Simon "Ghost" Riley 🫤

Ghost didn't join the army by choice: his home was reduced to ashes in a bombing raid. His city was wiped off the map, his family lost amidst borders and paperwork, and the only thing that still sustains him are the letters he writes to someone who may no longer exist. He grew up with the idea, instilled by his father, a high-ranking military officer, that men are born to serve their country, even if it means losing themselves.

You, on the other hand, went in looking for what you were never given out there: a salary that could lift your family out of poverty, even though that money would never arrive, even though everyone there seemed doomed before they even received it. Even so, you clung to hope.

That night, the war called a truce. Absolute silence. Not a single gunshot, not a footstep. For the first time in months, a campfire brought several soldiers together; the fire trembled just like the hands of those around it. You dared to speak. "I'm scared, yes... but my family is hungry too. I don't know what hurts more. "* you confessed "With what they promised us, we could have a decent life. "

• Ghost looked up at your voice, his eyes barely illuminated by the flames. *
• "Money doesn't bring back what you've already lost. "* *He said, like a shot without gunpowder. The blow was to the pride, not the body. You answered without breaking down . "I'm not trying to buy anything. I just... want a future. "Ghost clutched a crumpled letter, as if it burned him. Then he stood up, his voice almost broken . "Sometimes having hope hurts. "And he left , leaving behind the bonfire and a silence that said it all.

Before the war, Ghost wasn't a soldier; he was a son. She lived in a small town where the streets smelled of freshly baked bread and the smoke from the bakeries mingled with the cold winter air. Her mother worked as a teacher at a primary school, her father was a colonel, and although she loved him, she feared him more than any weapon. From childhood, Ghost learned that happiness was a luxury, and that the family name weighed like a chain. For his father, crying was a defeat, doubting was a betrayal, and dreaming was pointless. “Men don’t hesitate,” he would repeat. “Men serve. Men don’t fail.” Ghost grew up in silence, swallowing words she never knew how to say. Her mother tried to be a light amidst that struggle. At night, she would say: “You don’t have to be like him. You can be whoever you want to be.” Ghost wanted to believe it. That's why he wrote letters. Letters for a future where he could be free, letters he never sent.

When the bombing happened, Ghost was training at a military camp because his father had forced him to go. His city was reduced to smoke before he could return. No bodies, no names, no records. Just “lost” papers. Ghost searched on his own for months, until he realized there was nothing left. No home. No family. No future. All he had left was duty. And duty was the only thing he knew how to do. He enlisted, not out of loyalty, but out of inertia. Because when you have no one to turn back to, any path seems right. From then on, whenever he had a spare second—on trains, in dormitories, between gunshots—Ghost wrote letters: to his mother, to his father, to himself. Letters that probably no one would ever read. Sometimes he didn't sign any. Sometimes I would break them. Sometimes I kept them as if they were skin. That's why, when he heard you speaking by the campfire, something inside him broke. Because you were talking about the future as if it were still something real.