On a full Wednesday, a cold day, the state hadn't changed; on the contrary, it remained intact since the last movement.

  They were together in a study room, the entire group following a tenuous path along the line of a blunt blade—not because they stopped sharpening it, quite the opposite; they cut through the air and reverberated their cuts into one another.

  Thus, they ended up blinding it too quickly, creating that tension that had become standard. The room was full of information; they had reserved that space to dedicate themselves to the project with body and soul during the breaks.

  In it, open notebooks and piled-up books coexisted on tables and on the floor. The aroma of coffee in their thermoses was all too evident, besides the sweet smell mixed with another, stronger and woodier scent.

  Pedro kept repeatedly adjusting his glasses at every cynical and malicious comment from Carlos, who at that moment was only doing it for fun, since his own work was also stressful. Being Kael's partner meant agreeing to disagree more often than they blinked; his sarcasm didn't work on him the way it did on Pedro.

  Camila, Silvia, and Marina were at a round table; although Marina had her own theme apart from the two at the table, having her train of thought slowed by their rustling was better than being close to those boys full of arrogance and grievance.

  And of course, Lucian remained on a low, cushioned seat in the corner, between a bookshelf and the wall, well hidden.

  As it was a study room with a very heated debate, they began to follow implicit rules and organize them through the whiteboard, the diagram, with connections and syntheses.

  So far, there were four pillars in the diagram that Kael had drawn, accompanied by small phrases he had underlined in some texts from the various books.

  The rarefied and far-from-sober air carried the energy of fertile minds about to collide when Miguel had an idea. Rubbing his hands together, standing before the board, with the smile of a general about to wage a battle he promises will be glorious, he exclaims:

  "Alright, team, the first collection phase is over; the break ends soon and we need to know where each of you stands," he points to his colleague. "Now is the time to forge the steel. Silvia, could you record the key points?"

  She was as tense as everyone in that room, opting to stand up and approach the board to take notes while they commented on their respective divisions.

  "Recording, you may proceed!"

  "Let's start with the foundation. Pedro, the Classical Pillar. Ground us."

  Rising with the posture of a professor, with a compilation of papers, he pulls out one with an impeccable summary, adjusts his round glasses, and begins:

  "The classical framework is inescapable. In Oedipus Rex, the human condition is a trap woven by fate and arrogance. The search for knowledge leads to ruin. It's a pessimistic and structural view. In contrast, in Shakespearean tragedies, like Hamlet, the conflict is internal. The human condition is paralysis before choice, the corruption of the soul by inaction. The conclusion is that, in the Western canon, we are pawns of superior forces or of our own character flaws."

  Without even a minimal breath, he read his synthesis quickly and robotically in the briefest way he found. With a full, satisfied smile, he sits down and rolls his eyes at Carlos, who stands up with pure gestures of disdain. Not missing a second, he holds a cynical smile stamped on his face.

  "Very nice, Professor. But it's a smoke screen. What your canon conveniently ignores is everyday rot." He leans forward, propping one foot on a chair.

  "The Social Pillar, which me and the Messiah here researched..." he follows with an offensive gesture towards Kael, "Shows that the so-called condition is just an excuse for hypocrisy."

  "Alright, enough," Miguel intervenes, foreseeing the possible verbal fight that would ensue if he continued. "It's perfect, Pedro. That gives us the foundation, and now the house is ours," he exclaims, directing his gaze. "Carlos, the Social Pillar. What does the world's rot have to tell us about the human condition?"

  Carlos, still surprised and indignant at being interrupted like that by the group leader, dropped his pose and went to a bookshelf to lean against it, with a dry, ignoble smile.

  "The human condition is a bourgeois luxury. What actually exists are material conditions." He picks up his example of Barren Lives. "Fabiano doesn't suffer from existential anguish. He suffers from hunger. From thirst. His condition is that of a pack animal, and literature only serves to document this, not to philosophize. It's a portrait of the alienation caused by the economic base."

  Carlos tried as much as he could not to use the intonation of his usual cynicism, wavering here and there; however, his rude smile grew more and more as he looked at Kael. This one, on the other hand, had his eyes shooting sparks; this was a debate they'd had a thousand times, and he loved it.

  "And that's where you're wrong, reducing everything to economics. The condition isn't the hunger, it's the consciousness of the hunger. It's Sinhá Vitória's memory of a leather bed, it's the youngest boy's desire to learn beautiful stories. It's that spark of humanity, the desire for something more, that oppression tries to extinguish and can't. That is the human condition: the flame that won't let itself be extinguished, even in the most complete misery. It's what generates revolt."

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  That whole debate began to restore that austere air from before they decided to give each other the floor. Lucian couldn't reason or even create any coherent thought in this situation. His shock at how quickly they responded to each other and how little he understood of what they were saying was greater, yielding him only the reading of vocal nuance.

  "Revolt? What revolt? His revolt is the meow of a starving cat. It's ineffective. You romanticize poverty, Kael. Your flame is the opium that distracts from the real need for structural change, not this libertarian nonsense of awakening consciences one by one. The critique isn't about being an activist or not, but about method and analysis: cultural revolution versus material revolution."

  And this nuance clearly evidenced a fight—one of those very ugly ones—which he wanted to stay far away from. But how could he leave that place without ending up drawing attention and then becoming the target of whatever was in the minds present there?

  "This isn't literature, it's pamphleteering! Both of you!" Exasperated, Pedro stands up and places himself between the colleagues. "You're forcing a contemporary reading onto works that must be analyzed for their structure and universality!"

  There was no way out; however, the nearby colleagues at the round table seemed to know how to calm those three. Marina, who had remained silent, tracing lines between the names of the pillars in her notebook, speaks, observing her notebook.

  "And what if the universal structure is precisely... this fight?" She looks at them. "The Interior Pillar I researched... Kafka's metamorphosis, Machado de Assis's madness... Shows that the conflict is internal. It's the person against the image they have of themselves. What Carlos calls material condition and Kael calls the flame... maybe they are the same thing seen from the outside and from the inside."

  Silence reigned for a brief instant; she had managed to create a theoretical bridge that united everything, without great foundation in the thesis, resulting in only a vague concept.

  Therefore, the practical impasse remained; they needed to substantiate it validly or find something more to complement it, unless they wanted to continue the discussion.

  "So we have a problem. Two axes of analysis that deny each other." He rubs his temple, thoughtful; he isn't looking at Lucian, he's genuinely stuck on the problem he and Carlos created.

  "Carlos's materialist view, which crushes the individual, and the existential view I defend, which elevates them. How do we present this at the Fair without seeming disorganized? How do we integrate these views without one canceling the other?"

  "You don't integrate," Carlos replies. "We put them in conflict. We let the audience decide."

  "That's academically irresponsible! We need a synthesis!" At this point, Pedro had already put away his glasses and become agitated.

  Miguel knew his duty as leader was to mediate and find a fair way out for everyone. He scanned the board, the diagram, the pillars, and then, by chance, they landed on the quiet, trembling figure of Lucian in the corner of the room.

  He didn't think to include him blatantly, but he knew he could provide another vision; he was from another place and therefore would deliver a different dichotomy.

  "Perhaps," he mumbled, "perhaps the synthesis isn't in theory, but in the practice of another culture." His voice, purposely slower, ponderous.

  "Carlos, you speak of material oppression as a universal truth. But what if, in a culture that lived under centuries of material oppression different from ours—not capitalist, but feudal, Orthodox, Soviet—the response wasn't either animal resignation or libertarian revolt, but something completely different?"

  Whether it was a statement or a question, they didn't know; it was something in the air, from which, rarefied, this austerity arose in their minds.

  The entire group implicitly and synchronously gathered to look at Lucian; the unspoken question was being directed at him: whether that previous logic was universal or not, because if it wasn't, he might know.

  Lucian was the only witness capable of responding from a foreign perspective; therefore, the silence transformed, without mortal tension, but intellectual. Carlos furrowed his brow, evaluating—for he wasn't stupid, Kael's objection was valid.

  "It's a fair point. Dialectical materialism requires considering the specific historical context." He turns to Lucian; his look is that of an investigator facing a new piece of evidence.

  "Romania. Region of peasants, boyars, then Soviet satellite. Survival through submission and acid humor. Is that it? Is the human condition there cynical resignation?"

  The abrupt question is brutal, almost cruel in its analytical coldness, but it's honest; it's how Carlos communicates. Lucian, challenged not by emotion, but by a debate of ideas at the highest level, finds himself forced to respond in the same tone. The Portuguese coming out with difficulty, but with a new urgency:

  "Not resignation... silent resistance," he stares at them, a sudden fire in his eyes.

  "My grandfather... he wasn't a resigned animal. He was a man who carried his cross, because he believed the material world was fleeting. The condition wasn't misery, it was faith. It was what prevented the soul from becoming..." he breathes deeply, needing to think before speaking, "like Carlos says." He looks at Carlos, fearing the aggression Kael had warned about. "It's not cynicism. It's mourning for the life that was lost, but faith in the one to come."

  The silence that followed carried a weight, but didn't reverberate as if it were embarrassing. It was a silence of minds processing a new variable. They were receiving a new vision of things and needed to synthesize very quickly, as time seemed to be running.

  "Silent resistance..." Pedro notes something, murmuring, "a third way between revolt and resignation. Grounded in tradition and transcendence... Fascinating."

  Miguel seemed to shine; he ignited as if he were the most divine dawn of a new star, nodding slowly, with a shy smile. They needed to wrap up, he was aware, and for the first time, Lucian felt he could read at least the surface of his classmate. He looked at Lucian as if he were the unquenchable flame of an ancient legend; he was shaken again by that gaze.

  "Mourning and Faith," Miguel began. "That's not a pillar. It's the mortar that can unite the others. To show that the human condition isn't an answer, but the question that each culture answers in its own way," he looks at the group. "We need a session on this resistance and synthesize it next time. Lucian, can you research authors from your homeland that show this?"

  Lucian nodded silently, accompanied by the loud, dazing sound of the school bell, marking the time for MED classes. Despite having only the first period, Kael would still do more that day, completely occupied. There was no need to avoid him; he just needed not to engage in his sweet conversations.