“Can I hug you…?” the homeless boy asked the crying billionaire. What happened next is shocking.

Part 1: Peaks and Abyss
November in Chicago was like a monstrous steel beast breathing icy cold air. On the rooftop of Vane Enterprises, Julian Vane stood on the edge of a cliff, where the boundary between life and nothingness was just a step away.

Julian wasn’t just a billionaire; he was the architect of a new pharmaceutical era. But tonight, that empire was crumbling. Leaked documents about the “Lazarus” project—an experimental serum that had caused hundreds of slum dwellers to disappear—had been exposed. Stocks had plummeted, arrest warrants had been signed, and more importantly, Julian’s conscience—which he thought he had killed a decade earlier—suddenly resurfaced, tearing at his chest.

Julian wept. The tears of a man who held absolute power were now bitter and helpless.

“Are you alright?”

A clear voice rang out amidst the howling wind. Julian turned around in surprise. Standing there, beside the withered flowerbed on the rooftop, was a boy. He was about ten years old, wearing an oversized, tattered coat, soaking wet canvas shoes, and his face smeared with mud.

“How did you get up here?” Julian growled, wiping away tears. “This is private space.”

“I saw you crying,” the boy said, ignoring the question. His eyes were large, strangely deep and dark blue. “My mother says when someone cries, they’re losing a piece of their soul. You’re losing a lot, aren’t you?”

Part 2: The Embrace of Salvation
Julian laughed bitterly. A homeless child lecturing a billionaire about the soul. “Go away, kid. I don’t have any change. I don’t even have anything left for myself.”

The boy moved closer, slowly, step by step, on the cold tiled floor. He stopped just a few steps away from Julian. The neon lights from the skyscrapers reflected in his eyes, creating a strange effect, as if something were swimming in his pupils.

“I don’t need money,” the boy whispered. “Can I have a hug, Uncle…?”

Julian froze. In thirty years of building his empire, no one had ever asked him for a hug. They asked for contracts, money, leniency, or their lives. This innocent request touched the most fragile nerve in Julian’s heart. He thought of the son he had abandoned, of the wife who had committed suicide because of his coldness.

“Come here,” Julian knelt down, opening his arms wide. “Just for a moment.”

The child rushed into his embrace. He was small and thin. Julian closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. He prepared to feel the warmth of a human being, a final connection before he threw himself into the Chicago River below.

But the warmth never came.

Part 3: The Nightmare Begins
Instead of warmth, Julian felt an electric current run down his spine. It was icy cold, as if he were embracing a block of ice wrapped in human skin.

“Kid… you’re so cold,” Julian tried to push the boy away, but the child’s arms suddenly tightened like steel pincers.

“Do you recognize me, Uncle Julian?” The boy’s voice was no longer clear. It became distorted, polyphonic, as if dozens of people were speaking at once through a broken loudspeaker.

Julian bent down and was horrified to realize: The boy’s skin was beginning to loosen. Patches of skin peeled off his face like damp wallpaper, revealing not flesh and blood underneath, but a thick, dark purple, pulsating membrane.

“My mother never forgot you,” the child whispered, his mouth now stretched to his ears, revealing rows of sharp, needle-like teeth. “She’s number 402 in Project Lazarus. He injected that thing into her. He turned her into… bio-waste.”

Julian wanted to scream, but a thick, tar-like liquid began to seep from the child’s chest, soaking through his expensive vest, sticking their two bodies together.

Part 4: The Horrifying Climax
The real horror began when the boy’s body began to literally melt. The child wasn’t just holding Julian; it was assimilating with him.

“Stop! Please!” Julian screamed, clawing at the slimy mass of flesh crawling up his neck.

Tiny tentacles, resembling exposed nerve fibers, pierced Julian’s skin. The pain was indescribable – as if thousands of red-hot needles were sewing his soul to something hideous.

Julian looked down at his hands. His skin was cracking, and from those cracks, tiny eyes—identical to the boy’s—began to open, blinking wildly.

“We are your legacy,” the mass of flesh bearing the boy’s distorted face cackled. “You want salvation? This is salvation. You will never be alone again. You will take all of us with you. 402 lives. In one body.”

Julian’s body began to deform. His bones shattered and then reconnected at absurd angles. He was no longer a man; he was becoming a giant mass of flesh, a mobile pile of biological waste, groaning with the hundreds of voices of his deceased victims.

Part 5: The Final Twist
The next morning, Chicago police raided the building.

They searched the top of the Vane Tower. They didn’t find Julian Vane. Nor did they find any corpses at the foot of the building.

On the rooftop, only a luxurious suit lay scattered, its contents filled with a dried, purple, slimy substance.

In a dark alley a few miles away, a “man” in an oversized coat was limping. He looked unusually large and bulky beneath the coat.

A kind homeless woman saw him trembling (or looked like she was trembling) and approached him.

“Hey, buddy, are you alright?” she asked.

The man turned. Beneath the shadow of his hood, Julian Vane’s face appeared, but it was distorted, half of it the child from the night before.

“I… I’m losing my soul,” Julian said, his voice choked with tears. But then, his eyes turned a lifeless, dark purple.

He looked at the woman, a horrifying smile spreading across his face, and asked in a hauntingly distorted voice:

“May I hug you…?”

The lesson learned:
Atonement never comes easily with a belated act of kindness, especially when past crimes have created true monsters. Julian Vane wanted a hug for peace, but he received a hug that meant he would never die.