"I HATE MATH!!! I hate it! I hate it! I hate it! With all my heart! I HATE IT!"
The elderly Vector, rolled up in his reddish blankets to shield himself from the cold, muttered these words with fury.
"Damn cold!"
The sound of cars speeding by prevented him from getting any sleep.
"Damn cars!"
It had been three days since the snow had stopped falling from the cloudy sky, completely coating the city and its streets in a deep white.
"Damn snow!"
Lying on the sidewalk of one of these noisy streets was Vector. Despite taking refuge under a bridge with his blankets, he couldn't stop shivering from the cold. His face was pale, his lips purple, framed by a long and disheveled white beard, while his nose and ears stood out in red.
As if that weren't enough, he was hungry, and his stomach growled in protest.
"Damn hunger!"
The prolonged fasting for days had pushed his old and frail body to the brink.
"Enough! I can't take it anymore!" cursed the old Vector. "I can't take it anymore: I absolutely must eat something!"
However, apart from a small bottle of water, he had nothing to satisfy his hunger.
Consequently, he decided to stretch out his right hand toward the cardboard cup sitting on the ground next to him and check the results of his usual week spent begging on the streets.
"Let's see how many coins I have: 1… 2… 3… Hmm, what comes next? Tsz, damn it! Fuck math!"
Furious and with a trembling hand, the old Vector simply took all the coins from the cup and stuffed them into his right pocket, the one that wasn't torn. Then, slowly, he withdrew his arm and returned entirely under his reddish wool blankets, shielded from the cold and the snow blown under the bridge by the icy wind.
"Tsz, it doesn't matter. With this money, I should still be able to buy something tomorrow. Bread, perhaps? Maybe, if I'm lucky, I'll even find some expired jam among the trash of some bar!"
At the thought of being able to eat, especially something sweet, an unconscious smile spread across his wrinkled face.
But at that moment, while he was daydreaming about the next day's breakfast, the old Vector began to feel increasingly tired, and little by little his eyelids started to droop against his will.
However, these symptoms were not due to sleep at all!
After a while, the old Vector began to gasp due to sudden difficulty breathing. His eyes, fixed on the now deserted street, could see nothing. His vision was slowly becoming hazy, until he almost completely lost sight.
"Shit! Am I… dying?!" grumbled the old Vector, his voice deep and intense. "Well, it's better this way. After all, I couldn't wait to end this shitty life!'
A few minutes later, the gentle snowfall turned into a full-blown blizzard. Ice crystals reached under the bridge, violently carried by the fierce wind. In no time, Vector found himself buried beneath a thick layer of snow.
Although these extreme circumstances were testing him, the old Vector remained under his blankets. Unfortunately, he didn't even have the strength to get up and look for a better place to take shelter. Not that there was actually one at that late hour of the night.
So, curling further into his two blankets, which vainly tried to protect him from the cold, the old Vector had now given up on that idea.
"I think... my time has come..."
As to be expected at the point of death, a flurry of memories flooded the mind of the old Vector.
"So it's true that your whole life flashes before your eyes, huh?"
With his gaze fixed on an invisible horizon, Vector admired the distant memories of his youth, spent with his parents.
Or at least, until their presence.
'Mom…'
Suddenly, when Vector was only 5 years old, she completely disappeared without a trace. The police quickly speculated that she had been kidnapped, accusing a criminal organization that, at that time, was abducting people to dismember them and sell their organs on the black market.
The badly mutilated bodies of the victims were numerous, and, as in other cases where the bodies were unrecognizable, Vector's mother's body could not be identified, leaving him unable to honor her with a decent burial.
'Dad…'
He loved math like no other! So much so that he named his son Vector, after the vectors used in math.
But apart from his son, there was only one thing he loved more than math: his wife.
After losing the woman of his life, he completely immersed himself in his mathematical studies. His goal was to win a Fields Medal in honor of his wife.
After 10 years, he finally made a very important discovery in the field of mathematics, with which he would surely win the prize. However, shortly after, the father was brutally murdered.
Vector still remembered that day very well. Coming home from school, he found his father in his study, sitting at the desk with his head buried on the table, pierced by a knife.
Surely, Vector would have preferred not to witness that gruesome scene.
Only later, thanks to the police investigation, it was discovered that the perpetrator of the crime was none other than one of his friends and colleagues, eager to greedily claim the prize and the glory that would come with it.
The award was nevertheless given to Vector's father in memory of his unjust and cruel death. The money associated with the award was donated to charity.
After losing his parents, Vector was left alone and was shortly after placed in an orphanage.
At that point, he decided to graduate and find a job to support himself and pay for college.
'Yes, now I remember… I longed to get into some literary university or a culinary academy to become a chef!'
But his dreams were quickly dashed against a harsh reality…
In elementary and middle school, he had always managed to get by by cheating during math tests, passing the years without too many problems.
In high school, however, paid for with the little money inherited from his father, the supervision during tests became stricter, and he failed every single year.
'It wasn't my fault, but math's!'
Even now, in fact, Vector was unable to perform simple and basic calculations like additions and subtractions. He couldn't even count!
With these poor skills, likely due to a serious problem with dyscalculia, it was obvious that he failed every time to pass his math exams, and consequently, also those in physics. In chemistry, however, he managed to keep up with the average by studying the theoretical part well.
For this reason, he desperately tried to obtain a medical certificate. But his lousy school didn't provide such a free service, and relying on a specialist required a lot of money.
In no time, he definitively dismissed the idea of obtaining a medical certificate for dyscalculia and persevered alone in his studies despite this problem.
As a result, Vector ended up failing and being forced to continually repeat the first year of high school.
At the age of 18, he was thrown out of the orphanage. For the next 2 years, he rented a studio apartment with the little money inherited from his father that he had left.
In the meantime, after 5 years of continuous failures, he was prevented from continuing his studies.
'At that time, I was 20 years old. I no longer had the money to continue paying for my education, and the high school I was attending wouldn't have admitted me at that age anyway.'
With no money left, he could no longer pay the rent for his shabby studio apartment.
Thus, having no place to live, Vector's life began its rapid decline into misery.
He tried in every way to find a way to earn a living, working part-time in some pizzeria or restaurants as a waiter. By then, Vector was still living on the streets.
But every time he found a job, he was fired the same day he was hired. And the reason for this was easy to guess: Vector confused the table numbers, the pizzas, and sometimes couldn't even count how many coins to give in change.
All of this made the customers angry with him, putting him in the terrible position of seeming incapable of completing any task. Consequently, his bosses quickly framed Vector as a useless burden, a nuisance to be rid of as soon as possible.
After a month of continuous firings, Vector simply stopped looking for a job, surrendering and accepting the miserable fate that awaited him.
For 60 years, he had to live on the streets, in absolute poverty, eating no more than 3 times a week.
'Damn! What a miserable life I've had! But it's not my fault…'
The old Vector gritted his teeth in anger and frustration, rubbing them together. With that series of horrible memories, he was left with a sense of bitterness in his mouth.
'If it weren't for math, I wouldn't be here! I'd probably be home, lying in a nice double bed, with a beautiful blonde wife by my side and surrounded by the love of my children and grandchildren.'
Once he finished daydreaming, however, he immediately contradicted himself:
'No, wait! Even before that… If it weren't for math… my father would never have been killed!'
Vector tried to focus one last time on the road ahead of him, illuminated by the streetlights, before giving up and finally closing his eyes.
Tears of sadness for his horrible past life flooded his eyes, against his will.
Finally, suppressing the instinct to cry, one last thought accompanied his final breath.
'Fuck you, Math!'
Then, Vector completely lost consciousness, and gradually the sensation of cold began to dissipate until it completely disappeared.
At that moment, the old man lost all sensation of having a body, and any attempt to reopen his eyes and see something was in vain.
'Ah, am I dead?!' he wondered, almost unconcerned.
For the next few minutes, wherever he was, only silence reigned.
'Is this hell? Or maybe, there's no afterlife at all?'
A few seconds later, he regained the sensation of his body.
It was then that he felt something soft covering him entirely, from head to toe.
'This is… my blanket? Wait, how is that possible?!'
Vector was astonished, almost stunned by the soft sensation brushing against his body.
After all, he had just died, hadn't he?
'Maybe I jumped to conclusions too quickly, and I wasn't really dying. Could that be?'
But he didn't care much about the details. What mattered to him at that moment was to get up and go buy some bread for his long-awaited breakfast.
Having made this decision, Vector tried to stand up, to put his things back in his backpack, as he did every day, and begin his routine as an old vagrant.
But despite his many attempts, he couldn't move a single muscle.
'Really?! Am I so tired that I can't even pull the blanket off me? What kind of joke is this?!'
He tried again, with no success.
With this new attempt, however, Vector realized something: he couldn't move not because he lacked strength, but because his body wasn't responding to his commands at all.
'What's going on?! It's like I'm paralyzed…'
As if that wasn't enough, lying beneath the blanket that covered his face and prevented him from opening his eyes, he couldn't see anything.
'Damn it! At this rate, I'll die of starvat-'
It was at that moment that he noticed some sudden changes.
'How strange. Now that I think about it, I'm not hungry anymore. How is that possible? And the cold? Where did it go? Even if it's stopped snowing, it's still midwinter! Besides, this blanket doesn't feel like wool at all. Velvet, maybe? Did someone switch my blanket without me noticing?! No, that can't be it. Oh, for crying out loud, what the hell is going on?!'
There was no time to piece together all his doubts and questions, as a loud noise, like two doors forcefully thrown open, suddenly broke the silence of the place where Vector was.
"Stop, Ginevra! There's nothing more we can do!" said a deep, masculine voice.
"I know, Arthur, I know very well!" cried a feminine voice, filled with anger and frustration, while she sobbed. "But what exactly am I supposed to do?! Accept my son's death without even seeing him once?!"
At that question, there was no reply from the man named Arthur.
The two of them, meanwhile, seemed to be hurrying toward where Vector was lying. The sound of the woman's heavy heels echoed alongside her half-choked sobs.
Suddenly, a few seconds after their arrival, the footsteps stopped right next to Vector.
'Dead son?! What is this lady talking about? Did she smoke something by chance?!'
Other quick footsteps reached the place where Vector was.
"Mum, stop please!"
"There's no need!"
"You'll only make yourself suffer more!"
Three feminine voices, almost identical, belonging to what seemed to be young girls, shouted one after the other before stopping next to Vector.
'And now, who the hell are these?!'
There was a brief moment of silence, during which the atmosphere grew tense and full of anticipation, before Ginevra, with a voice full of emotion, began to speak:
"I understand your concern, my daughters. And yours too, dear. But please try to understand me! My son was born just last night, and I haven't even had a single chance to hold him! Don't you find it unfair for a mother?!"
No one dared contradict her.
After a short silence, the woman named Ginevra spoke again:
"Allow me… to admire his angelic face, just once! Then, we can proceed with the announcement of his death, and finally, his proper burial."
Once more, no one spoke when Ginevra finished talking.
Vector, however, upon hearing those words, could only be dumbfounded.
'Wait a minute… Are they talking about me? I'm supposed to be her son?! Dead?! What exactly is this lady talking about? And I'm not dead at all!'
Suddenly, the velvet blanket draped over Vector's body was lifted into the air, finally revealing his face, which was turned upward.
The air that brushed against his cheeks was warm, and the breeze blowing was no longer cold and harsh.
The sun now warmed the right side of his body, flooded with a bright beam of light.
"Oh, my dear son…"
In those few words was a heart-wrenching lament, from a woman who had lost a great part of the value of her life. An unconditional love, broken by the sudden death of her son.
'Oh, finally, they got that damned blanket off me!'
A couple of drops of water fell onto Vector's forehead, slowly sliding down the bridge of his nose to his eyes, still closed.
'Damn it!'
Having water in his eyes was certainly an uncomfortable sensation for him. Just like when taking a shower and some soap gets in your eyes by accident.
Well, not that he was actually used to taking showers…
Unable to use his hands to rid himself of the annoying itch caused by the slow descent of those drops, he blinked twice. Then, with a slow, rigid movement, as if it were his first time doing it, he lifted his eyelids.
'Oh, shit!'
A bright light blinded him, making it impossible to see for the first few seconds. After a bit of effort, though, he managed to focus his vision and closely examine his surroundings.
'Good! Now I can finally figure out where the hell I am! But more importantly, understand what the hell is happen-'
At that moment, interrupting his thought, five pairs of wide-open eyes were staring at Vector, just inches from his face. They looked at him partly with amazement, partly with disbelief and unease, but ultimately with immense happiness reflected in their expressions.
At this sight, Vector frowned.
'What the hell are you looking at exactly?'