Under the stars

Chapter 1: The Stolen Childhood.

Victor had always been the eldest, and with that status came certain expectations. He was born in an upscale Parisian neighborhood, a world of beautiful facades, impeccably maintained streets, and neighbors with distant gazes. His family was part of that bourgeois elite where everything seemed perfect on the surface. William, his father, was a wealthy man, known for his success in the aerospace industry, respected and admired by his peers. His mother, Sophie, elegant and graceful, had always been a model of perfection in social circles, all while working as a nurse. But behind this veneer of perfection lay deep cracks that Victor felt every day.

Their apartment, located in an affluent district, breathed opulence. But it wasn’t a warm home. Victor barely remembered spending time with his parents. They were always busy, rushing from one meeting to the next, hosting social dinners, or going on long trips. The rare moments when they were physically present did not make up for their emotional absence. From birth, Victor had been entrusted to nannies. They came and went, different from one another, some affectionate, others strict, but none could fill the void left by his parents.

At six years old, the age when most children discover the world with enthusiasm, Victor only knew loneliness. He spent hours alone in his vast bedroom, filled with expensive toys that felt cold and impersonal. Each nanny had her own method of keeping him occupied. Some entertained him with educational games, others read him stories. But none truly looked him in the eyes. He was just a duty to fulfill, a task to finish before the end of the day.

Victor looked different from the other children in his neighborhood. While his little brother, Nohé, resembled their father, with his blonde hair and blue eyes, Victor took after his mother, and especially his maternal grandfather. His dark brown, almost black, hair curled slightly around his face, and his eyes, as dark as ink, gave him a mysterious and different look. But this difference, which he didn’t yet understand at his age, would soon become a source of suffering.

Starting primary school marked a brutal turning point in Victor’s life. While he had hoped to find friends there, an escape from the solitude of his apartment, he was immediately set apart. From the very first day, the curious glances from other students turned into sneers. He didn’t look like the other children, with their pale skin, light hair, and neatly pressed clothes. Victor always seemed a little disheveled, his hair often messy, and his dark eyes drew scornful comments.

“Why are you so dark?” one boy sneered, glaring at him with disdain.

At first, Victor didn’t understand. Dark? He wasn’t dark. But the children didn’t care about the nuance. To them, he was different, and that was enough to make him vulnerable.

As the weeks went by, the remarks intensified. The teasing became more vicious, more personal. “Are you sure you’re not adopted?” they mocked. “You must be from somewhere else!” These seemingly simple phrases cut deep into Victor’s heart. Each word was like a sting, an invisible wound that wouldn’t stop bleeding.

But it wasn’t just the students who made him suffer. At school, even the teachers seemed to have different expectations of him. His teachers, perhaps influenced by the behavior of the other students, didn’t help him. On the contrary, they often scolded him, comparing his academic results to those of his brother, who had now joined the same school. “Why aren’t you more like your brother, Victor?” his first-grade teacher would often say, a dry and authoritarian woman with no patience for “different” children. With each comment, Victor’s face would harden, but inside, he shut himself off a little more.

Nohé, with his blonde hair and sparkling eyes, was the perfect image of the model son. Kind, well-mannered, intelligent. He seemed to succeed where Victor failed. The teachers often used him as an example to show Victor what he “should have been.” This constant comparison added extra weight to his already heavy burden of suffering. How could he compete with his own brother, the one everyone admired? The teachers treated him like an inferior being, as if his physical difference justified an intellectual one, which wasn’t even true.

It was in the school bathroom that Victor found his only refuge. During every recess, he would lock himself inside, desperately trying to escape the stares, the taunts, and sometimes the blows that rained down in the playground. The bathroom became his sanctuary, a place where he could be alone, free from judgment. The cold tiles offered him a strange comfort. There, no one came looking for him, no one could reach him. He spent the twenty minutes of recess sitting against the bathroom walls, his knees pulled up to his chest, listening to the laughter of the other children outside. Sometimes, he cried silently, tears streaming down his cheeks, unstoppable. But most of the time, he simply sat there, motionless, hoping time would pass more quickly.

At home, things weren’t much better. Sophie and William, exhausted from their workdays, only spoke to each other to argue. The once silent walls of the apartment now echoed with the sound of his parents’ voices clashing over things he didn’t understand. “You’re never here!” his mother would shout. “At least I bring in the money!” his father would retort. Though young, Victor understood that something was wrong. He could tell their arguments were deeper than mere fatigue. They were the proof of a love eroding under the weight of their obligations, their careers, their superficial life.

To protect his little brother Nohé from these family tensions, Victor took it upon himself. He would often say, “Come on, let’s go to my room.” He’d grab his hand, leading him away from the battlefield their living room had become. Nohé didn’t understand what was happening, but Victor did. He felt the anger rise in him with every argument his parents had, with every door that slammed. Nohé, with his innocence, remained cheerful, carefree. Victor, on the other hand, already carried the weight of the world on his small shoulders.

He tried to be strong, for him, for Nohé, for his parents, but inside, he was broken. The outside world, like the world at home, offered him no reprieve. He was six years old and already alone.

It was in this atmosphere of despair that a fateful encounter changed his life. One day, while riding the bus home from school, his classmates began to harass him again. The laughter and teasing echoed in his ears like an endless refrain. “Look at him, we’ll have to beat him up again!” Their shrill voices rang in his head, and he felt ready to collapse.

Suddenly, a towering man in military uniform appeared. He approached the boys tormenting Victor, grabbing them by their collars with incredible force. “That’s enough!” his booming voice commanded. The laughter stopped instantly, and the boys, caught off guard, backed away, unable to respond. Victor, astonished by this intervention, gazed at the man with admiration. The man then sat next to Victor, looking at him with an intensity that seemed to pierce through his soul.

“Are you alright?” he asked in a gentler tone. Surprised by the stranger’s concern, Victor nodded. The man continued, offering him practical advice on how to handle difficult situations. “Never forget, you’re stronger than you think. I know words can hurt... but so can fists,” he added with a wink. “Sometimes you have to stand up for yourself once and for all. It’s not the best way, but it’s effective,” he concluded. This simple phrase resonated with Victor, a note of hope in an otherwise chaotic life.

Though brief, this encounter left an indelible mark on Victor’s heart. He woke up the next day with a sense of empowerment, but reality quickly set in. The years in middle school continued to be marked by relentless abuse. The words became more hurtful, and the blows more frequent.