Chapter 107: Chapter 105 The Little Decision
Tuesday was still there, though no longer with the clean clarity of the first hours. The afternoon had begun to enter through the tall windows of the institute cafeteria, spreading over the white tables a slanted light, lower, almost golden, that made everything it touched seem slower. Outside, the courtyards still held movement, but no longer the compact pressure of the main schedule; some students crossed in small groups, others remained beside the corridors, and inside the cafeteria there lingered that calm after classes where noise does not disappear completely, it only loses strength. It was a pause. Not complete peace. A pause built with collected trays, scattered conversations, chairs moved without hurry, and the sweet smell of the desserts that still remained served in the side display cases.
Sebastián was sitting on one side of a white table, his back straight and his gaze fixed on Valentina. He did not seem relaxed, but neither hostile. His stillness had that hardness proper to someone who does not rest even when the world around him insists on behaving as if nothing were happening. Across from him, on the opposite side of the table, Óscar Smith occupied his chair with an almost disrespectful comfort, his dark brown hair tied in a high bun, his posture loose and his eyes attentive beneath an expression that seemed distracted only to someone who did not know how to look.
At the head were Virka and Valentina. Virka remained at one side of the girl, silent, with black hair falling over her shoulders and red eyes fixed on every small gesture of hers, not with hardness, but with a protective vigilance that did not need visible tenderness to be real. Near Valentina, resting beside the chair and with a minimal opening, was her backpack. Inside, reduced for the common world, Narka remained hidden, still, heavy even in silence.
Valentina was eating a gelatin dessert with simple happiness. The transparent container looked large between her small hands, and the spoon sank again and again into the trembling surface of the sweet with a concentration that seemed too clean for the story she carried on her back. Her hair, dark brown on the upper part and white on the lower part, covered part of her left eye, but when she raised her face to look at Virka, the different shine of her eyes could be noticed: the right one brown, the left one light blue.
There was something new in her, not a complete transformation nor an impossible cure, but a small space to breathe. She ate slowly, smiled sometimes without realizing it, and every time the spoon tilted too much, Virka intervened with dry patience, correcting the movement, bringing the container closer or wiping a drop of gelatin before it fell onto the girl’s clothes.
Sebastián said nothing. He only looked at her. His expression remained firm, closed, but deep in his red eyes, where that dark tornado turned without ever going out, there was a different attention. It was not open softness. Sebastián did not know how to inhabit that kind of gesture without something in him tensing. It was rather recognition. The silent acceptance that that girl, sitting there with her legs drawn up and her mouth occupied with a sweet dessert, had become a presence within his path even though he had not yet decided what name to give that.
Virka noticed it without looking at him.
Óscar too.
Óscar let the silence last a little longer before speaking. He did not do it with solemnity, because solemnity did not suit him when he could use a lighter phrase to touch the same point. He leaned barely backward, rested one arm on the back of the chair, and looked at Valentina with that mixture of low irony and precise observation of his, as if even a casual comment had been thought over twice before coming out.
—I’m surprised by how much she changed in a single day —he said—. She looks calmer. More alive.
The phrase did not fall like mockery. Nor like sentimentalism. Óscar said it with the tone of someone who rarely shows everything he understands, but who had already seen enough to know that the change was not superficial. Valentina did not seem to fully understand the weight of those words; she kept eating, happy because of the gelatin and because of Virka’s closeness.
Virka did hear him. Her red eyes shifted barely toward Óscar, measuring whether there was any hidden intention in the observation. She found no aggression. Only sharpened curiosity.
Sebastián looked away from Valentina and fixed his gaze on Óscar. There was no threat in the gesture, but neither permission. His voice came out dry, low, without excessive distance and without unnecessary closeness.
—Don’t start prying any further.
Óscar raised both eyebrows with an almost amused calm. He did not take offense. He seemed to have expected exactly that limit, and even so his face kept that carefree tranquility that made it difficult to know whether he was stepping back out of respect or because he had already obtained the reaction he wanted.
—No problem —he replied—. I was only observing the obvious. Sometimes I also do harmless things, even if my reputation doesn’t help.
Sebastián did not answer. Virka focused on Valentina again, who was trying to bring another spoonful to her mouth with excessive enthusiasm. Narka did not come out of the backpack, but from inside, a more conscious stillness could be perceived, as if he too were listening, evaluating, and letting the common scene exist a few seconds more before reminding them all that the common was barely a layer.
Óscar now rested his elbows on the table, interlaced his fingers, and looked at the three of them with a lightness that did not manage to hide the calculation. The afternoon entered through the windows behind him, cutting out part of his silhouette and making his dark brown eyes shine faintly.
—Leaving that aside —he said—, I think it’s time to celebrate this small change. And before anyone looks at me as if I had just proposed a crime, I’m talking about something normal. Relatively normal.
Valentina raised her face with the spoon still in her hand. Virka watched him without expression. Sebastián kept silent. Óscar smiled faintly.
—I was thinking about forming an activities club.
The word remained on the table with a strange simplicity. After what had happened in the last few days, after invisible gazes, threats not everyone had seen, and silences that weighed more than they appeared to, that proposal sounded almost absurd. But precisely because of that, it made sense. A club was not only a school excuse. It was a place. A reason to gather without raising suspicion. A way to move pieces under the appearance of routine.
Óscar did not say it that way. There was no need. The way his eyes passed from Sebastián to Virka, then to Valentina and finally to the backpack where Narka remained hidden, made it clear that his idea was not as light as his tone.
—What do you think? —he finally asked.
Valentina looked at Virka first, as if the world’s answer had to pass through her before reaching anywhere else. Virka did not answer immediately. Neither did Sebastián. The afternoon kept entering through the cafeteria windows, covering the white table, the gelatin dessert, the silent backpack, and the faces gathered around a proposal that seemed small, but that perhaps was beginning to give shape to something much harder to break.
Valentina left the spoon suspended over the gelatin container as if the word had just touched something new inside her. The dessert kept trembling on the transparent surface, small, sweet, illuminated by the afternoon entering through the cafeteria windows. For an instant, the girl did not eat again. Her eyes, the right one brown and the left one light blue partially covered by white hair, rose toward Óscar with clean, curious attention, no longer as closed off as when the world demanded she hide to survive.
There was still caution, because that part of her could not disappear in a day, but there was also a warmer spark, a simple willingness to believe that, perhaps, some questions could be asked without receiving harm as an answer.
—What is an activities club? —she asked.
Óscar looked at her with a calm smile, the kind that in him were never entirely innocent, though they did not need to be cruel either. He settled into the chair with his carefree air, the high bun slightly tilted backward, and rested one elbow on the table as if they had just asked him something very simple in the middle of a world far too complicated. His dark brown eyes passed over Valentina, then Sebastián and Virka, measuring both of their reactions before returning to the girl.
—Basically —he said—, a club is when several people get together to do things they like. Friends, classmates, people who don’t want to spend the whole afternoon staring at walls or pretending that studying regulations is exciting. That kind of tragedy.
Valentina listened to him with absolute seriousness, as if Óscar had just explained an important law of the institute to her. The spoon slowly lowered until it touched the edge of the container. Virka remained at her side, attentive to make sure the gelatin did not end up on the table, but her red eyes stayed on Óscar for one second longer. Sebastián did not speak either. The word “friends” had remained there, simple, almost harmless, and precisely because of that it weighed in a strange way. For other students, it could be a common word. For them, it was not. For Valentina, much less.
—And can I be there too? —the girl asked, and this time the emotion appeared before she could hide it.
Óscar smiled a little more, without exaggerating the gesture. He did not mock her. He did not soften his voice until it became false. He answered her with the same relaxed naturalness with which he spoke about anything, but his eyes kept that sharp gleam of someone who already knew that question could move more than a simple approval.
—Of course. If the club exists, it would be pretty strange to exclude the person who just made it more interesting.
Valentina opened her eyes wider. Happiness reached her face first, then her shoulders, then the way she gripped the spoon with both hands, as if that answer had been a physical gift. She looked at her gelatin, then at Óscar, then at Virka. For an instant, she seemed not to know what to do with so much possibility. Then she turned toward Sebastián, and the question came out with a confidence that did not ask permission to be important.
—Mom, Dad... can we do that activities club thing?
The cafeteria kept moving around them, but at the table everything stopped.
Virka did not answer immediately. The hand holding the napkin beside Valentina’s face stayed still halfway, and her red eyes lowered barely toward the girl. There was no open tenderness nor learned human gesture to accompany that word. In her, the reaction was more instinctive: a protective stillness, deep, like that of a wild creature that suddenly understands that something small has just come too close to her chest and, even so, does not want to push it away.
Sebastián did not speak either. His red eyes fixed on Valentina, and the dark tornado inside his irises kept turning with the same intensity as always, but his face remained motionless for a fraction longer than normal. The word had fallen over him without violence and, even so, it had reached him.
Óscar watched the scene without interrupting it. This time he did not smile with irony. He only waited. He knew when a joke could break the moment and when silence was more useful than any comment of his.
Sebastián was the first to look away from Valentina. He took his gaze toward Óscar with controlled dryness, but not with threat. He had understood the mechanism. The girl’s question had not been born by accident, but it was not a lie either. Óscar had placed her at the center of the decision because he knew Sebastián and Virka could reject him easily; rejecting her was different.
—That was what you wanted to achieve, wasn’t it? —Sebastián said.
Óscar let out a low, brief laugh, more honest because of how little he tried to hide it. He raised one hand in a minimal sign of surrender, without losing his relaxed air.
—It was the most efficient way to convince you —he replied—. I admit it was perhaps also the most dangerous, but everyone here seems to have a fairly flexible relationship with risk.
Virka let out a low growl.
It was not loud, but it was clear. A brief, contained vibration that was born from her throat while she brought the napkin closer to Valentina’s face again to clean a small trace of gelatin. She did not look at Óscar while doing it. Precisely because of that, her voice sounded drier when she spoke.
—It’s like last time.
Óscar tilted his head slightly, without pretending he did not understand. His expression remained calm, but he did not insist. There was a boundary in Virka that even he seemed intelligent enough not to push without need. Valentina, instead, looked at Virka with such direct hope that any long resistance became useless. The girl was not thinking about strategies, nor surveillance, nor what it meant to remain gathered inside the institute. She was thinking about friends. About activities. About belonging to something without having to hide.
Virka held that gaze for a few seconds. Then she sighed.
It was a brief sound, tired, older than a school scene should contain. Her hand passed once through Valentina’s hair, carefully moving aside a part that fell over her face. Then she spoke without still looking at Óscar.
—I agree. Because she wants it.
Valentina smiled immediately, wide, luminous, so simple that for an instant the table seemed less heavy. The gelatin trembled again when she left the spoon inside the container and leaned a little toward Virka, as if she wanted to celebrate without knowing exactly how. Narka remained still inside the backpack, but the minimal opening barely revealed a compact, ancient, silent shadow. Even reduced, he seemed to listen to every word as if that small school club had just become something more serious than anyone around the cafeteria could imagine.
Sebastián stood up.
He did not make a speech. He did not try to soften the decision or give it more turns. As he stood, his shadow fell over part of the white table and over Valentina’s dessert container, cutting the golden afternoon light for an instant. He looked at Óscar, then Virka, then the girl, and his voice came out dry, direct, with that way of his of closing a conversation before it began to deform.
—Then start at once.
Óscar stood up with a satisfied smile, though he tried to hide it just enough not to tempt another growl from Virka. Valentina hurried to take one last spoonful of gelatin before standing up, and Virka helped her without saying anything, arranging the container, the napkin, and the backpack where Narka remained hidden.
Little by little, the four of them prepared to leave the table. Outside, the afternoon continued entering through the cafeteria windows, but now that light no longer covered only a pause after classes. It covered the beginning of a small, almost school-like decision, one that perhaps would serve to gather them under a simple name before the world tried to separate them by force.
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END OF Chapter 105
The path continues...
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