The same day Ima woke up in the hospital was the day Barry began his community service for the first time, collecting trash.
He had been almost tossed out onto the street like nothing, with a fear instilled by the law. Every time he considered that a false move or approaching a certain zone would trigger the signal on his ankle monitor, a shadow crept across his mind. Even so, he was proving to be quite good at playing the role of a liar—all for the purpose of building trust so he could eventually carry out his plan.
"Hey, kid!" shouted the oldest collector in the group from the other side of the park's small pond. "Don't stop working if you don't want me to report you to an officer! There's still an hour left before the break!"
Barry nodded to avoid further trouble and continued picking up cans, used papers, and dog waste that some irresponsible owner had left behind.
"I hate being here, and this heat isn't helping at all... I smell like shit," he muttered, struggling with the trash picker to lift a can. "Thinking that I have to be in this situation for months is repulsive... If only they hadn't abandoned me like this..."
The can wouldn't budge, and in his frustration—fueled more by internal sadness than anger—he began to pick repeatedly at the ground, growling. When it still didn't give way, he kicked the can with excessive force, tearing up grass and sending the can flying into the lake.
One of his coworkers noticed and approached him.
"Did something happen, Barry?" he asked, placing his hand on Barry's shoulder with familiarity.
The man didn't expect to see the face Barry was making—a look he had never seen on another man. His face, flooded with absolute sadness and etched with the lines of imminent weeping, made the man feel crushed.
Before he could say anything, Barry regained consciousness of his surroundings.
"Go to hell and leave me alone!" he shouted, pulling away and swinging the trash picker roughly.
For the rest of the hour, Barry hid his very human need to cry, focusing on picking up trash and sometimes taking out his frustration on whatever he found, even the dirty trash cans.
Finally, the break hour arrived. While everyone gathered to eat at one of the park tables, Barry preferred to sit entirely alone on a distant bench, turning his back on everyone.
"Does he still refuse to join us?" asked one of the collectors between bites.
"Screw him, he's just a criminal like any other! As soon as he finishes this and turns of age, he'll surely do worse things!" the old man shouted with rage.
"Maybe this is just his way of fighting the pain... After all, he's still just a kid," commented the man who had seen his strange expression minutes earlier.
The group went silent at the comment. No one argued, and they simply continued eating.
For his part, Barry bit into his food with ferocity while watching the people coming and going in all directions. He saw a father playing with his son, making him feel even more annoyed.
There was a reason why Barry's almost unreflective mind kept feeling so suffocated: The day he was released, Barry didn't take long to rush home after the authorities' instructions and warnings, childishly holding onto the hope that he could explain everything without anything—not even shame—interrupting his side of the story. Unfortunately, when he opened the door with the key his father usually kept hidden in one of the many pots around the entrance, an enormous weight, far greater than that of the law, overshadowed his existence: his family had completely abandoned him. There was no trace of anyone in any corner. Despite Barry running everywhere, opening doors and closets and screaming, he found no one. It was final: both his father and brother had left him.
Everywhere he went, a heaviness followed and hammered at his existence over and over again. The hysteria of searching his home again and again didn't stop until several minutes later when, checking the kitchen, he noticed a sheet of paper stuck to the refrigerator.
He removed the magnet holding it and took the paper with an extreme tremor. He opened it with anxiety and read the contents with eyes wide as saucers. In just ten seconds of reading, Barry was broken.
The paper slid to some part of the kitchen that Barry didn't even care about. Having fallen to his knees with his hands on the cold marble from the shock, he began to curse, strike out, and lament his position.
II
"What am I supposed to think about all this? Despite what Barry did, he never dared to cross his limits until that day. I didn't think he would do something like that. This is so heavy... I thought that with this I could shame the three of them and slowly push their idiocy away, and it all turned into a dilemma. At least there's a possibility that the other two won't dare speak to me again..." Ima finally received his tea and thanked the waiter with confusion. "Even if some say he deserved it, shouldn't that decision be mine? So, what to think?" The last question resonated in his mind as if someone else were right there with his thoughts. Ima sipped a large portion of the hibiscus tea, and the intense, acidic flavor of the drink ran across the anatomy of his tongue.
"Dilemma, dilemma, dilemma... How frustrating. The report wasn't even mine, and yet they made it effective. Indirectly, I ended up causing Barry to be seen as a criminal now." Ima held the teacup with unusual force, even with slight tremors, because of the demand he was placing on his brain to think. Anyone who had observed him would have thought he was having some kind of neurotic delusion. "I should have approached everything differently. I just wanted Barry to feel fear and decide not to do anything again once the teachers and cameras recorded everything. Not something like what happened."
Ima paid for the tea and left the shop to continue his reflective adventure. He still hadn't dared to test his abilities in a focused way, and he ignored banal interactions as he had done with Vanesa. Nor did he yet have clarity in his mind regarding how Barry's case concluded.
He moved along the large sidewalk, dodging some unsuspecting people with phones in hand. The morning cold made him feel congested, his eyes aching from the chilly gusts.
Ima saw an arcade, and his still-existent "inner gamer" made him enter to distract himself for a while. He felt good about having taken another day off, although since he left the house, the looks people gave him because of his scars made him want to run back home more than once.
"Welcome! Do you need to change some coins?" asked a girl, possibly a university student, as soon as she saw Ima enter.
"No, no, I'm fine," Ima lowered his head out of embarrassment. "Thanks anyway."
The atmosphere was serene and there were few people inside the shop; except for the characteristic sour stench of such places, everything comforted him. He put in a coin to beat the MUGEN of the only machine he found. As soon as he touched the controls and placed his hand on the joystick, a shadow crossed his face, and he felt so foreign to himself, remembering that barely two weeks ago, he was a complete outcast.