The snow began to fall from the sky, painting a landscape that the young homeless man had already experienced in Japan. And the sudden change in temperature - from the hot sun of summer afternoons to the tough cold of winter nights - carried more than perfect contrasts of the feelings he had harbored within himself for seven years.
And being under the cheerful cherry blossoms last spring was enough to evoke in his feelings and memories that now gained more and more of a shape in the mourning that wrecked his soul; seducing him in silent invitations, once agonizing, but always in tune with the emotional turmoil that fused him deeper and deeper into the pit of depression. Thrown in a random gutter, one day the young homeless man bent his grimy face to the sky, and cursed God in his thoughts:
"Why won't God just kill me?".
After a compulsive cry that was also lost amidst so many sobs, he began to wipe away the tears that were running down onto his filthy scarf. Because now, buried in the mourning of his already impossible desires, the ignorance of his unanswered whys, the sharp curves of the road, he survived. He survived to change and remember, and also to remember and suffer. This was his fate. At first - in the morning - as soon as he woke up from a dreamless dream, his thoughts traveled far away, orbiting through scenes of the early life he had lived with his beloved. However, as soon as a few rays of sunlight passed through the clouds and began to warm his body, his dying gaze was seized by a sadness so serious that he was accompanied by until the end of the day.
The young man received help from religious people who arrived in bus convoys, and who later spread out on the sidewalks looking for people of all kinds: desperate, hungry, abandoned, or someone who just needed good advice. In fact, it was a human anthill, with volunteers everywhere, offering their legs and arms, helping to distribute clothes, food, medicine, blankets and also hugs loaded with promises of salvation.
"The soup is here. Should we get it while it's still hot?" said the volunteer Veronica.
Still, the young homeless man would not budge. With long, grimy hair covering a handsome but now bitter face, he hesitated fearfully. During the reception of meals at the tables, he would sometimes arch his body, pretending to give her some favorable response, but then he would give up with a half-moon lean, followed by the three steps that soon distanced him away from his table.
Volunteer Veronica, on the other hand, was a slender girl. A young woman of tenderness and charm. She had matured young. Maybe too young. In Colombia - precisely in Bogota, her hometown - she was always beside the old polished copper lamp, which pushed away the darkness from her face every time she ran up stairs, breathing airs of death, medicating her dying mother against a cancer that gnawed at her body and soul. To soothe her pain, Veronica would medicate her in silent tears, sometimes in alarmed tears, but always accompanied by her mother's agonized screams that literally tore through the deafening silence of the night.
As soon as she established herself in Japan, — with love overpowering her immense heart — Veronica sought to intersperse the commitment of her profession with the volunteer work she carried out with a lot of love. However, her younger sister - by only two years, as she liked to remember - teased her:
"Look at that... It's crystal clear that you have a crush on him, Veronica..."
To what Veronica defended herself:
"Stop being silly, Sofia! As if! Me and that beggar?" But then, already regretting what she had said before, she tried to correct herself: "What if I am? What's the problem? After all, he's just like you and me. Isn't him?"
to be continued
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