With the agreement to go to the library lurking, under the vigilance and company of his devil, the day became pleasant; he expected torment, but with him, comfort was evident. Cloudy, mild, and suspended in the mind on the caravels of classes, when the last mandatory base subject was announced, he stood up to change rooms.

  The entire class reverberated in an exclamatory ceremony; they longed for that physical education class, a light moment in the school routine. He walked, thoughtful; he would be with Miguel around the city, at the library, alone, just with him; a rough strangeness rose with his nervousness.

  Despite the ash-gray sky above, the heat was stifling; there wasn't even a breeze to relieve it. When they arrived at the court, the situation seemed to worsen; it looked like that place had its own sun, just for them. Lucian stayed on the bleachers, suffering in silence.

  He couldn't read, nor write in his little notebook; the sweat and vigor of that scene—his classmates running, exercising, or playing some other game—was more striking. He couldn't follow any line of reasoning; he felt his head frying under that fiery star.

  "Lucian," he felt a light hand on his shoulder accompanied by a warm whisper. "If you want, we can go to block A, you know, hang out there, killing time."

  "Are you inviting me to skip class?" he questioned, already knowing the answer.

  "No, my dear, I'm inviting you to spend some time here at school, just not on the court. So, what do you think?"

  "How do you intend to do that? We don't have access to rooms in other places during MBDs."

  "Lucian, dear, I'm the class representative and a big favorite of the institution; I have the key."

  "It seems to me that you are the key," he joked, continuing to watch his classmates across the gym with his gaze, popping like popcorn.

  That didn't last; Kael took him firmly by the wrist, but gently, calmly leading him to the opposite side from the others. Lucian didn't seem to want to resist; he didn't even try. The kidnapping was executed perfectly; they arrived at the block without uproar or pursuit.

  In block A, there was a section blocked off with yellow tape and some warning signs; they went anyway, moving forward through the clutter. He unlocked the wooden door, revealing with a corner smile an old auditorium, with the wooden floor loose in certain spots.

  Miguel said he wouldn't turn on the light, both because it wasn't really necessary, as the cracks of light were numerous, and because they didn't want to draw attention. The stained glass windows were beautiful, tamed by a mystical and attentive aura, as if they collected hearts.

  The Plate headed to the stage, lying on the structure as if he were a shooting star, completely beautiful. At the back, there was a staircase that seemed less old than everything else in that environment. Lucian, for his part, sat on the second step, with his little notebook.

  The contrast was obvious; the draft converged into a necessary coolness, more comfortable. The smell followed the same premise as the library, however, without the vigilance or the chance of abrupt interruption—a dangerous place, easy to be disarmed in.

  "What does the prince of the Balkans keep jotting down in that little notebook?" he asked, breaking the peaceful quiet, reinvigorating Lucian's soul, who feared he might not be able to answer.

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  In his notebook, there was a bit of everything as a record, ranging from book titles, insights, small drawings, to that list about Kael, attached with the manila paper. Miguel's smile became a streak of light on his shadowed face; he kept his eyes closed, as if reading the words in the air.

  "A treatise on the temptations of the tropical summer or on the moral decay of the tropics?" he replied, turning to look at Lucian on the stairs, who shuddered in his silence.

  He didn't intend to answer, but his faltering breath, of someone caught red-handed with a cruel secret, became absurd. He decided to open the little notebook, leafing through to the page with the highlight—it was a relatively recent page, where a list traced certain pragmatic concepts with rigidity.

  With the pen from the inside pocket of his uniform blouse, now in hand, he began to undo them under nervous, tense strokes.

  1. Avoid eye contact.

  2. Don't respond to provocations.

  He took a deep breath; his pen hovered over the third rule, already half erased:

  3. Don't engage in blasphemies.

  "Let me guess," Kael's sweet voice invaded his thoughts without asking permission. "Rule four: don't forget that the devil also quotes scripture." — Lucian shuddered, but Miguel still kept his eyes on him, transfixed.

  "How do you...?"

  "Every saint has a diary of confessions, Lucian. And every devil likes to read," he winked; his eyes were green like moss under the filtered light. "Can I make a note?"

  Before Lucian could refuse, Miguel stood up with the fluency of a golden feline and took the notebook, sitting one step above. And his pen, red like vibrant blood, as if embodying the spirit of a chronicler, traced exaggerated letters in the margin:

  "And the angel said to the foreigner: fear not, for from the shadow shall be born the verb, and the verb shall become flesh, and the flesh, paradox."

  Lucian read it and felt a shiver.

  "That is..."

  "Blasphemy?" Kael completed, returning the notebook. "Or literature? The Gospel According to Miguel, chapter one, verse one."

  "Do you want to tempt me?"

  "Do you want to make me your devil?"

  The sonorous rest settled differently than any other. It wasn't empty, nor absent; it was full. Full of the noise of his blood boiling in his body, the whisper of leaves outside, the almost imperceptible breathing of Kael.

  Lucian watched Miguel's profile bathed in the amber light of the stained glass and thought, not for the first time, that Kael seemed like a creature made of antitheses — libertarian and angel, devil and human.

  "You speak more with your eyes than I do with my whole tongue, Lucian," he said, softly, almost a whisper.

  Lucian lowered his eyes to the notebook; his hand moved almost of its own will, crossing out all the rules. In the center of the blank page, on the back, he wrote in a single line:

  "Single rule: his voice contaminates, ignore it."

  Kael leaned in to read, nudging his classmate's face lightly with his pink-tipped spikes. He didn't smile; he kept a serious, almost solemn face.

  "Then let's make the contamination worse," he whispered, his mouth so close to Lucian's ear that the air formed goosebumps on his neck. "Tell me a word in Romanian."

  Lucian swallowed hard, mumbling:

  "Dor... it's a longing that hurts. A nostalgia for something you don't even know existed."

  "For us, dor isn't saudade; saudade is its own concept. Dor is anything that causes a bad feeling, that hurts, literally or not."

  "Now you," challenged Lucian, his voice firmer than he felt.

  "Iubire," Kael said, the word coming out soft as a kiss. "Repeat it."

  Lucian felt his heart stop.

  "Iubire."

  "It's a way to call someone, right? Love?" Kael asked, his gaze fixed on Lucian's lips.

  This one, however, only nodded, unable to breathe.

  "Ah," Kael pulled back; they hadn't noticed the natural proximity. He returned with a smile. "So that's what I've been trying to say since the beginning. I can keep calling you just 'dear,' if you want."