Emmanuel licked the bowl clean. He was finally warm again. Suddenly, he saw drops of water land in the clean bowl. Emmanuel looked up. It wasn’t raining, but his face was wet.

He gazed at the starry sky for a long time. He never stopped to look at them before. The last time he did that was when he was a child. He was in the same situation then: Poor, hungry and cold. He was on the verge of death by starvation if it wasn’t for the hot bowl of sweet potato porridge a dirty-looking lady gave him. She wore a torn red dress which had faded and a brown scarf over her head. She smiled as he ate, and told him that she painstakingly found the ingredients and made porridge, but was willing to give it all to him.

It then dawned on him. The porridge, the lady, the clothes…They all matched the lady who had given him the porridge earlier. But by then, the lady had already vanished again, like during childhood after he had finished. He looked ahead.

“That’s the second time I lost the chance to thank her,” he mumbled.