Departure

Getting Yuusuke onto the boat as a stowaway wasn't that difficult, with a little practice and the ease of not checking the cars more than superficially it was possible. After half an hour he was able to get out of the trunk and climb up to the bow with the rest.

They left the dock behind, and with it, the smell of fish, the foam on the water, several groups of strangers saying goodbye affectionately, and the tranquility.

When they reached the island, the arid climate hit them, all except Imobach, whose dose of dimenhydrinate ( Biodramina for friends) had to be always higher than average and, even so, managed to make him a little dizzy. Once the driver recovered, they set off.

"Do they have frangollo?" Coral asked as she walked away to ask the workers.

“Bingo first!” Adassa held up high the ticket they were given as soon as they entered the hotel.

“We're going to the pool later,” Teresa redirected the group. Not even ten minutes had passed since they dropped off their bags and they were already attracting attention.

“We came to investigate,” Yuusuke stressed.

“Hey, hey, hey, this is a paid vacation before the recoveries.” Adassa raised her hands as she spoke. “There is no hurry. Besides, the page is doing well in sales and” she lowered her tone and adopted a semi-hunched posture, “we can get more merch from here.”

“Well, it wasn't his fault that you gave your final Technical Drawing assignments to a bum,” Imobach defended him. In any case, I brought the floats.

“What's wrong?!”

“You failed” Yuusuke answered bluntly, among other reasons.

“That's because of a lack of training. But I know he'll be ready for next year.”

“Are you planning to stay another year?” Imobach took a deep breath, luckily for him he was planning to go backpacking for at least a couple of months.

“Were they talking about Mr. Juárez? Coral appeared with Belize ice cream for everyone and an ice cream for her brother.

“There's nothing wrong with that, he was asking for money and I gave him my task. A decent job.”

“I really don't know if you're very smart or very stupid,” Yusuke's natural antipathy spoke.

“Where is that charming boy who made me feel like the protagonist for having found him?” Coral swayed on Yuusuke's shoulders like a vaporous cloud. He was finally able to relax them, and put his hand on top of his friend's.

Over the central pool, which is wide and has different depths, Imobach launched the inflatables, taking care to hit the distant tourists. His sister followed suit, on top of the watermelon-shaped floater.

“At least I'm not the one giving him money in case I'm ever in danger and he, feeling indebted, saves me.”

"It's mainly for food," Teresa defended herself against Adassa's accusation. "And if you think about it... it makes sense."

“Teresa…” Imobach began to laugh in a deeper tone.

“It's true, think about it,” the blonde approached him, smiled as she looked into his eyes.

“And I'm not the one who at night thinks she can go 1v1 against a lion,” Adassa incriminated Imobach with her look, and he blushed.

“In my defense it was before searching how much they weighed.”

“Yes, because you've already put aside studying biology, like mom, right?” Coral raised her voice as she slowly walked away with the current of the pool.

“You're a bit of an architect... “ he threw a large amount of water at her in response, he preferred to stay sitting on the shore with his feet soaked and in company.

Adasaa's swimming to the other mat only made it more soaked.

"Everything will be fine," Imobach said to Yuusuke as he looked at his hands. They were locked together, like a padlock that couldn't be opened.

“You can't be sure.”

“He doesn't, but I do want to make sure no one gets burned,” Teresa proceeded to slather him in sunscreen.

After playing cards for a few hours, Yuusuke's tension was so obvious that they decided to have dinner on English time and go out to search for the Perseid .

"It's the first time I've seen you like this," Coral worried. "I think you've eaten more your brain than the fish."

“I don't know what to expect.”

“And that worries you…” she raised his eyebrows downwards.

“Obviously. Who doesn't?” his eyes seemed flat, motionless.

“You know, someone told me not long ago that everything gets better and that we are not the center for something different to happen to us.”

“It is not applicable when you are a singularity that is generating dissonances. I have suspicions, once I see it, the Perseid , I will confirm them.”

“Didn't you look like Aizen? You always have everything planned out." Coral mocked.

“I'm serious.”

“Yes, but how can we do nothing but walk with our lanterns pointing in all directions and hope that nothing, or no one,” she looked scared, “assaults us. The municipality of Antigua is vast.” She changed her tone to a more energetic one. “What was the case that you enjoyed the most? For me, the fact that Mr. Chinea could continue with a goodbye after several years, touched me.”

“The ghost of the mountain.” A flash of a smile appeared at the corner of the boy's lips.

“You are such a jerk when you want to be.”

Coral remembered how stupid they had been… she squeezed the dark-haired boy's tiny nose by the bridge and shook him.

“We would have already finished if you had gotten dro... drowsy? Drowsy,” Yûusuke repeated to reinforce the word.

“DRRRow-sy” his friend corrected him very comically.

“How nice.” He said ironically. “Theia , as a colliding planet, is your axis of the nebular hypothesis,” he attacked.

“There comes the Smart-arse…” Adassa shouted from a few meters behind the two oldest ones.

“Keep talking, Yûu,” the focus of the conversation caught Imobach's attention. He had dressed himself in his favorite Hawaiian shirt, although he rarely wore them, whenever he put them on he felt great.

“Yes. Better to listen to it than to think about an ambush by Tibicenas .”

The rest of the night followed the thread started by the foreigner in duplicate. That there was gravitational collapse, that the Earth's core was too big and, surprisingly, that the Moon and our mother planet were originally one.

It was the only discovery that night, as there was nothing else. They wandered around the trails and the ground for a while until they had to prioritize their safety.

The next morning Adassa swept through the breakfast buffet before Yuusuke's watchful eyes, not hiding a certain aversion to the girl's poor concoctions. Teresa didn't even flinch.

They began their walk again, this time further away from civilization. If there was something nearby, someone would have seen it already. Whatever that cosmological phenomenon was had already disappeared, from the place, from sight, and from the news columns.

The one with the surf scar that ran up from her shoulder and the one with the unpigmented eye were a little further behind the group, they were using and enjoying the instant camera, they had taken the opportunity to repeat old photos, even one from yesterday and today of Yuusuke with which they had laughed a lot, without a doubt, the favorite pastime of both was the trend #ImJustAKid , to see and redo.

Meanwhile, the more advanced group had delved into how the parallel society to the one they were in, despite being in the contemporary age, was so technologically advanced, same declarations of independence, same revolutions and same problem with plastic but in this one foldable screens flooded the streets, being a driver had fallen into disuse (now any car was autonomous), the population preferred to wear glasses, with which to connect and leave mobile phones behind, nuclear fusion was the engine of society...

Everything was going well, until a point was seen in the distance. The point. The Perseid. Yuusuke started running towards the place in question, with his backpack dragging behind him (something a bit pathetic for any human being) and his cap with a neck protector with the adjustable one over his Adam's apple, slowing him down for a few seconds, like a parachute. It didn't take long for Imobach to catch up with him.

“What are you doing? If it's a joke... it's not funny.” Teresa saw them.

She also saw her friend's bag of basic things (hair ties, water bottle, umbrella just in case...) fall when she imitated them.

“A sphere?” Teresa asked between deep breaths, finding it difficult to recover.

“Yeah, I always thought it would be like a circle, flat.”

Adassa, who had equalled the blonde's time, took several photographs. She kept the most prudent distance the whole time, but surrounded him in her splendour.

“What a… black, huh?” Imobach had choked on the words. Normally he was more observant than talkative, but now he didn't know what to say. “It's” he paused, “strange.”

The boy who started it all had his limbs fully stretched out and stared at him, his mouth turned oyster-shaped, and then he hurriedly scratched the junction of his right shoulder and neck.

“It's how you explained it to me. Such a-...” Coral corrected the sentence as she verbalized it. “It's time…” she dropped both hands on his shoulders, loudly and suddenly. She didn't move them.

Yûusuke, who was grateful for the circulation of small clusters of clouds overhead, turned around in front of them and turned his back on what he didn't want to believe was a possibility.

“It's unstable,” Adassa said first.

“At any moment it could turn white, like the Perseid” he scratched the right corner of his forehead. “I don't know how much exotic material it has used, I can't wait long. Once it crosses the event horizon I'll leave.”

“How will it be?” now the restless one was Imobach. “Will it crush you? If it turns white, will it repel you?”

“But how do you know you'll get there safely? To your home, where you want to be. Imagine you end up in the middle of Antarctica, or on Venus…” Teresa continued.

“We can waste time with conjectures or say goodbye properly” the boy with the slanted eyes interrupted them.

The first step was taken by Coral, who formed the epicentre of the embrace that they slowly and steadily joined in. Even Adassa made the gesture, staying out of the way and trying to touch them as little as possible, but there was contact, and the VAR saw it .

“Thank you for giving me something when I couldn't offer anything. The lessons of culture are apart from that,” he relaxed his face with a confident smile. “In my sixteen years, I have achieved everything by my own hand, with charms, cunning or falsehood, but I never considered getting close to someone beyond the headaches they may give. It is not bitter to be alone, although I know that from now on any special event that happens to me will not have the same taste. Besides, now my headaches due to cedar allergy will return.” He bent his back more than 30ºC. “Thank you.”

He broke free from the crush, took a deep breath, and walked straight to the phenomenon.

"Wait!" Coral unleashed her voice, halfway between a proud shout and a silent declaration. "I'm going with you." She lowered her gaze and decided not to look at her brother or her friends, it was for the best.

“You know I'm not going to reciprocate” the dark-skinned man raised his hand.

“Oh, how annoying with that. I'm over it now. Have you never uttered eternal love and then it's over?”

“No.”

“Okay…” Coral rolled her eyes.

“You also know that I am leaving to avoid further abnormal disturbances” he lowered his chin and looked at her, raising his pupils.

“Yeah, and if I go, I'll cause trouble, blah, blah, blah . I'll be here for less time than you” she tapped him on the tip of his nose.

"Come on," he said, his eyes wet and his back still turned. "It turns out that we've both always been good actors."

“Coco…” the big guy seemed to have lost his strength, “have a good time.”

“I will turn around when I take the step,” answered her sister, still turning her back on them, “if not, I know that this courage will go away. I have thought about it, I know it is crazy… but it will be therapeutic, starting in a new place where nobody knows me. Nobody cares if you win or lose, only you yourself have to be proud of yourself, of your name, it is you against yourself, time does not give you marks or starting points, only yourself. Fail, we all do. Truly prove to myself that I am worth more than just pretending. I will succeed.”

She began to slowly turn her neck, looked at them over her shoulder, shook her friend's hand firmly, so strongly that she thought in his little head that a random event would not separate them, and turned completely towards the remaining three.

“I love you all…” her lower lip began to tremble, “very much.”

“We will miss you,” Teresa said goodbye, still trying to understand, then she focused her gaze on the brunette. “I will miss you very much.”

“You will miss me, I know it,” Adassa said goodbye like a soldier. Firm and confident.

“Coco…”

From her bag, with hers remaining hand, she pulled out the photo they had all taken together when they woke up. She hugged it to her, to her chest, as tightly as she could.

“I will keep it like a cloth of gold .”

They disappeared as quickly as they took the first leap back, leaving silence and darkness in their wake.

After a few seconds, in which they stared into the abyss, Teresa was the first to react, she took Imobach's big hand and wrapped it in hers, he was still staring, he gently caressed her skin; then he freed one hand to bring it closer to Adassa, she grabbed one of his fingers, almost unconsciously.

“It's not a goodbye... it's a see you later.” Imobach convinced himself. “I've always known that she would have to leave at some point and I would have to get used to it, but I never thought…”

"None," Teresa replied, patting him twice on the forearm.

"What the hell," the one with the piercings complained. She swung her companion's hand wildly.

“It's complicated, we'll have to get used to it” the boy told him.

“Shit! Coral had the key to the room. I'm not jumping over the wall, and I'm certainly not paying,” Adassa crossed her arms, still holding her finger.

“I'll take care of it later,” the brunette stroked his hair with his nails and then put his hand away.

“It must be very beautiful at night, can you imagine the white sphere?” Teresa finished.