Filippo entered the clinic without stopping and placed Akira on the metal bed. Akira's body hit the surface with a weight far lighter than it should have been. Filippo stepped aside, watching with his arms crossed.
The doctor wasted no time. He tore away what remained of Akira's clothes and began cleaning the dried blood around his shoulder. His hands moved quickly, but his eyes could not hide their concern.
"He lost a lot of blood… how is he still alive?"
Filippo didn't answer. He remained standing in silence, watching every movement. After a moment, the doctor's hands suddenly slowed. He stopped completely. He leaned closer to the wound, his eyes lighting up with clear shock.
"Wait… this isn't possible…"
Filippo raised his head at once.
"What? What is it?"
The doctor hesitated before answering, as if trying to confirm what he was seeing.
"The bullet… it's not here."
Filippo's expression stiffened. He stepped forward.
"What do you mean it's not here? He was shot by the police."
The doctor carefully ran his fingers around the open wound.
"Exactly. It should have been lodged in his shoulder… but it's gone. As if someone removed it."
He lowered his head further, noticing the details. The uneven scratches around the wound. Deep marks, rough and imprecise, but deliberate. He slowly lifted his gaze to Akira's pale face and said:
"It can't be… did he take it out himself? These… are claw marks."
Filippo's eyes widened. A cold shiver ran through his body. This wasn't just a wound. It wasn't just an escape. This was a child who tore a bullet out of his own body. Alone. No tools. No painkillers. No one.
At that moment, something broke in the image Filippo had always held of Akira. He wasn't just a strangely shaped child. He wasn't a simple "mistake." He was something else… something Filippo didn't understand yet.
The doctor took a deep breath and began to stop the bleeding. He pressed, cleaned, and tightly wrapped the bandage around the shoulder.
"This boy isn't normal, Filippo. Any other child would have died long ago. He's clearly been injured for hours, and yet… his body endured far more than it should."
After a few minutes, the doctor finished his work and wiped the sweat from his forehead.
"I did what I could. But he needs rest. His body is strong, yes… but even that has limits. If this continues, this won't be the last time you see him on the edge of death."
Filippo lowered his voice as he stared at his son's face:
"I know. Keep this between us. I don't want anyone to know he's here."
The doctor gently placed the oxygen mask over Akira's face and made sure his breathing was steady. He hung the IV bag on the metal stand and inserted the needle into Akira's vein. He looked again at the pale face, now slightly more stable.
His voice came out low:
"How long will you keep fighting, boy?"
The doctor stayed silent for a few seconds, then quietly withdrew into the next room, leaving Filippo alone with Akira.
Filippo stared for a long time at Akira's body lying on the bed. The tubes. The bandages. The dried blood on his fingertips.
At last, he moved. He sat on the chair beside the bed, turned his head slightly, and looked at Akira's face again.
His voice was low, uncertain:
"Look at you…"
He paused.
"You escaped from prison… killed men… tore a bullet out of your body with your own hands, then walked back to my door as if… as if you didn't know where else to go."
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
"You knew, didn't you? Even while you were bleeding… you knew this was the only place left."
He reached out without touching him, stopped just before his fingers reached Akira's forehead, then pulled his hand back. His fist clenched.
"The strange thing… is that I can't say I'm surprised."
He leaned back in the chair and stared into the empty space ahead.
"You know, when I was your age… no one would have taken me to a doctor if I were you. There was no clinic. No old man with medical glasses. No one saying, 'Take him in quickly before anyone sees.'"
His voice dropped even lower:
"There was no one at all."
[23 years earlier]
A sharp scream tore through the air.
"You understand nothing! You're always trying to control everything!"
"And you? All you do is shout and hide behind your bottles!"
The house was small and worn down, its walls thin. Filippo was just a barefoot child standing at the hallway entrance, holding a piece of dry bread in his hand. He was looking at his mother in the kitchen, her face red, her hand raised as she screamed.
"Don't interfere! This has nothing to do with you!"
On the other side, his father violently threw a chair.
"Enough! I'm sick of this house! I'm sick of you and your shouting!"
Something slammed into the wall. Glass shattered. Behind them, his older siblings were in the living room, laughing nervously, as if all of this were just familiar noise.
"Let them fight."
"They do this every day."
Filippo asked in a quiet voice, barely audible:
"Is… dinner ready?"
No one answered.
His mother screamed again:
"Do you see what you've done? Even the children can't stand you!"
His father replied with bitter sarcasm:
"Don't use them against me. You didn't raise anyone in this house."
He gave a short laugh, then added:
"Neither did I."
Filippo sat on the floor, leaned his back against the wall, and slowly chewed the bread. He wasn't just hungry. He was used to it.
On another night, the shouting was louder. A slap. Muffled crying. Then a door slammed shut.
The father entered the room, looked at the children, and said coldly:
"Sleep. I don't want to hear a sound."
Filippo asked:
"Dad… aren't you tired of all the shouting?"
The father stopped at the door. He didn't turn around at first. His body swayed, his shoulders slumped, a half-empty bottle hanging from his hand. His eyes were red from heavy drinking.
He laughed a short and broken laugh:
"You're asking if I'm tired?"
He slowly turned and looked at Filippo.
"Shut up and go to sleep."
Filippo clenched his fist. His heart was pounding unnaturally fast, anger beginning to consume him. He took one step forward and said:
"I hate you."
The father froze for a second, a brief look of surprise crossing his face. Filippo continued, his voice rose despite himself.
The words came out broken, but honest:
"I hate living here. I hate this house. I hate you, and I hate Mom. All you ever do is shout. You never once asked me if I was scared, or hungry, or tired. You're not a father. You're a bad person."
A heavy silence fell. The bottle stopped swaying. At last, the father's expression changed. He clenched his jaw, a twisted smile forming on his lips.
"You hate me?"
He started walking toward Filippo.
"You don't know what you're talking about, you little bastard."
He lifted the bottle slightly, looked at it, then looked back at Filippo.
"You want a father?"
In a single instant, the bottle rose, then came crashing down. Glass struck Filippo's head and shattered in every direction. Filippo didn't understand what had happened right away. He only felt a sudden heat, then an overwhelming weight pulling his body down.
He fell to the floor. Blood began to flow immediately, running down his forehead. He tried to lift his head, but the world was spinning. The sounds grew distant and blurred.
The father stood over him, breathing heavily, staring at him without expression.
"Learn to keep your mouth shut."
Then he turned his back and staggered out of the room.
No one came. The mother didn't scream. The siblings didn't run in. No doors opened. Filippo remained lying on the floor, blood beneath him, the cold creeping into his small body. He raised his trembling hand and touched his head, looked at his blood-stained fingers, and did not cry.
That night, Filippo learned only one lesson, a lesson he never forgot: cruelty is the only language this world understands. And a father… is not necessarily the one who protects you. Sometimes, he is the one who smashes your head and walks away.
The years passed. Filippo grew up without care, without direction, driven only by blind stubbornness to survive. By the time he turned twelve, he was no longer a child in the true sense. His body was thinner than it should have been, his shoulders slumped, his gaze always cautious, never trusting anyone.
On one dark evening, he sat on the back steps of the building. He pulled a stolen cigarette from his pocket. His fingers trembled slightly, not from fear, but because it was his first time.
He lit it. The smoke hit his lungs harshly. He coughed hard, bent forward, almost threw it away, but stopped. A few moments later, he took another drag, slower this time. The pain faded, replaced by something else… a warm weight, a dull numbness.
From that day on, the cigarette became his companion. Not because it made him feel strong, but because it silenced something inside him. Something he didn't have a name for.
At home, things grew worse day by day. His mother screamed more and existed less. She spent most of her time either crying or shouting, sometimes both at once. His father no longer settled for alcohol alone. He came home late at night, and sometimes didn't come home at all. And when he did, the house turned into a battlefield.
"Where's the money?"
"You're the one who spends it all!"
"You don't work!"
"And you do nothing but wail!"
Plates shattered. Doors slammed. Words were thrown like knives. The older siblings began to disappear one by one. One ran away and rarely returned. Another started spending his time on the streets, coming home late, with empty eyes that looked just like their father's.
As for Filippo… no one asked about him. No one asked why he came back with torn clothes. No one asked why he had grown quieter. No one asked about the bruises that appeared and then vanished.
One night, the father entered the room drunk. He looked at Filippo, who was sitting on the floor smoking.
The father paused for a moment, then pointed at the cigarette and said:
"Where did you get that?"
Filippo slowly raised his eyes and replied with cold emptiness:
"From the street."
The father gave a short laugh:
"You're learning fast."
Then he turned and walked out without a second thought.
That night, Filippo realized something else: no one would stop him from falling. And no one would hold his hand if he did. So he began to learn on his own. He learned how to close his heart, how to hide his weakness, and how to turn cruelty into armor. He didn't know then that these very lessons… would later make him a father who didn't know how to be a father.
When Filippo turned fourteen, he entered his father's room. He quietly opened the wardrobe and found an old cloth bag hidden behind the clothes. He opened it slowly and found more money than he expected.
He stood there for a moment, staring at it, then said to himself in a low voice:
"You were never a father… so why do you expect me to be a son?"
He took all the money and closed the wardrobe. He left the room and headed for the front door. He carried nothing but his old jacket, a pack of cigarettes, and the cash. When he closed the door behind him, he felt no sadness. No fear. He felt something closer to inner silence, as if the noise he had lived in for years had suddenly stopped.
He rented a small room in an old building on the edge of the city. It wasn't a real apartment, just a narrow space with a single bed and a kitchen that could barely be called a kitchen.
The next day, he started working. He didn't choose. He didn't search much. He took the first thing put in front of him. Cleaning, loading, deliveries… anything for money. He came back every night with a tired body and cracked hands, but he returned to his own place, not someone else's house. He ate little. Slept little. Worked a lot.
No one said to him:
"You're too young."
No one shouted:
"You're a burden."
He was alone. And that was enough. The first months were hard. There were nights he went to sleep hungry, and others when he sat on the floor with his back to the wall, staring at the ceiling, wondering if this was really better. But he never went back.
After two years, his place changed. He moved to a simpler but cleaner apartment. Then to a slightly better one. His work became steadier. His body grew stronger. His gaze became more stable. He stopped wasting his money. He stopped trusting people easily.
And when he turned twenty, he bought his first home (the same middle income house he lives in now). He began to eat better. Sleep regularly. Work, then come back. A simple life… but a stable one.
He thought he had succeeded. He thought running away was enough. He didn't realize that the cruelty he learned to survive… would stay with him. And that the child who was never raised… would one day grow up and become a father… without knowing how to be one.