At the break of dawn, Safal, a small figure with bright, determined eyes, could already be seen stomping out of his house. He wasn't tall—standing at just 149 cm (a towering 58.7 inches, as he liked to remind others for precision)—but there was something about his lively energy that made him seem bigger than he was. His skin was pale, his look kind and innocent, though life had shaped him into something much tougher.
It wasn't like Safal woke up every morning bursting with joy. Oh no. He would stretch, groan, and mutter complaints about his aching back like an old man.
"Ugh… I'm twelve, not seventy! Why does cutting wood feel like I'm hauling mountains?" he grumbled, throwing on his worn-out shirt. But despite his theatrics, he got up every single day without fail.
Safal's mornings were not what you'd expect from a twelve-year-old kid. While other children were busy playing games, throwing stones, or stealing mangoes from old Mr. Chatur's orchard, Safal would pick up a hammer and head straight to the construction site. No one ever told him to work, but he couldn't stand sitting idle. His tiny hands could carry more bricks than the grown men liked to admit.
"Oi, Safal! You're putting us to shame!" one of the workers teased, wiping sweat from his brow.
Safal shot back, "Well, if you didn't take tea breaks every ten minutes, maybe you'd get something done!" He grinned as the others burst into laughter.
But even in the chaos of the construction site, he never complained about the sweat dripping down his back or the calluses forming on his palms. Hard work was his ally. He might not have remembered his past—his brother who left him when he was two, the pain of abandonment buried somewhere deep—but this was his way of fighting back against life.
By afternoon, Safal's day turned into something straight out of a survival story. Armed with an old, splintered axe, he'd venture into the forest, where the trees loomed like sleeping giants. He swore they whispered things to him sometimes.
"Don't cut me, kid."
"You think you can chop through me with those noodle arms?"
Safal would raise his axe dramatically and point to the nearest tree. "Laugh all you want! By the time I'm done, you'll wish you were firewood already."
And just like that, the quiet forest would be filled with THWACK! THWACK! as Safal worked tirelessly, his energy seemingly never-ending. The afternoon sun burned his skin, sweat poured into his eyes, but Safal kept chopping. He didn't sell all the wood he cut; sometimes he gave it away for free.
"You're too nice for your own good, boy," old man Chatur told him once.
Safal shrugged. "Wood's just wood. If it keeps someone warm, I'll chop a hundred trees."
But it wasn't kindness alone that kept him going. It was something deeper. Something unspoken. As if every swing of the axe was helping him cut through his own past, the darkness he didn't remember but could still feel in his bones.
Evenings, though, were the most thrilling of all.
Safal would head to the village head's house with nothing but a stick and an old lantern, ready to guard the place for two to three hours. "What's a kid like you guarding against?" people often asked.
Safal smirked, holding up his stick like a sword. "Ghosts, thieves, or runaway chickens. Bring it on."
Of course, he never faced anything scarier than a stray dog knocking over pots, but Safal pretended otherwise. On nights when the wind howled, he would shiver and mutter, "If any ghost comes, I'll whack it so hard, it'll wish it stayed dead!"
His imagination ran wild as he sat under the pale moonlight. What if one day he saw shadows creeping toward the house? What if something really was out there?
"Not today," Safal whispered to himself, gripping his stick tighter. "If you're here, come get me."
It was this unshakable grit, this mix of courage and humor, that made Safal different. Life hadn't been kind to him. He didn't have a family to fall back on. But every day, whether he was swinging an axe, laying bricks, or "fighting" ghosts, he gave his all.
As night fell, Safal returned home, the tiny child who carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. His body ached, and his eyelids drooped, but before he went to sleep, he looked up at the stars and whispered to himself:
"Tomorrow, I'll work harder. Tomorrow, I'll be stronger. One day, I'll be so strong, nothing and no one can take anything from me again."
And with that, the twelve-year-old kid, who looked small but carried a heart full of fire, drifted off into dreams of a future where he didn't have to fight alone.
Suspense hung in the air as Safal closed his eyes. Something big was coming—something that would change his world forever. But for now, he slept, unaware that the shadows of his past were inching closer every day.