The ice became translucent as the machine moved forward, polishing and shining it, yet Elian could still see the lines, once cracks, beneath the surface.

It was funny, no matter how much they passed the wheels over and over again, all night, they wouldn't be able to repair the cracks.

So the ice was his soul, his haggard and wounded self, and... the machine was himself, the person he should be.

The man everyone was waiting for trying to heal and repair the cracks in his true self.

It was exhausting.

An impossible task.

He knew it but if he let the cracks reach the surface then everyone would see them, his protection mechanism would be violated and all the pain would escape.

A clearing of the throat next to him brought him out of his thoughts.

Lan was there, wearing his uniform, and by the redness of his knuckles, he could tell he'd been in another fight.

-Are you coming to scold me too?

-I could... but that won't ease your heart, right? - I didn't wait for an answer, Elian looked devastated, the dark circles under his eyes indicated his lack of sleep, and he probably wasn't eating well either. Relax, it's not the end of the world.

- My family abandoned me, my team abandoned me, they murdered my dog, I fell from the seventh floor and relapsed. My mother calls every day to offer me different rehabilitation places throughout the world, no one from the team answers my messages.

Maybe it's not the end of the world, but it's pretty close, don't you think?

- You're still alive, that's the important thing.

-How do you do it?

-Do what?- the lights of the place made her blonde hair shine and the red tips made the whole thing look similar to fire.

Elian remembered their first meeting, fire was definitely his element.

-Live. Live without being affected by the rest.

-Ah, that. You just have to break through everything, the looks, the whispers, the looks, them. Then you can go out, and shine for who you are, and live for you.

-I don't think I'm capable.

-You are good at playing, the best here.

It's not different. You once said that hockey was your life, well, to turn on the light you must break the ice, right? You past them without worrying about whether they're talking about you, who's watching you, or even what's going to happen tomorrow. It's the same. Break through everything.

-I can't.

-Why not?, what you did, what you say, what you are, it's not bad. You're not wrong, you just believed that way, you believed their words and that's isn't your fault. But, if you stay like this, if you keep holding back, hiddin yourself, then it will become your fault.

-You sound like and expert.

-Maybe I am. Look, I got my curses to, everyone was but I'll tell you something: you can chose.

-I can't chose not to be me.

-That's right. Again: you are you and it's nothing bad about it, but you can chose if acept it or not.

Falling is the easy part. You just do it.

One day you’re at your cousin’s birthday party, at eleven, and while the adults aren’t looking, he hands you a cigarette. At that time it seems like a game, the adrenaline of being discovered turns it into one and even the smoke inside your lungs seems pleasant despite coughing and coughing to expel it.

The next day you’re out with your friends, one of them crosses over to the opposite sidewalk to exchange words with a guy in a black hood. He comes back smiling, hands out a few cigarettes to the group, much smaller than you remembered but you know, times change. By the time you can tell the difference in the taste of the smoke it’s too late, everyone is laughing, joking and encouraging you to keep smoking. The effects are good at first, you don’t feel them… until the next day.

And that day is followed by another, and another and days are followed by years.

Then your father dies, in a car accident and you can’t remember anything from the night before. The images run through your head all mixed up, an argument, my mother crying, myself escaping insults, running aimlessly through the streets until someone calls my name. They are my friends and I take refuge in them, in them… and in the smoke and the injections.

They steal a car to make me feel better, they drive it at full speed through the streets; it’s not a big deal for us, we’ve stolen, beaten and even extorted. The thing is, when you see a lady walking at night to the bus stop, you don’t think about helping her. When you see through the windows a twenty-four hour worker alone in the store, you don’t think about just stopping to buy something and that’s it. No.

You only think about getting more, and more because, while your body is poisoned, your mind is healed.

The remorse comes later, the guilt, the “it should have been better” but it’s too late, you can’t change anything and that hurts you, and you know very well the way to push away the pain. You want to change, you can’t. You don’t want to get a shot that day, but you do it anyway. You don’t want to be out in the cold at that time of night, you know mom is home worried about you but your feet don’t come back.

They say it takes 21 days to form a habit. I wish that were a lie. The funny thing about life is that it doesn’t notice the passage of time, it’s just a day. But, when the days come together and the decisions you made torture you, it’s still a day but you’d rather not have opened your eyes to see the sun, the disappointment in some eyes and the hope in others.

Because no matter how bright the sun shines, no matter how cold the wind, no matter how your mother’s smile. Everything around you is black, you try to reach out your hand for help but you come up against a wall, then another, and in that moment you know: you fell.

You are a fallen one.

When I was a child I used to wake up in the mornings with music, my mother liked to play it as soon as the sun appeared in the sky. Then, while she was preparing breakfast, cleaning the house and so on, I could hear her singing from my room. She was not good at singing by any means but she gave me peace, happiness. Even when she opened the door I pretended to be asleep because that way she would sing louder to wake me up.

She was like a ray of sunshine. Bright. Warm.

As I grew up I learned her songs, I knew the exact moment to be out of tune, where to incorporate more feeling than necessary and where to pretend to cry. It became a routine, just the two of us, singing and being happy at sunrise.

But, if you read the previous chapter you will know, that happiness ended one day and, if you did not read it then it makes no sense to stay here so go read it and then come back.

Anyway, in this part readers are wondering: what happened?. Why did they stop singing in the mornings? The answer is me, myself. The human being called Elian Blake who writes these words.

Dramatic, right?

In reality, what always happens happened, something that all children want to do more, when they do it they prefer to go back in time: grow up. Don’t get me wrong, I grew up with love, respect and awareness, my mother treated me like a treasure, a pretty tough one, valuable enough to protect from danger, and strong enough to let the world see it. She warned me about the world, look both ways before crossing the street, don’t talk to strangers, even your friends can betray you and you must take care of yourself. The classics.

My father was his opposite, in his eyes I was nothing more than a small version of him, destined to follow the same path, through the same streets, at the same time, at the same damn second. He started karate at five, I did too. He was in advanced classes all through elementary school, so did I. He surrounded himself with good friends, so did I. He helped mom with the cooking, so did I. He had his first girlfriend at thirteen, I… yeah… I didn’t.

The future of our relationship went downhill from that point on. A rift was created, quite small to be honest but, over time, it did nothing but deepen more and more. And there was nothing I could do about it.

Father was more attentive to me from then on, read “attentive” in quotes, the same ones people use when talking to define a word that doesn’t fit the description at all but we just can’t find another more suitable.

Questions about grades when I got home from school took a backseat, giving priority to questions about girls and falling in love. I don’t blame him. By then I was about to turn fifteen, I was tall, handsome and my body wasn’t bad either, anyone would assume I had a following of admirers. It wasn’t entirely fake, I had female friends, some of whom were interested in dating me in the loving couples way. The disinterested one was me.

I just wasn’t feeling it. I wasn’t attracted to girls, the curves everyone was drooling over had no effect on me. My friends talked about dating and “going to first base” but I couldn’t keep up with them.

I wasn’t all that attracted to men back then either. I was in the middle, a big grey area in which I felt quite comfortable. I liked girls of course, I found some pretty, some cute but not attractive. Unfortunately for me, finding women attractive was the norm in society, it was the norm for my father, it was the norm for my friends, it was the norm for the world.

That made me abnormal.

I wasn’t what everyone imagined I would be. And I had no intentions of being one either. I was happy with me, it didn’t seem like a serious matter, I mean, there were surely many young men over fifteen without a girlfriend, right?, couldn’t be the only one. But I was the only son in the family, the only great heir, the next one to expand the line of succession and, when they thought I wasn’t listening, my parents blamed each other.

-Why do you sing every morning? You taught him to clean and cook before changing the tires on the car- he said.

-That’s not important, you forced him to attend that music camp first- she said. I, behind the door, didn’t remember anything about the music camp.

-We need to correct it, the neighbors start to suspect. At this age young people steal their parents’ cars to go to parties, they sneak women into their rooms.

-Elian isn’t interested in those things. He’s a good boy, he wouldn’t steal your car.

-I wish he would. I wish he would be normal for once.

-I won’t talk about it anymore. My son will grow up with love and company, no more reproaches and you better not say any of this to him or you will be left without a key for months.

-May, understand. It’s for his own good, people will make fun of him if he’s different, no one will want to be around him.

-Enough. Go to work.

Yes, my mother was a ray of sunshine, my shield, my protection against everything that wanted to hurt me. And I, well, I tried to do my part.

I couldn’t let her face everything alone, right? So I tried. I tried to be like my father… and my mother… and myself. A rather exhausting task: I sang with her in the mornings, then I watched sports with him in the afternoon and I trained karate at night, I tried to come home late to create the illusion of rebellion.

I tried to get to the car but I couldn’t start it without the keys but, to my surprise, father didn’t get angry, he seemed relieved. Of course he was, I behaved like a normal young man.

The changes happened overnight. You know the feeling of looking at someone and suddenly thinking how attractive they are? Well, it happened to me in high school, finally a normal and not at all reprehensible behavior of wanting to kiss someone just because they are attractive, finally my heart was beating wildly because of a presence. A man. My classmate, my karate partner, my childhood friend.

And you can guess that things did not turn out well. Not well at all.

You see, my friend, who I was slightly in love with, had a lot of family problems, and many is an understatement. Here’s a summary: he was adopted at twelve, he could never get used to them, he started hanging out with people from the night, he started smoking and from there everything got worse. Oh, right, remember the “one day a friend passes you a cigarette but it tastes different,” that was him. Yes. He introduced me to that world of toxins.

It was his way out.

I wasn’t sure if he loved me the same way, most likely he didn’t. But I was happy by his side, I woke up in the mornings with his name in my head, I sang with my mother hoping to get to class early to see him. I went to training happy and content and I didn’t mind spending hours and hours outside the house walking the streets with him to find the best price.

While I was discovering his world, I was discovering myself. A simple touch, a look, a smile and that was enough to make my heart about to explode. I wanted to be with him, and that feeling had little to do with male friendship. I wanted to be with him so much that I inhaled whatever he put on my lips, I put whatever was in that syringe without caring about anything. Idiot, right?

By then I was seventeen years old and still didn’t have a girlfriend, nor had I been found kissing a girl in the school hallways, nor did I send messages late at night. Father’s reproaches returned, this time towards me. He controlled me, where I was, who I was with, what I did, it exasperated me… and I became the one who lit the tip first, I became the one who calculated the measure and I was the one who knew the places with the best price.

And I was the one who hid the drugs in my underwear drawer.

And I was the one who opened the door for him that night when mom and dad go to dinner. And I ordered pizza using his card, and I bought some more shots too.

And I was the one who rested my head on his shoulder crying, barely aware of reality. And I was also the one who kissed him, over and over again until his body became everything.

And where am I going with the endless “it was me”? That’s precisely it. Yes, my love and my father’s pressure possibly pushed me to them, they took me to a point where I didn’t recognize myself when I looked in the mirror. But I was the one who allowed it. And I paid the price.

The morning after pizza night, I was in bed, naked, with a man next to me. And mom opened the door, it didn’t take long for her to realize what happened. She was more horrified by the amount of substance on the floor than by the naked guy next to me. But dad. Oh, dad didn’t care about the substances, in fact, it would have been better for him to find me dead from an overdose than to confirm his suspicions. And no. I’m not lying, he said it himself.

-You should have injected that shit into your heart before making love to a man- I remember it well.

And I remember it for two reasons, first: we didn’t make love, we were too high to think about that. Second, after those words I hit him, it was the first time I used my masculine strength against someone and, after that, mom kicked me out of the house.

And after that I fell into a hole. A very dark one.

Note: It’s pretty ugly, and somewhat traumatic, but when I started writing this, I promised myself I would write it truthfully. Just that. I promised myself not to lie, not to ignore details or anything like that, like calling things by another name. No. Things happened just as I write them now, if I don’t remember something I’ll say it, if I’m not sure about something I’ll say it too. But I won’t sit here and lie and mask the events under a cloak of light, if any of the readers are sensitive to this kind of dark experiences, my recommendation is that you don’t read the next chapter, just skip it and I promise that the bad will end soon.