Looking at distant worlds.

I'm Leonel Rossi and I'm a high school student at one of the oldest schools in the wild, chaotic country known as Argentina.

I'm an average student by our standards: average grades, no respect for authority, I love entering forbidden areas, I'm always exchanging punches with students from other classrooms—you know, the usual stuff around here.

If I had to choose one thing that defines me, I'd have to say it's my little obsession with fire.

Of course, I'm not some crazy pyromaniac; I have reasons to be interested in fire. I even play with it. Whenever people are playing "fireball" on the streets, you can bet I'll be there.

I'm not afraid of fire, but most people run away as soon as I use flames to scare them. It's a powerful "psychological weapon." Even the strongest thugs run away like a bunch of little girls when I douse a rag ball with fuel.

Unfortunately, when I'm at school, getting any kind of fuel is impossible. That means no fireballs here. Not since the last time they caught me smuggling fuel in a tiny soda bottle.

Things have been somewhat boring around here since then, but today, something happened. Something very unusual. I immediately got excited; I knew something fun was about to happen.

You see, there's a student named Marcus in our classroom. He's always quiet, always reading books about ancient Egypt. He rarely leaves his desk. In fact, he doesn't even leave his desk during gym class. The guy has been skipping gym class for months. He won't even leave the classroom to play football with the other guys during breaks.

Another unusual thing about him is that even in those rare cases when he opens his mouth, he only ever pronounces short monosyllabic words such as "yes" and "no."

It's because of all these things that he gets bullied a lot, and yet, he endures it for months. But every two or three months, he blows up, stands up, and starts chasing his bullies all over the school until he gets to punch at least one of them. He even became famous for punching and kicking someone when everyone was singing the national anthem in front of the national flag.

But today was different. No one was bullying him and yet he decided to leave his desk as soon as the break bell rang; he even left his books behind. Something was odd. I instinctively smelled trouble, so I decided to follow him.

Immediately, Alejandro, the tall, rough, brown-haired street fighter with noticeable muscles, started shouting.

"Hey guys, Marcus is going somewhere, he's gonna do something, let's follow him!" Alejandro yelled. He probably assumed there was going to be a fight.

But to me, this felt like something more serious than a simple fight. It's almost as if Marcus was being compelled by a strong force to go somewhere.

Of course, our class representative, Maria, was very worried. She could sense trouble brewing. She's a shy and somewhat innocent girl with a nerdy look, long black braids, and big glasses. You'd think she spends most of her time in a library, but in reality, she spends most of her time patrolling the school grounds, specifically looking out for our class members to make sure we don't do anything stupid. This is perfectly understandable, considering our class is known for being the most problematic class in the school.

"Did anyone do something to him? Is there going to be another fight?" Maria asked.

Mateo, a short, chubby, black-haired friendly guy who always keeps a low profile despite wearing bright video game t-shirts, was quick to respond from the back of the classroom.

"No one here did anything to him," Mateo said. "I bet he's hunting down someone from another classroom."

Maria's sister, Gabriela, who almost looked as if she were her twin, although with shorter braids, seemed to believe this was an urgent matter, or at least that's what her facial expression and her movements showed us. She was wearing the same outfit as her sister: a light blue t-shirt, a giant cross hanging from her neck, and a skirt with vertical white and light blue stripes. Despite looking almost like her sister, her body, unlike her sister's, was kind of trembling, probably due to a sense of urgency.

"Maria, shouldn't we go check to make sure that nothing bad happens?" Gabriela asked.

Maria suddenly became a bit more serious, but retained her usual shaky voice. "Yeah, we should follow him just to be safe. Our classroom is already considered the worst class in the school; we even made a teacher resign. If there's trouble ahead, we must stop it before it starts snowballing."

Alejandro, Mateo's childhood friend, became filled with enthusiasm. "Let's goooo!" he yelled. He clearly didn't want to stop a fight; he probably wanted to be a part of it.

And so, everyone still in the classroom decided to follow Marcus. Five people following him from a distance of around ten meters, and then, three more people, Agustin, Anahí and Xiomara joined us on the way—not the most stealthy group, I would say.

The first thing we noticed is that he was heading toward the stairs. Our classroom is on the second floor. The third floor is for kindergarten. Maybe he has a sibling up there? Even if he did, getting authorization to access the third floor is not easy for a normal student.

But then, things got a little weirder: he opened a maintenance door. Those doors are usually locked with a key, but that wasn't the case this time. We waited outside for a while before entering. We couldn't risk getting noticed by him. There were no teachers around, and no maintenance employees either. Once we went in, we found out why the door wasn't locked. It was an abandoned storage room with old, empty boxes everywhere.

But there was something we never expected to find in there: stairs. He really was heading toward the third floor after all.

Our class representative suddenly warned us. "Guys, the third floor is off-limits. Only children, teachers, and parents are allowed there. We're only moving forward to stop a potentially troublesome situation. Stay close to me, and if a teacher spots us, let me do all the talking, okay?"

One of our wildest girls, Anahí, quickly responded. "This must be the first time you've acted like a proper class representative, nice, girl!"

Anahí may not be the wildest person in our class, but she's one of the wildest girls in our school. She's tall, athletic, and very energetic. She also has a wild appearance, with her long, wavy hair, as black as the night itself, almost reaching her waist, and long, bright silver fingernails. A dark green tank top and a very short, dark red skirt catch everyone's attention on the school grounds. If this school had a dress code, she'd probably be very unhappy. Despite everything suggesting she would be a popular girl, surprisingly, she has no friends and is often found playing football with the guys during breaks whenever she's not damaging school property just for fun. I'm not surprised she's following Marcus with us; she probably thinks chaos awaits us. In that sense, she's not very different from Alejandro; they are both expecting to see a fight.

And of course, Mateo, the low-profile guy—harmless and usually quick to avoid fights—decided to bring some common sense into this situation.

"I don't think he's going to cause trouble," Mateo said. "I mean, who is he going to fight against? There are only children and teachers up there. You guys are overthinking."

Once we were done with the stairs, we found ourselves in a very unusual place. We were convinced the stairs would lead us to the third floor, but that wasn't quite the case. We ended up in a very long corridor with a few tiny windows here and there. With no electric light in sight, the sunlight coming through these tiny windows was the only thing that allowed us to walk through this place without bumping into large wooden boards or old metallic junk. The sunlight also allowed us to notice something important: the ceiling was only a few centimeters above our heads. This detail, combined with the muffled noises that kept coming from beneath us, made it very clear that we were in a forgotten area, between the ceiling of the third floor and the rooftop of the school. In fact, this area felt like a very long attic in someone's old wooden house.

After walking for a while, we found a small, rusty metallic door at the end of this corridor. It was open. Marcus had just walked through that door.

Our class representative hesitated for a while, but eventually entered the room, and we followed right behind her.

The place was dark. Very dark. Lots of very small holes on the walls and ceiling of this semi-spherical room allowed just a little bit of sunlight to slide into the room.

We immediately knew what this place was. We had heard stories about it, but no one knew exactly how to reach it.

"This is it," the class representative said. She almost sounded relieved, as if a burden had been taken off her shoulders. Now that we were here, it was clear that Marcus wasn't hunting anyone down.

Gabriela then pointed out the obvious, as if the giant dark object in the middle of the semi-spherical room wasn't enough of a clue.

"This must be the astronomical observatory," Gabriela said. "It was built around the year 1900 and was eventually abandoned due to the lack of funding needed to repair it."

I was really excited. I love accessing forbidden places. And this was the ultimate forbidden area, one that no one could reach because no one knew how to get here. After all, the front door was always locked. But this side door that Marcus found—this was amazing. If we hadn't followed him into the forgotten corridor, we would have never found the side door.

But now, there was a question we were all asking ourselves. What was Marcus planning on doing here?

"MARCUS, WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE!?" I yelled. "We've been following you for a while, expecting something fun. Surely you didn't come here just to be alone in silence, right? What exactly are you planning? Are you meeting someone here?"

He turned around, stared at me, but did not reply.

Our class representative was next. Of course, she had questions. She spoke in a slow, soothing voice, which was not normal for her.

"Marcus, this place is off-limits, and it's dangerous because it's literally falling apart. We shouldn't be here. Why did you come here?" Maria asked.

He didn't reply. Then Anahí brought something to our attention.

"Guys, look up there," she said. She was probably pointing upwards with her hand, but it was so dark we couldn't even see her arm.

But she was right; there was something up there—a small red light. It was slowly increasing in size. Before we could say anything, there was a sudden red flash, illuminating the entire room. I could hear the girls screaming for a few seconds, but then, suddenly, the screams were gone. In fact, everything was gone.

I was in a place of complete darkness, of complete silence.