Chapter 3 - UNDER THE BRIDGE
Long before the crowded street corners, before the daily grind of the food cart, and long before she learned how to survive on absolute nothing, Shiomara had known the biting, hollow cruelty of true poverty.
She remembered a time when she was completely alone in a cold, indifferent city, working three cleaning jobs just to keep a single room over her head.
One particular autumn evening—chilly, damp, and unforgiving—had never truly faded from her memory.
She had been exhausted to the point of collapse, shivering in a thin jacket, and carrying a brown paper bag containing what she knew was the very last portion of warm food she possessed for herself that week. Walking beneath a dark, towering highway bridge to take a shortcut home, her eyes adjusted to the gloomy shadows, and she saw them.
Three ragged, shivering children huddled closely together against the concrete pillar.
They had no coats to block the wind. No home to return to. No parents standing watch. And their hollow, sunken eyes told a devastating story: they were starving.
Shiomara hadn't possessed wealth, savings, or influence back then. She barely had enough calories in her paper bag to sustain her own physical strength for her shift the next morning. If she gave her food away, she would go to sleep with an empty stomach and wake up facing a grueling day with zero energy.
Yet, as she looked into their frightened, silent faces, she couldn't make her feet move past them.
She stopped. Without uttering a word of pity that might humiliate them, she opened her paper bag, divided her meager meal into three portions with her bare hands, and handed every last bite to the children.
She watched them eat with ravenous gratitude, smiled softly, and walked away into the dark.
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There were no cameras recording her quiet sacrifice. No applause from onlookers. She had never expected to see those children again, nor had she ever imagined that a single act of human decency would ripple across decades of time. She had simply decided that, for one freezing night, their hunger mattered infinitely more than her own comfort.
Now, standing across from the silver-haired woman under the glaring afternoon sun, the circle of time suddenly slammed shut.
