SOME SNEAKERS, AT LAST (4/4)

Madrid, 2025.

Some neighbors looked at him strangely as he left Mario's building. With a lost gaze, without direction, oblivious to his surroundings, he collided with several people. He collided with a streetlight, stopped. "But if... Finally! If he had been carrying them in his backpack..." He opened it. He buried his head, took a deep breath. He caressed them. He closed the zipper and continued walking. When he arrived home...

Finally, since that locker room, he had gotten the sneakers of a male. He felt a pang in his chest: the times Mario had whipped him with them.

He couldn't wait until he got home. He took them out. Neither he himself knew, nor did he have time later, to think about where the absolute necessity of surrendering to them forever and from then on came from. He tied the laces of both and hung them from his neck.

He continued with them on his chest. Their smell intoxicated him, he caressed them, looked at them, panted.

The bus driver stated that the boy appeared out of nowhere. Those waiting for the traffic light corroborated his statement. A man, from the opposite sidewalk, saw how his backpack fell off without him seeming to cross. A lady screamed in panic. The pharmacy staff came running out, but nothing could be done for the young man who lay with sneakers full of blood tied around his neck.

It is assumed that, days later, when someone mentioned in front of him that "a kid who was coming from training" had died run over by a bus two blocks down, it didn't even occur to Mario to think of Rubén.