After arriving in London, the beating heart of England—or as Edgar preferred to call it, Britain—the two found themselves in a city pulsing with movement like a restless heart, yet they lingered in its dark edges, in a corner untouched by light.
They had no choice but to take shelter in an old, abandoned factory as their first refuge.
There, among rusted walls and shattered pipes, they slept beside rats and spiders, sharing stale bread as their main sustenance, learning that survival was not a choice but a human instinct.
On the first morning, Klein rose, dressed in his elegant blue suit—the last remnant of his dignified past—and headed into the city streets in search of work.
Every time he entered a shop, he was met with artificial smiles and soft voices saying:
"Welcome, sir. Black coffee? Or tea?"
But the moment he expressed his desire to work, the faces would shift as if betrayed.
The welcome would vanish, and the looks would turn to aversion.
When he was turned away, he would hear cold words that cut through his pride:
"I thought you were someone."
He would reply with painful calm:
"I am, indeed... someone."
But he no longer paid it any mind—he no longer bowed until his neck ached, nor did he lower his voice like a timid puppy.
Klein realized that people in this city respected appearance more than soul, and his elegant suit did not open doors for him but closed them because of his empty pockets.
In a world that worshipped appearances, elegance without influence aroused suspicion.And so, he decided to shed his past.
He entered an empty alley, tore his suit, smeared it with mud, and washed away its former shine, then resumed his search anew.
Only then did the world—the world of the jungle—accept him.
He found modest work in a factory, a small start but enough to restore his sense of survival.
While the father silently rebuilt his dignity, the son was constructing his own small world inside the abandoned factory.
Edgar would climb the pipes, discover locked rooms, and treat the rust like an old friend.
Then came the day he heard a sound behind him. He turned slowly, trembling, imagining a ghost from the remnants of the place.
But what he found was a child his age, holding a stick like a rifle, shouting enthusiastically:
"Bam! Bam! I got you, thief!"
Edgar froze, unsure how to respond, but the child repeated the line, determined to play out his theatrical scene.
So Edgar smiled, placed his hand on his chest, and said:
"Ah... you got me, I'm dying!"
Then he fell to the ground with exaggerated acting, sticking out his tongue like the dead.
The child laughed loudly, then extended his hand to Edgar, saying:
"I'm David. Do you play here too?"
Edgar replied, shaking his hand with a sincere, childlike smile:
"Yes, I play... just play."
He didn't tell him that he actually lived there.
From that moment, a friendship was born.
Their first game was cops and robbers, and Edgar chose to be the robber—perhaps because he had long felt the world treated him as one.
The years passed like a arduous climb up a cold mountain, but with each step, life granted them new warmth.
Their situation gradually improved until they moved into a small, simple but clean and respectable home.
On Edgar's eighteenth birthday, the house filled with laughter, candles, and neighbors.
Klein stood silently in a corner, smiling with tearful eyes.
Edgar approached him and asked tenderly:
"What's wrong, Father?"
Klein replied, gazing at the flickering light on the cake:
"Nothing... I just remembered my birthday with my father. We used to laugh just like this."
Edgar didn't respond. He simply placed his hand on his father's shoulder and pressed gently, as if saying: I'm here.
But the night had another face.
Klein stumbled out, drunk more on nostalgia than on alcohol, knocking on the city's doors as if knocking on his memories.
He knocked on a familiar door, and when it opened, he found Lewis—the face he never expected to see again.
Lewis said coldly:
"Hello, Klein."
Klein laughed, a drunken laugh mixed with sorrow:
"Hello? Is that all you have? Am I your neighbor or your coworker?"
Lewis replied with weary sternness:
"Enough, you're drunk. Come in, I have something to say... something important."
Klein staggered in, muttering like a lost child:
"I'm your son... I'm your son, Father."
In the morning, Edgar woke to find his father gone.
He didn't panic, thinking it was just another fleeting bout of sorrow.
But days passed—the second day, the third... still no trace.
Then he decided to search on his own, with David's help, without turning to the police—for the police, to him, were no longer a symbol of justice but of betrayal.
Four years of searching passed,
Four years of exhaustion, sleepless nights, and futility,
Until he finally found him.
Sitting in an alley, with a thick beard, tattered clothes, and eyes lost between the present and the past.
He was muttering fragmented words:
"Edgar... Lewis... Edgar... Lewis..."
Edgar approached slowly, covering his mouth to stifle his scream,
Then knelt before him and burst into tears.
He carried his father to the rooftop room he rented, laid him on the bed, and enveloped him in silence.
Klein was absent from the world, unaware of where he came from or who stood before him.
Nothing remained of him but the shadow of a man lost between two names—
The name of the son he loved, and the name of the father who betrayed him.
And the night kept echoing the same refrain,
As if the entire city chanted along with them:
"Edgar... Lewis..."