The day was operating in survival mode: cloudy skies, unbearable traffic and her backpack seemed to weigh the symbolic ton of all her academic responsibilities.

She walked through the condominium gate with rhythmic steps, her headphones still playing some song - the perfect soundtrack for a dragging Friday. But then, like a silent warning from the corporate gods of intuition, something caught her eye.

A silver Hade.

Shining under the streetlights, arrogant as someone who knows it shouldn't be there - and yet it reigns. It wasn't common to see such flashy cars in that neighborhood, where the "good practice manual" recommended discreet models and even more discreet faces. She hesitated. Just for a second. Just for a moment.

Nothing much, maybe just a wealthy delivery man. She thought, in an unconvincing attempt to calm the unease that was now scratching the back of her neck.

She walked forward, dragging her backpack like a soldier at the end of a war, to the entrance of the building. She entered the code for the automatic gate - the same one that a buffoonish trustee insisted on changing every month - and climbed the steps to the third floor. The number 302 shone on the sign, just as it should.

But the door...

The door, the damn door, was leaning. Not open, not locked - leaning, like a mocking invitation.

She stopped. Her heart started hammering dramatic presentations in her chest, as if she were at an emergency meeting.

She had locked it. With two turns of the key. As she did every day.

The world, with its usual lack of warning, turned upside down.

Swallowing her fear - because leaders of themselves don't back down - she pushed the door with the tip of her foot, in a careful, strategic gesture. With the caution of someone who knows that "those with a mouth go to Rome, but those who are curious go to the morgue". The apartment seemed normal at first glance. The pale light from the living room lamp cast timid shadows on the furniture.

But then she saw him.

In the center of the room, sprawled on the sofa as if he were the CEO of that home, his feet disrespectfully anchored to the glass table, was Hunter, who was puffing on a cigarette with the arrogance of someone who has never read a good practice manual. The smoke drew liquid sculptures in the air, and his head tilted back gave the scene a blasé air.

When Hunter finally realized her presence, he lifted his face, a crooked smile drawing itself with the audacity of someone who knew no bounds.

— Happy to see me after prison, Blackberry?

Four years. Four fucking years. And he still used the same damn nickname.

The silence that followed was dense, viscous. Time ticked away on the clock on the wall. He was there. Back again. Like an inconvenient shadow from the past.