Seraphim - broken, lost and hopeless

It wasn't the first time I saw him. His name is Seraphim. This is not a joke or a call sign - that's what his mother called him. Now it sounded like an evil mockery. His real name, it seems, has already been erased even for himself.

A portrait that is hard to forget: He was unnaturally thin, as if his body was trying to become invisible. Pale skin, on which every new bruise and every old scar were visible like inscriptions on parchment. His clothes were a baggy school sweater and pants, bought a size larger to hide the outlines of his body. But nothing could be hidden. There was a doomed smoothness in his movements, as if he had already resigned himself to any blow. And in his eyes... There was neither malice nor fear. Only emptiness. A deaf, bottomless silence in which all the screams were drowned.

He was leaning against the rusty wall of the boiler room, and they were surrounding him. Three of them. They weren't monsters, just ordinary guys with indifferent faces. They weren't screaming. They were methodically, almost bored, mocking him. One of them was poking his arm with a lit lighter, and he didn't even flinch, but his skin turned red, adding a new mark to the old burns. The other one was emptying the contents of his backpack into a puddle: tattered notebooks, broken pencils, and the remains of a stale sandwich. The third one was just talking. In a quiet, nasty voice, he was listing everything that would be "done" to him tomorrow, the day after, and the following week.

And Seraphim was looking at the ground. He wasn't crying. He was nodding. Nodding as if he agreed with every word. His mind wasn't just broken; it had been reshaped. Humiliation and pain became his language, his atmosphere, his duty. He didn't wait for salvation. He waited for it to end for today, so that it could start again tomorrow.

That's when I couldn't take it anymore. It wasn't a heroic act. It was something deeper and darker—a pure, uncontrollable rage at the sight of complete, absolute acceptance of evil.

I didn't scream. I just stepped into the circle, standing between him and the man with the lighter. My movement was sudden, unexpected. I knocked the lighter out of his hand. It happened quickly—a push, a gasp of surprise, and confusion. They took a step back, not out of fear, but out of bewilderment. Their victim hadn't resisted for years, and the system had been working flawlessly.

Get out I said, my voice sounding foreign, low and dangerous, even to my own ears.

They muttered something, exchanging glances. First at me, then at him. At Seraphim. And then the most terrifying thing happened.

He looked up at me. Something flickered in that void. But it wasn't hope. It was a panicked, animalistic dread. He looked at me as if I were a new, more terrifying tormentor who was about to take away the only thing he had left—his predictable hell. His body cowered even more, and he began to tremble violently.

When their footsteps faded, we were left alone. The silence weighed heavily. I turned to him. He stood there, not breathing, looking up at me, ready for anything.

That's itI said quietly. They're gone.

He blinked. The word didn't get through.

Why? he finally whispered. His voice was hoarse from disuse.

Because it doesn't have to be that way. I simply answered

He shook his head negatively, as if I had said the stupidest and most improbable thing in the world.

It should. That's how it should be his tone was not defiant, but matter-of-fact, as if he were explaining the law of gravity to me. It's always like this with me.

I crouched down to be at eye level with him, and slowly reached out to help him gather his scattered belongings. He recoiled as if electrocuted, covering his head with his hand—a practiced, muscular gesture.

In that moment, I understood the depth of his situation. He was not just a victim. He was a prisoner in a labyrinth, its walls constructed from his own broken psyche. Kindness was more terrifying to him than cruelty, because it was unpredictable. It did not fit into his worldview. Protection is just a delay before a new, even more sophisticated revenge.

He looked at my outstretched but empty hand, then at his torn allowance in the puddle. And in his empty eyes, among the bruises and scars, the first, barely perceptible emotion finally appeared.

Confusion.

It was with this confusion that the most difficult part had to begin. Not with rescue, but with a painful, step-by-step re-teaching of a simple truth: that pain is not normal. That one can say no instead of nodding.

But for this, someone had to stay. To confront not only his tormentors, but also his greatest enemy—his own belief that he deserved all of this.

And I stayed. Not as a hero. But as a man who, that day, saw in a filthy yard, not a “weird femboy,” but a universe of pain, and could not look away.

And so... what will I do with him? Broke further? Or try to save?