Rest

The degrees of boredom were only surpassed by the degrees of heat.

After Adassa's new success, getting everyone to get a piercing. There were more discreet ones, like Coral's orbital conch or Teresa's tragus , but also indiscreet ones like Yuusuke's industrial , which surprised everyone, without a doubt, the one that looked best on Imobach, whose helix connected to his lobe and fell like a stylized rain, Adassa had already moved on to other areas of the body, and enjoyed a surface on each side of the shoulders.

They had nothing else to do; the heat wave and the pollution on the beaches had made their favourite pastimes become memories, and they could only enjoy the cold air conditioning in the Cuesta-Ruiz living room.

“We could investigate why hamsters are cursed…” Teresa suggested while delicately fanning herself with one of her three Victorian fans.

“I don't understand,” Imobach managed to say, his mouth feeling pasty.

“About their deaths, so horrible… poor things,” she cried. She was still a little teary about what had happened, and thinking about these things made her vent a little more. “I'm still emotional” she shared a smile with her friend.

"Keep them now," Coral replied, lying on the floor with her legs up, "you're going to get dehydrated."

“I will not go back to 24 hours to buy more water,” denied the man who days ago claimed that in his country the summers were worse.

“That's because of your period,” Adassa explained. “That's why you're still like that” she continued playing with the switch while talking. “I know it because we're synchronized. It's true, we're best friends and that happens, mine got it yesterday.”

She continued talking with Teresa's embarrassment as a witness, now she was blushing.

“In any case, it will be more useful to us to decipher why foreigners jump off their balconies as soon as they set foot in Spain.”

Balconing , a word that surprised Yuusuke when he first read it, “it’s not my intelligence that stands out,” he thought, “but the stupidity of others.”

Coral's phone rang again.

"I'm getting tired," she said, rolling her eyes. She was trying not to pay attention to the phone, but it was hard. "I give up," she lunged for the phone.

“Not so fast, skinny,” Adassa said.

Yuusuke, the closest in position, was the one who snatched the device once it was unlocked, typed quickly and gave it back to him.

“What have you done?” she said, horrified.

“Reply.”

Coral tried to see the message but as soon as it was sent, the boy took care of deleting it so that she wouldn't see it.

“You know I have to be in high school for another year, right? You know that” she got scared.

“I haven't said anything that could incriminate you, they're just not going to bother you again all afternoon.”

And so it was.

“If I had known, I would have thrown them with the moving bus around the curve in Sauzal.”

The brunette waited for an answer, something to try to find out what he had said, although it would not be possible. She resigned herself to trying to calm her mind and leave behind that anxiety that was gnawing at her.

Since she had told the group that she would not be able to participate in the tournament, an avalanche of messages crashed , in the words of the Mohican, her phone. Worry for her and for winning the competition in equal parts. She read comments that downplayed her injury, also those that wished her a speedy recovery, others that encouraged her to continue training, and some that hinted that they were not going to win like that.

Despite the anguish, his first step was to say, “I have been injured.” At another time he would have held on until the consequences had been worse.

Besides, it was something she had to keep practicing, she had already said “No” to Agoney, who was angry at first, he understood that Coral's thing was a help and not his duty, the same with the Curbelo sisters, whose surf classes, as little as the instructor cared, were free.

“Well…” Coral stood up to wash the glasses.

“No, wait, I'll do it” said her brother, reaching the sink.

“You could have said that before, when we had lunch” she complained. Then she followed her brother's gaze, who had her in the living room. “Ah…” she understood quietly, one of the things that her brother hated was washing dishes, in fact, and as a future gift, Coral had always thought of buying Imobach a dishwasher, perhaps with her first salaries. “Here, macho,” she handed him the sponge.

She returned to the living room, where the conversation had taken another turn, and hugged her friend. No matter how sweaty they were, she would not reject her hug. Coral turned to look at hier brother and winked at him mockingly.

“It would be unlikely,” Yuusuke defended.

“But… space is vast, they could send us some warning, like we did with the Voyager golden record …”

“Exactly. If they reach us, it will be when they have disappeared. The universe has had several stages, and this is the one before ours, when contact would have been possible. But we were not yet very developed. And now we are further and further away.”

"Well, that's crap," Adassa added. She had rarely heard the boy talk so much, he must have been interested in the subject. Teresa just nodded in agreement.

“According to the Kardashov scale,” the dark-haired man continued. “I looked up what it's called here, you're also in Type 0, although we're a little above,” he said to tease Adassa, although he didn't succeed. “If there hasn't been contact it's because: A, the other civilizations have destroyed themselves, B, they're still in stage 1 or similar, or C, we're so far away that we don't represent a speck of dust for them,” he debated more options in his head, but those were the most probable for him.

“But you came in a black hole…” Coral tried to understand. “Isn't that being more advanced? Why is your universe at a stage similar to ours and not at 1 or more?”

“We haven't conquered our star. Not even the entire planet, it's just that my brother is a stupid genius.”

“That reminds me," Adassa was fully reclined on the couch with one knee on top of the other, "I found this."

She showed him the screen of the electronic device. Yuusuke could see some of his belongings, or his brother's, scattered around the world and in time.

“Hey... Coral had to tell that.”

“What does it matter, the book is almost over,” the orange girl justified herself. “It has to be told.”

“What book? What are you saying?” Coral asked, surprised. She no longer cared about being the one who stood out in front of Yuusuke. Even less so since that time when the boy promised her to play a very exciting sport, “it will leave you sweating” and it turned out to be chess. Later she would admit, in front of the brunette, that she no longer needed to pretend to be polite and kind, she was starting to be herself.

“The Book of Smart-ass” Adassa had lowered the nickname from inconvenience to that, and in her mind, it wasn't a bad thing.

“Ahhh.” Coral said. “Wait, what?”

The chair sank a little further with the return of Imobach, who had taken the opportunity to gather his hair and wet the back of his neck.

“It's normal for this to happen.” Yuusuke explained. “As it is a created black hole, there is no event horizon, it is not stable, that is why it closes, the universe in an attempt to control the energy, expelled in fractions what was contained within the passable throat and expelled it through a white one. There will surely be more in the future.”

“It's amazing how you say it so calmly,” said Imobach while deleting the messages he had received. He was no longer interested in banal relationships, he was beginning to cultivate that inner emptiness himself.

Coral saw him, she was next to him, she just had to stretch several intraocular muscles, she spoke to him through the same messaging system.

<<well done 👍👍 😀>>

<<??>>

<<to throw them away>>

<<I don't know>>

<<I already told you that I was taking care of myself>>

<<It's the beginning>>

<<gossip ¬.¬ >>

<<a good one>>

<<I give my blessing>>

<<about what>>

<<reply>>

<<about what>>

<<I'm by your side>>

<<You could have told them no.>>

<<instead of deleting it>>

<<directly>>

<<I did it the first few times>>

<<I'm tired already>>

<<but what do you give the blessing for?>>

“There's not much I can do about it. I'm not going to worry about it anymore,” the one with the mole on his chin replied, half oblivious to the conversation between the brothers.

“It's a bit… defeatist,” Teresa suggested.

“With that attitude towards everything... bah! Waiting for things to come, well!” declared Adassa.

“I've become friends with you guys like this, even with that desperate guy.”

"You see how hard it is to remember!" Adassa said, justifying herself for not yet remembering Joel's name.

“Besides, wasting energy is not efficient and I follow logic…”

"He said it, he said it!" Coral said quickly. "Hug! Hug!" she cheered.

The brunette launched herself at him, normally her unfriendly guest wouldn't say something so presumptuous, and from what he had told her, he didn't have any friends on the other side of the multiverse. Following her were the almost seventy-eight kilograms of Imobach, very careful not to touch her leg; shortly after Teressa, very carefully and without knowing very well how to get on the mound; in the end, even Adassa put her hand on him as a participant