"Listen to me, Cristiano," said Cristian's rough, hoarse, visibly broken voice.
In that unreal, suspended half-light, broken only by a pale, milky yellow glow that seemed to seep in from nowhere, Cristian was twenty-one years old.
His face bore the devastating, indelible marks of a life lived at a hundred miles an hour and ending in the worst possible way. Several days' worth of unkempt beard covered his rigid jaw, two dark and deep bags under his eyes hollowed out his cheekbones, and the skin of his face looked swollen, dull, worn down by nights spent drowning his soul in alcohol, poison, and rage. His short, wavy blond hair fell messily over his forehead, occasionally covering his blue eyes.
Standing before him was Cristiano, only eleven years old.
His blond hair was already beginning to show light-brown roots, while his gaze remained locked onto his older brother's with an ancient, poisoned anger, filled with a fierce contempt that desperately tried to hide an unbearable pain.
"When you become an adult," Cristian continued, cautiously taking a step toward him across the cold bricks of that dream, "sometimes you simply have to learn how to say no. To certain people, to certain easy shortcuts... to all those substances that promise to heal the emptiness inside you, only to end up digging your grave from one end to the other."
Cristiano stared at him, clenching his fists at his sides until his knuckles turned white, his fingernails digging into his skin.
"Then why didn't you say no to drugs?" the child asked, his voice slicing through the silence like a razor-sharp blade.
Cristian lowered his gaze for a second, struggling to swallow the bitter taste of that question.
"It was the only way I could forget Maia."
At those words, something inside the boy's chest finally snapped.
Cristiano's face twisted into an expression of blind fury and profound disgust. Tears broke through his eyelids, streaming hot and uncontrollably down his cheeks, reddened by the cold and humiliation.
"YOU THINK SO?!" Cristiano screamed with everything he had in his lungs, his voice cracked, high-pitched, completely hysterical. "I'M A FUCKING WIMP, A LITTLE WHORE! HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO GET OVER GIACOMO'S DEATH AND EMANUELE'S SUICIDE?! HUH?! TELL ME!"
Cristian opened his mouth to answer, to move his arms and try to calm him down, but the words died in his throat.
He simply stood there, frozen in front of his brother's emotional collapse.
"You always hide behind your bullshit excuses!" Cristiano continued screaming, taking another step forward with an unprecedented verbal violence, trembling from head to toe like a leaf in the wind. "Always playing the victim! 'Maia this, Maia that!' What about me?! What about us?! It disgusts me just to look at you while you say this bullshit! You think you're the martyr of this fucked-up world, but the truth is you're just selfish! Do you have any fucking idea what it's like to be left alone at eleven years old?! No, because you're not a loser like me! All you've ever thought about in life was winning for yourself! You strutted around, showing off, acting like the big shot, the tough guy everyone had to respect because you could beat them up!"
Cri took another step forward, his thin chest rising and falling at a frantic pace.
"I was alone when I was a kid, you understand?! At the soccer field, everyone made fun of me. They told me I was useless, that I was weak, that I wasn't good for anything... they never fucking passed me the ball! To everyone, I was just a shadow, a piece of trash! But then Giacomo came along... Giacomo actually saw me. He shook my hand, he made me laugh, he changed my life! And now that Giacomo is gone?! Now that Ema killed himself?! What am I supposed to do, huh?! Answer me! Should I do what you did?! Turn to coke? Meth?! Numb my brain like a fucking coward so I don't have to feel anything?! Or should I spend the rest of my life regretting that I didn't enjoy every single second while he was still here?!"
The whistling wind of the dream seemed to stop.
The silence that followed that desperate rant was terrifying—thick, suffocating, absolute.
Cristian slowly bent his knees.
He lowered himself onto the cold floor until he was exactly at the child's eye level. His blue eyes, wet with tears and hollowed out by regret, searched Cristiano's wounded gaze.
"I know you're much stronger than me, Cri," Cristian said, his voice cracked, completely stripped of any trace of arrogance or self-defense. "I know that behind those eyes that seem empty to you, there's a living, genuine child, filled with a beautiful light that nothing and no one will ever be able to erase. I raised you, Cri. I held you in my arms when you were nothing but a tiny little bundle crying in your crib. I made you food when there was no one else at home. I watched you change and grow bigger day after day..."
He swallowed hard.
"And unfortunately, I'm only realizing it now, when it's already too late: I was wrong about everything. I'm the loser, Cri. I'm the one who should have been the man, the father, the older brother I promised you I'd be under that streetlight."
Cristian took a trembling breath, letting his tears run freely through his unkempt beard and soak his cracked lips.
"I spent my entire life pretending to be tough, throwing punches at people, getting on my motorcycle and acting like some badass in the streets because I was nothing but a fucking coward who was terrified of the world. When my life became complicated, when I lost Maia and everything went dark, I felt lost... but I should have grown up! I should have looked at you, done what you're doing now, fought with everything I had and stayed standing! Instead, I gave up. I threw myself into the garbage like a piece of trash because destroying myself was easier than trying to rebuild."
He paused, his chest weighed down by everything he wished he could have said while he was still alive.
"But look at yourself, Cri. Look at the way you face your pain. You didn't hide behind a fist or a substance. When Mom screamed at you and spat poison at you, you kept looking forward. When they insulted you on the field, you ran harder, pulled that blond hair over your eyes, and made the best passes of all. You loved Giacomo and you loved Ema with a heart so pure, so wide open and courageous that I never had the strength to have one like it. You let this pain break your heart, but you stayed here, your fingers wrapped around the ball, fighting every single day."
Cristian reached out a hand, gently touching Cristiano's cheek and wiping away one of his tears with his thumb.
"Once, you asked me if you could be like me when you grew up..."
Cristian's voice trembled.
"Fuck, Cri. You're already a thousand times better than I ever was or could ever have become. You have a dignity, a purity, and a strength to live that I never even came close to having—not even at my best. There isn't a trophy, there isn't a great game, there isn't a single thing in this world that could ever make me prouder than I am of you."
His eyes softened.
"You're the most beautiful, pure, and important thing I've ever done in my life. You're my only victory, Cri."
He smiled through his tears.
"And I'm so proud of you... so fucking proud of the boy you're becoming."
Cristiano stared at him, his cheeks wet and his breathing shallow, as his brother's words pierced his chest like red-hot nails.
The fierce anger that had held him together until that moment collapsed all at once, disintegrating in the face of that naked, unfiltered truth.
"WHY DID YOU DIE?!" Cristiano screamed, his voice breaking into a desperate sob. "I WANTED YOU HERE WITH ME!"
Instead of answering, Cristian leaned forward and grabbed him.
He pulled him close with visceral strength, wrapping his large arms around the boy's thin shoulders and locking him inside a desperate, endless, unbreakable embrace.
For a second, Cristiano tried to push him away, pounding his fists against the jacket that still smelled of rain, gasoline, and tobacco.
But then he gave in.
He buried his face against his older brother's neck, clutching the fabric of his shirt with his tiny fingers, crying out every tear he had held back for months, for years.
Cristian held him tightly, pressing him against his chest as if he could shield him from all the cold in the world. He kissed his blond hair with the desperation of someone who knew that time was running out.
He could feel Cri's small body trembling in his arms, and he continued to hold him, rocking him gently in the darkness of the dream.
They remained like that for what felt like an eternity, fused together in an embrace that erased death, drugs, failures, and the blood on the asphalt.
Then, as Cristian's figure slowly began to become transparent, consumed by the light of awakening, Cristian whispered into his ear with infinite calm and solemn tenderness:
"Those years are over, Cri."
"Those years are over. Now you have to live."
A violent, freezing shiver tore through the darkness of the bedroom.
Cristiano, only eleven years old, suddenly opened his eyes in bed and jolted upright with a strangled gasp that tore through his throat.
His heart hammered against his chest like a madman. His shirt clung to his skin, soaked in cold sweat, while the room remained immersed in the still, heavy darkness of the night.
He stared at the empty wall in front of him for several seconds, breathing heavily, the bitter taste of tears still lingering on his skin.
He could still physically feel the embrace.
The smell of rain.
The warmth of his brother's chest.
With a sudden, furious gesture, angry at the entire world, he rubbed his face with the back of his hand, wiping away the last traces of weakness.
"Fuck you," Cristiano shouted into the empty darkness of the room.
He abruptly turned onto his other side, grabbed the blanket, and pulled it all the way over his ears to chase away the cold sinking into his bones.
Then he closed his eyes again, forcing himself to fall back asleep.