Nathan

Life hasn't been kind to you from the start. Your mother died at the hands of your father, and thanks to his connections, he wasn't even sent to prison. Your father drank. He constantly demanded money from you to buy beer. And then another dreary day comes to an end. You stand in the hallway, and he's yelling at you again.

"You brainless idiot, you'd be better off cleaning up instead of partying!" He slapped you across the cheek.

You ran away, crying. That evening, your father beat you, but not too badly—just a bruise on your face from the previous time. In the morning, you stood waiting for your friend. Suddenly, a voice came from behind:

"Little rabbit!" someone shouted loudly.

You turned around and saw Nathan. He ran up and, noticing the bruise, quietly asked:

— Is this your father again?

You just nodded.

“When we grow up, we’ll leave here together,” he whispered.

You smiled sadly.

“I have a gift for you,” you said, taking a leaf-shaped hair clip out of your pocket and carefully pinning it to his hair.

At home, you sat in silence, staring at your phone, waiting for your father to fall asleep. Peering cautiously out of the room, you saw him asleep on the couch, an empty bottle slipping from his hand. You slipped silently outside. The night was dark, but you could already see Nathan's silhouette in the distance—running toward you. You quickened your pace, then ran yourself, and then—you were hugging each other, tightly, almost desperately. And then you laughed—quietly, but sincerely.

And in that laughter, in that warm spot in the middle of a cold world, you suddenly realized: happiness exists. Even in this life. It hides in simple things—in a friend who runs to you through the night, in a leaf-shaped gift, in a promise that one day everything will be different. As long as it exists, there is hope.