The workshop was oppressively hot, the kind of heat that sticks to your skin, mixing the smell of burnt oil with the lingering heat of metal. The clatter of tools formed a constant soundtrack: hammering, engines starting, wrenches tightening bolts. Amidst all this organized chaos, Luis moved with the focus of someone who couldn’t afford to make a mistake.
He was in his early twenties, his hands covered in small scars, his clothes stained with grease that wouldn’t come out even with the best detergent. But his eyes held something you couldn’t buy in any store: a mixture of weariness and tenderness. Behind every long day was a clear reason: his mother.
They lived in a simple house on the outskirts of town. His mother had been ill for some time, and the cost of her medicine was more than Luis could earn in several days of work. Every peso he earned had a specific purpose: medicine, rent, food—and if anything was left over—which was almost never—a small treat for her, like her favorite sweet bread.
That morning seemed like any other. Don Ernesto, the owner of the workshop, paced back and forth, overseeing everything with a furrowed brow, jotting down notes in a book: hours, parts, orders, even minutes of delay. For him, time was money, and money was the only thing worth protecting.
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