An eight-year-old schoolboy wore a knitted winter hat tightly pulled over his head for forty consecutive days—despite the stifling summer heat. When the school nurse, Sophia, finally decided to see what was underneath, she was left in complete shock.
While most students were running around the playground in T-shirts and shorts, this boy wore warm trousers, a thick padded jacket, and a wool hat pulled down to his eyebrows, almost as if it were glued in place.
“Hello,” Sophia said gently. “Aren’t you too warm? Maybe you should take off your hat?”
The boy flinched, clutching his headwear tightly, whispering that he’d rather keep it on. Sophia didn’t press the issue, but she couldn’t ignore how tense he became anytime someone mentioned the hat.
At lunch, she voiced her concern to his teacher, who explained he hadn’t removed the hat since spring break—and once had a breakdown in gym class when asked to take it off. His family always repeated it was a “family decision” and insisted it was nobody else’s business.
A week later, the boy was hospitalized with severe headaches. Unable to bear the worry any longer, Sophia put on gloves and gently removed the hat. What she found made her freeze.
His head was completely bald—not from illness, but covered in dozens of round, inflamed scars. Some were old and healing, others were fresh and oozing. They were unmistakable: cigarette burns.
The boy remained silent, eyes cast downward, before quietly confessing that his father had forbidden anyone to touch the hat. It had been bought by his older brother to hide the marks.
That very night, the police detained the father. The boy was placed in a safe location and finally received the urgent medical care he had long been denied.
