer, I had gotten the chance to wish, hope and dream and go out into the wilderness to fulfil those desires.

  No matter how pathetic I might have been before – never making that simple, easy step to reconnect with my parents, never finding my calling in life and choosing to run away from everything by constantly going overseas, and letting those tiny, unimportant guilts reach deep into my heart and shake me to my core – I had inarguably lived a privileged, good life with family that loved me and nourished me with care that I did not deserve and could not repay.

  I was expendable. The little girl was not.

  The least I could do for the parents of my previous life, who had wasted their love and care on a son like me who could not properly return that favour, was to make sure this little girl at least lived longer than me.

  Maybe then, I could go back to their place for hot pot with a smile on my face.

  Going by previous experience, there was maybe another hour and a half before the girl would wake up. I had to start preparing and planning for the rest of the day.

  I looked around myself, squinting to better make out my surroundings in the darkness before sunrise.

  There was a large, relatively straight stick.

  That would do.

  I picked it up and pointed it at the ground, drawing a line in the dirt and adding a little divot to it near the middle.

  It was meant to represent the street and alley that we had slept in.

  I carefully connected the line to another, drawing more and more intersecting streets until I had a map on the dirt that took me more than a second to physically walk from one side of the dirt to the other.

  After a couple dozen minutes of painful recollection, I was left with a strange shape.

  It was a half-complete misshapen circle, several smaller rings and lines inside of it dividing it into various ‘depths’ and districts. Stray lines fractured out of the circle’s perimeter before dissipating into nothingness.

  To an outsider, it probably just looked like an extremely strange spider’s web, but to me, it was my still-incomplete map of the slums and its surroundings.

  I remember it was not even a month ago when I hated coming even near the slums. I dreamed naively of finding something beyond the limits of the city, willing to give up my consciousness and sanity to the delusions of starvation if it meant crawling even a single inch further than I previously had.

  That was stupid of me. It was a lot of things, really. It was stupid, but also incredibly reckless and naive. And above all, it was irresponsible.

  I couldn’t just take the little girl with me and go off on that foolish adventure. That would just result in me blacking out to my starvation and then finding the little girl next to me dead.

  No, I had to let go of that hope. I had to surrender that ambition and those dreams for the sake of a life I was now responsible for.

  I had to make sure the little girl lived.

  No matter what, and at any cost.

  At any cost.

  That meant no more wild prayers for a miracle to happen. That meant I had to stop picking a direction and just hoping it would lead to somewhere good. No more relying on pure luck for there to just be food wherever I found myself wandering.

  I had to take things slowly and methodically. I had to be absolutely certain of everything around every corner and eliminate all uncertainty from my surroundings.

  And no matter how much I hated it, that meant returning to the slums. I knew how to find food reliably here. That was more valuable than anything else, even outweighing the downsides of less security and a more dangerous neighbourhood.

  Maybe in the future, I could return to dreaming of escaping the slums and even the confines of the city and find some wilderness out there to sustain myself and my new ward on, but if I wanted that, I had to take it slow from now on.

  The process would take months. Maybe even years. I had to make sure the girl was fed properly first and grow up healthy and stable. I had to map out every inch of the city to make sure there was somewhere we could always retreat to and sustain ourselves for a bit in case things got worrisome.

  Progress was good. It wouldn’t take me many more weeks to fully map out the slums and etch these alleyways and crevices into my mind.

  I had already grown somewhat proficient when it came to traversing this place. I was starting to get familiar with all the small shortcuts to take and how to find the most efficient route from one point to another. I was fairly confident I could circle the entirety of the slums in less than a day now if I had absolutely nothing else that I needed to do.

  With any luck, I would be able to make the slums my home base and focus my efforts on mapping out the rest of the city by the time winter rolled around.

  I reviewed my map of the slums one more time.

  This sector was almost fully filled in. It was dangerous to explore further north, that was the territory of one of the gangs. This group was more malicious at night, which was normal for the ones on the outer rings of the slums. I probably wouldn’t be able to fully map it out for a few days, since it was much more efficient to be searching for food during daytime; that was when the people in the slums were less desperate.

  To the south, however… there might have been something worth exploring there with potential long-term benefits. That would probably be my goal for today after I made sure the girl was fed.

  There was still probably an hour left before the sun rose and the girl woke up. I had to go nab something for the two of us to eat before we set off for the day.

  I slunk through the quiet darkness of the early morning streets, accompanied only by the sparse chirping of morning birds.

  I headed north towards the belly of the beast; the territory of the gangsters. Early morning was the one time I knew was relatively safe – this gang was active at night, but like to sleep until noon. Hardly anyone would be up at this time of day, and definitely not where I was going.

  At least, not anyone dangerous.

  If there was one good thing about going into the gang territories, it was that they were by far the easiest places to find food lying around. They usually liked to centre themselves right at the heart of these neighbourhoods where the markets, bakers and restaurants were all nestled together. It made it incredibly easy for them to hold leverage over the citizens there and subjugate them when they controlled the core livelihood of the entire district.

  The baker I was planning to steal from would almost definitely be up; they needed to wake up even earlier than me, but with any luck, they would be too busy to notice a loaf of bread missing.

  A dozen minutes later, I escaped from the bakery, bread bundled in my arms, and entirely unnoticed.

  It was a heart-pounding, but uneventful affair.

  I wasn’t able to get any full loaves – they were in far too conspicuous of a spot to reach without alarming the baker and I wasn’t anywhere near confident enough to try brazenly taking one given it was my first time doing this – but I was able to get my hands on a modest bundle of breadsticks.

  Before leaving, I gave one last look behind me to a building on the other side of the street longingly.

  There was a barbecue restaurant of some sort there, hanging up what looked like some kind of smoked bird and a bunch of jerky.

  It was a shame I couldn’t take any of it; it was all hanging out right in the open on large, complicated metal hooks and chains. Trying to get those pieces of meat without making any noise and getting caught was impossible.

  I really wanted it too. Not for myself; I just felt guilty about the little girl’s diet. Most of what she ate consisted of tossed away, expired fruit, barely drinkable water and half-stale bread. I would have liked to give her some meat to remind her that eating could be enjoyable.

  I shuffled back towards the alley where I woke up, fiddling with the breadsticks in my arms.

  I was lucky, they were warm.

  There was still maybe half an hour left before the girl would wake up naturally.

  I struggled a bit with what to do internally, but in the end, I made the decision to poke her awake.

  Warm food was a rarity, it was a luxury far more valuable than a good night’s sleep at this point. I was fairly confident I’d be able to find us a good place to sleep by the end of the night, but I wasn’t sure I’d find warm food again.

  But maybe that was speaking too soon.

  There was a decent chance depending on what I found today that I could come back to this district and try my chances at nabbing some of that jerky next sunrise.

  It took about a minute of prodding for the girl to get up.

  She groaned sleepily, rubbing her eyes in a fittingly childlike manner as she hunched over and pulled herself up.

  She blinked up at me with hazy, half-asleep eyes.

  I couldn’t help but feel strange every time I saw those yellow eyes of hers.

  Aside from the fact they were a colour that was extremely weird in my previous life, I couldn’t help but feel like they were… familiar?

  I don’t know why, but I got the odd feeling that I had seen those exact eyes somewhere before.

  I brushed the strange feeling aside and held out the breadsticks to her, taking one or two for myself and leaving the rest for her.

  It wasn’t going to be enough to fill my stomach adequately, but it was fine.

  I wouldn’t die by the end of the day, and that was all that mattered.

  It was a sacrifice I was willing to make to keep her from starvation.

  “Eat.”

  I spoke coldly, pushing the warm food into her arms.

  She seemed to be a bit confused, still not awake enough to fully process what was happening, but managed to nevertheless hold the bread in her arms without letting them drop to the dirt.

  She blinked, wide-eyed, seemingly shocked by something.

  She stared emptily at the warm bundle in her arms, instinctively clutching it closer to her chest to bring the residual heat closer to her.

  “Eat fast,” I repeated.

  It was fairly easy to guess what she was thinking.

  It was probably the first time since I took her away from the orphanage that she had held warm food. The feeling of warm food in her hands was probably a big shock.

  “It won’t be warm for long.”

  I wasted no more words, biting away at my own pieces of bread.

  She stared emptily for a couple of seconds, before snapping awake suddenly and hurriedly munching down on her food.

  We didn’t speak to each other much.

  I didn’t know her name, or if she even had one in the first place.

  I would silently take her by the hand, and walk to where we needed to go.

  At best, I would give her some simple commands, such as ‘follow me’ or ‘stay and hide until I come back’, and she would nod nervously.

  She rarely questioned me or spoke back.

  It was a bit surprising, in all honesty.

  When I first ran away with her, I was expecting some level of distrust or hostility.

  I had no idea how to gauge whether or not she knew what was happening to her back then. Maybe she did know those men were going to take her away to do unpleasant things. Maybe she really did just not want to be separated from her friends and just live at the orphanage.

  Either way, it would have been a normal reaction for her to be wary around me. I was a stranger who she had never seen before who just forced my way into her life against her will who then proceeded to drag her across the slums day and night.

  I wasn’t going to return her to that orphanage. Ever.

  That entire sector where that particular gang was active was entirely unmapped to me. I would rather die than return there while I still had to take care of the girl.

  Anyways, I was lucky that she held no ill will or distrust towards me.

  I couldn’t tell you if you asked me why it was the case, but she seemed to fully trust me. I wasn’t going to pry and ask her about it either; it wasn’t my place to ask.

  I wasn’t family, or even a friend. I was just a stranger who couldn’t mind their own business and bullishly made it their responsibility to take care of her.

  As long as she was alive, that was good enough for me.

  About a minute passed in silence. Bread crunched. Mouths chewed.

  I finished my first breadstick faster than she did. That was to be expected, of course, but for some reason, just before I was about to put the second in my mouth, the girl gave me an odd look.

  I paused, unable to parse what she was thinking.

  Her gaze seemed to be drawn to the sole breadstick remaining in my hand.

  I pulled it away from my open mouth and frowned.

  Did she want it?

  I silently offered it to her.

  She flinched anxiously, stumbling backwards as she rapidly shook her head, scared by something.

  I blinked.

  That was strange.

  I had no clue what that was about.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  The rest of breakfast – if that meagre meal could be called that – went by silently.

  I finished my second piece of bread and sat near the entrance of the alley, watching over it.

  The sun had risen by now, and people started to walk on the streets.

  I was disrupted a few minutes later by a slight pinch and pull on my shoulder.

  “U-umm…” the girl’s meek voice called out from behind me.

  “Hm?”

  I turned around.

  My nose nearly smacked into two extended breadsticks.

  I tilted my head, confused.

  I gave the girl a questioning stare.

  “I-I’m full… you can have the rest…”

  I frowned.

  No, she wasn’t.

  Even if I put the obvious nervousness, childish stutter and straying eyes that gave away the fact that she was lying aside, I knew from experience that she wasn’t full.

  She had eaten much more before when she was less hungry. There was just simply no way she couldn’t fit two more pieces bread down her gullet.

  I glared at her, pushing the bread away from my face.

  “It’s yours. Finish it.”

  Before I could turn around again, she pushed it back towards my face.

  “N-no!” She screamed out, shoving the bread into my arms before I could react.

  “I-I mean it… I-I’m r-really not… hungry…” Her voice trembled, seemingly on the verge of breaking into tears.

  She hung her head low, her hair shadowing her face, obscuring her expression and blocking me from understanding what was going through her mind.

  My frown intensified.

  I didn’t get it, really.

  What was she so sad about?

  Was the bread I gave her bad?

  That shouldn’t have been the case. The bread was pretty freshly baked, and it was miles better than what we were eating before.

  Maybe my taste buds had dulled from an extended period of starvation and homelessness?

  She looked relatively well-fed when I saw her at the orphanage, maybe her standard for food were just higher than I thought.

  I clicked my tongue.

  Looks like I really would have to come back to this place. I really had to get my hands on that smoked bird and jerky now.

  I shrugged in defeat, accepting the offered bread.

  That seemed to calm the girl down for some reason.

  I still didn’t get why she was acting like that. But the alternative was pushing back more and making her cry, and I wasn’t so heartless as to make a child cry over a few pieces of bread.

  If it kept her happy, I would take a few breadsticks from her, even if it made no sense to me.

  After finishing off the rest of the food, there was one more thing I had to check before we left.

  I went back to where we had slept and brought the cloth that made the makeshift bed up to my nose.

  I sniffed it.

  I immediately retched.

  That was a mistake.

  It looked like this set wouldn’t last her any longer. I had hoped it would last a couple more days.

  It looks like I had to add finding the girl a new ‘blanket’ and ‘mattress’ to the list too.

  Hopefully whatever was south of here could prove helpful in that regard.

  Well, at least it meant we could travel lightly, that would speed us up by a bit.

  I gestured to the girl to follow me, and we set off for the day.

  I kept my eyes on the surroundings as we walked, keenly surveying the streets to make sure everything lined up with my mental notes on the place. Even the smallest error in my map could be disastrous.

  It was amazing how much of my consciousness I had retained compared to how I was just a couple of weeks ago; a shambling zombie that wandered the streets.

  The better food and sleep helped a bit, sure, but I was knee-deep in several months or maybe years worth of malnutrition and restlessness, and a couple of weeks of being slightly better at fulfilling those needs wasn’t going to make the difference.

  What mostly changed – and what led to the better food and sleep in the first place – was simply that I had to be more conscious.

  I couldn’t just live selfishly anymore.

  The girl had to live, no matter what.

  My life and my desires were secondary. I had to make sure that the girl was fed. Even if I was starving, even if I was always about to pass out, I could never let that one thing go.

  If I woke up one day to find that the girl next to me couldn’t, I-...

  I don’t know what I would do.

  So I pushed all of it away, all of those lingering memories and guilts and hopes and dreams from before, and became a single-minded machine.

  The girl would live, it was the only thing that mattered.

  I could no longer consider myself a person. I was a tool that made sure the girl was cared for. And that was all.

  As we made our way south, we stopped by a public well, taking one of the communal buckets.

  The water wasn’t the best, but it was safe and drinkable, and there weren’t any alternatives.

  If there was one thing I was thankful for, it would be that people in this era still understood that water was a basic human right, even if other things weren’t.

  Not even the gangs were brave enough to try and restrict access to water, lest they draw an angry mob to their doorstep.

  After a quick water break, we continued making our way south, and after a couple more hours, around the start of afternoon, I had made it to my destination.

  It was a simple street corner, ruled over by another local gang.

  There were a couple shops along one side of the road, and around all of them hung groups of gangsters just standing watch, sitting, drinking, eating and patrolling.

  This area was under constant surveillance from the gang, and I just had to figure out why it was so important to them.

  The main clue I had was what laid on the other side of the street; a large ornate gate with two gangsters standing on either end of it, protecting it dutifully.

  Just beyond the walls, I was barely able to make out what seemed to be a row of houses. They seemed a bit fancier than the ones in nearby neighbourhoods, but they all seemed to be in a worse state of disrepair, completely unattended to.

  There were several more clues I gathered during the several trips I made around this area.

  Firstly, I had never seen those gates open for anyone; I had seen various important looking members of that gang come up and inspect the gate, and talk to the men stationed there, but they never actually walked through.

  Secondly, this gate was on the west side of what was a largely unidentified square in my mental map, and while I found nothing but walls on the north and south sides of the square, on the east side, I found almost an exact mirror of this exact place, right down to the people guarding it.

  My theory was that this used to be a relatively decent housing district, but then the gangs came into town, started extorting everyone, and then slowly bled the residents dry until no one could live here anymore.

  Judging by the state of disrepair amongst the outer houses, no one had stepped through those gates in years.

  If I was lucky, then maybe there was a way that I could get through the walls and get inside undetected, then I would be able to secure the girl and myself one of the abandoned houses for shelter.

  I continued my way across the street, holding tightly onto the girl’s hands and bringing her closer to me, worried a bit about her safety.

  Luckily, we were able to blend in somewhat well. While this place was a scary place to be for most people, it unfortunately contained a large row of businesses and stores, making it a necessary place to go in many of the residents’ daily routines.

  Before long, we found our way towards the unmapped northern side of the housing district.

  I hadn’t been able to fully explore the area before.

  It wasn’t just a simple wall.

  It was a fully lived-in street as well, with rows of buildings on either side of the street, with little alleys between each one of them that would inevitably lead to a dead end as they came up to the wall.

  Those were what I was interested in.

  Maybe there was some way in one of the countless alleys to get over or underneath the wall.

  The next few hours were… well, they were rough.

  Smelly, dirty, surprisingly sweaty – I was kind of in disbelief that my body was capable of still working up such a large amount of sweat.

  A lot of fruitless hours were spent in those tiny crevices shoving debris and trash away, only to find that at the end of it all, there was a solid brick wall with zero vulnerabilities in sight.

  At the very least, this side of the street seemed to be residential, meaning we were lucky enough to find a few food scraps tossed away out of people’s windows to keep us fed.

  That small detail was extraordinarily helpful. It meant we wouldn’t have to spend hours looking for food elsewhere, where we would then have to spend another hour running all the way back to this wall.

  I continued to make my way through the countless little alleys one by one, doing my best to avoid confrontations with a few of the other vagrants we met along the way.

  The day wore on, and the sun started to set. The streets slowly started to become quiet.

  Luckily, there weren’t any people we needed to be too worried about. Most of the local criminal forces around this place seemed to be concentrated around the two gates on the west and east sides, making my life much easier.

  Against all odds, just before I was going to call it quits for the day and find the girl a place to sleep, my effort was rewarded, and I found what I was looking for.

  I was pushing aside a large pile of rubble, when I noticed some of it collapsed in a rather strange way, seemingly falling inwards and backwards?

  It seemed rather odd to me, given that the pile of rubble was resting against a solid wall, so I focused my efforts on excavating it.

  It hurt my hands a lot. A lot of pieces of sharp stone and crumbled brick. I nicked my hand on a few splinters, but I pushed the pain aside, focusing only on the rubble in front of me.

  I heard a few sounds of discomfort behind me, coming from the girl as she watched me work.

  I looked back at her once or twice; she looked at me with concern, and hesitatingly reached towards me with her hand, only to flinch when I felt her moving.

  “Stay back,” I warned her gruffly.

  I think she wanted to help me deal with the rubble.

  I wasn’t going to let that happen. My hands were in terrible condition. I wasn’t going to inflict that pain on her. She could live without splinters and cuts.

  It took maybe a full hour to clear it, but I finally managed to get my way through the rubble, and when I did so, my suspicions were confirmed and rewarded.

  There was a hole in the wall. It wasn’t a big hole, but it was there.

  It was still filled with a lot of rubble that slid backwards as I tried to dig it out, but if I were to clear that last bit out, I was certain there would be left a hole big enough for a child around eight years old or younger to crawl through.

  I sighed, and prepared myself for the last stretch of hard work for the night.

  By the end of it, I was completely spent, and my arms were nearly completely black from the accumulated grime.

  I panted and groaned in pain, but I managed to muster up enough energy in me to gesture the girl over to myself.

  She carefully stepped through the bits of rubble on the ground, avoiding any sharp spikes.

  I pointed to the hole.

  “Go in.”

  She stared at me and blinked.

  A worried glimmer appeared in her eyes.

  Was she scared I was going to disappear or something?

  I shook my head.

  “I’ll follow after you.”

  I repeatedly tilted and nodded my head towards the wall in a gesture of hurry.

  She didn’t put up much more of a fight after that, and crawled through as I had asked.

  It didn’t take long for me to join her, and when I came out the other side, I think my eyes might have brightened when I saw what was there.

  I might have even smiled. I wasn’t sure. I was too focused on the prospect of finally being able to give the girl a stable home, at least for a little bit.

  Sure enough, there was a large row of abandoned houses in front of us.

  Luckily for me, it seemed to be several rows of houses, considering that I couldn’t see gates on either end of the street, meaning we would be undetected as long as we stayed out of the centre row.

  I faced the girl and brought a dirty finger to my lip, gesturing for her to stay silent.

  We snuck through the dark street, carefully exploring it.

  Conveniently, there was even a functioning well nearby, which I used to clean my hands of the accumulated grime.

  After we cleaned ourselves off, I took her hand and made my way back towards the hole where we came from.

  I looked among the nearby houses, trying to find one with a door that seemed like it wouldn’t make too much noise.

  Thankfully, I didn’t have to look too hard.

  I quietly pushed the doors opened, and peeked inside.

  …It wasn’t stripped bare.

  It wasn’t furnished, but it wasn’t empty.

  It wasn’t exactly in a good state either; everything was covered in a thick layer of dust and I was fairly confident that the place was infested with dust mites. There was mould in more than a few corners and a lot of the wood seemed to have been hollowed out after insects got inside and chewed on it.

  But it was good enough for now, maybe if I was given enough time those issues were even fixable, but first I had to see if this was even a good place to sleep.

  I turned around and beckoned the girl to head inside with me.

  We made our way through the house, checking each room and cataloguing them.

  I got more and more anxious as we ticked off the unexplored rooms, worried I wouldn’t find what I was looking for.

  But finally, at the very last door, my worries were relieved.

  There was a bed still left behind in the house. It even came with covers on it.

  I looked around the room. There were various closets and drawers.

  I pulled open one of the closets, and I had to rub my eyes to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating when I looked inside.

  Somehow, beyond all reason, there were even miraculously spare sets of sheets and covers.

  I genuinely did not believe my luck in that moment.

  It was as if God was watching over me.

  I breathed a massive sigh of relief and chuckled.

  I could do right by the girl.

  I dragged the little girl towards the bed.

  She looked up at me, a familiar confused look on her face.

  I smiled. That look had started to get engraved into my memories. It was almost endearing.

  I ruffled her hair and pushed her onto the mattress.

  “Sleep here,” I commanded her.

  She blinked at me as she always did.

  I still didn’t really get why she always looked like that.

  Surely it wasn’t that hard to understand simple commands like ‘sleep’ or ‘eat’. Why did she look so hesitant to follow them sometimes?

  It wasn’t like we spoke different languages.

  “W-what about you?” she muttered softly.

  I frowned.

  Why was that what she was worried about?

  I thought she would just be happy to be sleeping in a bed again.

  I shrugged in response to her question.

  “I’ll sleep on the floor. Don’t worry, I’ll still be nearby.”

  She looked stunned at my answer.

  She stared wide-eyed at me, her mouth hung open.

  Her head swivelled several times between me and the bed I forcefully tucked her into.

  I ignored her and turned back towards the closet, intent on pulling out one of the blankets for myself.

  “W-WAIT!”

  The little girl behind me screamed out, panicked about something.

  I turned around, puzzled.

  “S-S-S…Sister… w-wait…”

  I froze.

  My train of thought lost itself.

  Something at the back of my mind started to crack and crumble.

  W-...

  What did she say?

  N-No, I-...

  I had to have heard that wrong.

  I collected myself, shaking my head.

  I realised I was shaking.

  Badly.

  When did that happen?

  Why-...

  Why was it so hard to breathe all of a sudden?

  “S-sorry, w-what did you say?”

  My vision was blurry, why was that?

  The girl flinched in fear as if she had done something wrong.

  She lowered her head, almost cowering.

  “I-I said…”

  Time seemed to freeze when I heard the word she spoke next.

  “Sister.”

  And the dam broke.

  Everything I was holding back flooded through my mind.

  The memories I had set aside, of that young man travelling the world, searching for something that surely was out there waiting for him.

  All his dreams and hopes, the guilt he held close to his chest, his worries and anxieties over his connections with other people.

  Every little thing he did and remembered. That I did and remembered.

  The ambition I had to get out of the city and make a better second life for myself. The belief that surely other people could be relied upon and strangers could be kind, that not everything had to be done by oneself.

  I had suppressed all of it for the sake of the girl in front of me.

  I couldn’t live with those thoughts in my head without compromising her health, so I locked them away and became a machine.

  I felt it come on, all of a sudden – the unbearable starvation, the haze and delusion, the maddening frenzy that bubbled inside of me, whispering to me to feast upon anything and everything it could find.

  But above everything else, one memory stood out, standing tall above the rest.

  I remembered-…

  I remembered there used to be a little boy who waited for his sister to come home.

  In a single word, the little girl in front of me broke through to him.

  The expression on her face worsened.

  My heart ached painfully in response.

  “I-I’m sorry…” she shrivelled in fear, panic overtaking her as her lip started to tremble, “I-I w-won’t s-say it again…”

  Why did she look like that?

  Why was she so scared?

  I felt something roll down my cheek.

  Was I-...

  Crying?

  Was she scared because of me?

  Against my will, I found myself sniffling.

  “N-no!”

  Before I even knew what was happening, I found myself shouting at her in a hurry.

  “Y-you didn’t do anything wrong! Don’t be scared! Everything’s fine, I-I just-...”

  My voice trembled.

  Then my lips trembled.

  My cheeks started to hurt.

  I pulled a desperate smile up onto my face.

  “C-could you… say that word again?”

  The girl froze.

  After a few seconds, her lips pulled open.

  It was little more than a whisper.

  “Sister.”

  …

  Oh.

  I was crying.

  I found myself breaking out into sobs.

  It flashed again in my mind; that little boy who used to exist, he used to be so excited and thankful to just be living every day, to be able to wake up in the morning and go to school.

  He was a stupid kid, embarrassing to be around beyond belief.

  He’d pick petty fights with older kids because he viewed them as challenging to his claim to the title of ‘best big brother’ or something stupid like that.

  But…

  I couldn’t fault him.

  He was fulfilled, and I wasn’t.

  He just wanted to make his little sister happy when she came home to him.

  I fought away the oncoming flood of tears and memories, collecting myself.

  I rubbed my red eyes clean, and looked back at the girl in front of me.

  I smiled warmly at her, and spoke to her softly.

  “Sorry, did you want to say something?”

  I think that might have been the first time I spoke to her in such a gentle way, given her confused reaction.

  “I-I just wanted to say…” the girl trailed off, avoiding my gaze, “y-you don’t have to sleep on the floor.”

  She hung her head low, and mumbled the rest of her words.

  “We could sleep together in the bed.”

  I sniffled one final time, letting the smile on my lips bloom.

  “Sure thing, S-...”

  The word was stuck on my tongue.

  It refused to come out.

  “S-Sis-... Sister.”

  Her face brightened upon hearing me call her that name, and I felt all the pressure in my heart crumble away.

  I withdrew from the closet and approached the bed.

  The little girl shuffled to the side, making space for me.

  I laid down next to her, and held her tightly to my chest.

  She was warm.

  I would never let go of her.

  Thank you.

  Thank you, dearly.

  Thank you, beyond what words could ever hope to convey.

  Thank you, to my parents, who cared for me despite everything.

  Thank you, to my friends, who stuck by my side and helped me during rough times.

  Thank you, to the strangers I met in my travels who helped me along the way.

  Thank you, to God, or whoever else was out there, for giving me this second chance at life.

  I promise, I would not squander it.

  And above all, thank you, to the little girl in my arms.

  I would protect her with my life.

  It was the only way I could make amends for wasting my previous life away.

  It was the only way I could repay my parents for the love they gave onto this undeserving son.

  It was the only way I could make up for wasting the life of that little boy who waited for his sister – the person that I used to be.

  That night, holding that warmth close to my chest, I made a resolution.

  An oath.

  This little girl – my little sister – would be my everything.

  She would want for nothing.

  She would grow up strong and wise, and I would feed her and teach her.

  She would hope and dream, and I would make sure they came to life.

  I would give her anything and everything.

  She would live and be happy, no matter what.

  At any cost.