There were several crumpled paper bags on the floor and a couple of napkin wrappers that hadn’t quite made it all the way into the trash can.

Lyan was lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling, his arms crossed over his chest and a tired expression on his face.

He had decided to treat himself that night and went down to get burgers from the place on the corner, something he rarely did because his budget didn’t allow for those kinds of indulgences very often.

He ate them sitting on the floor, with his head resting against the bed, lit only by the faint light the bulb gave off.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, the reminder that he still had homework left to do lingered.

His own and Lucas’s group’s, which was still waiting as always because he was still the one who always did it.

’Those bastards can go to hell,’ he thought with a certain resignation, since he didn’t have the energy to be truly angry. It was the last thing he would do tonight. Or tomorrow. Or ever, if it came to that.

He stayed silent, staring at the ceiling for a moment longer.

’I could leave school...’ he thought afterward, with no particular drama behind it, simply as an observation floating there among the others. It was an option.

Technically, it had always been an option.

’Move to another country and start from scratch,’ he continued, just as calmly. A place where no one knew anything about him or had any preconceived notion of who he was.

’And live off junk food...’ he concluded, looking at the bags on the floor without changing his expression. ’That way I’d be happy. Maybe.’

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

The door to his apartment suddenly sounded in the silence, and Lyan turned his head toward it with one eyebrow raised.

He picked up the phone from the floor beside him and checked the time.

Two in the morning.

’Why is the old man awake at this hour?’ he thought, because the only obvious candidate was the building manager, though it wasn’t as if he was the type to knock on someone’s door at two in the morning for no reason.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

This time louder than before.

Lyan set the phone back down on the floor and slowly started getting up, laziness hanging over his shoulders. He also had no real interest in changing the bored expression on his face.

He began stepping around the bags on the floor and reached the door, opening it as far as the chain lock would allow.

There was no one on the other side.

The hallway was empty and silent, with the dim corridor light illuminating nothing in particular.

’...’

"Well—"

"Hi!"

Lyan let out a short, involuntary groan, taking half a step back in surprise.

Sophia had appeared out of nowhere from one side of the doorway, with a smile and a bag in her hand, as if she had been waiting for that exact moment to appear.

"W-What are you doing here?" Lyan asked, looking at her with genuine confusion. "How...?"

Sophia tilted her head slightly and looked at him with a smaller smile than before, then glanced both ways down the empty hallway.

"Can you let me in? It’s pretty cold out here..."

The building had no heating in the hallways, and probably never had, because the conditions of the place didn’t allow for that kind of luxury. That was a fact.

Lyan looked at her in silence for a full minute, literally, without saying anything, processing two questions in parallel that still had no obvious answer: whether he should let her in and how she had gotten there.

"Lyan?"

Her voice brought him back to the present.

He looked over his shoulder at the inside of his apartment. The bags on the floor, the clothes piled on the chair, the unmade bed, and the nightstand with the helmet and the glasses on top.

"W-Wait a minute."

He closed the door in her face.

Sophia stayed in the hallway, still holding the bag, looking at the closed door.

She started fidgeting with her feet, moving them lightly against the floor as she waited, and if someone had looked at her closely, they would have noticed she didn’t exactly look like someone waiting indifferently.

There was a slight blush on her cheeks that wasn’t just from the cold, and her fingers were gripping the bag with a subtlety that wasn’t entirely natural.

Her eyes went from the door to the floor and from the floor to the door, with a certain unease.

From the other side of the door came the sound of movement, something dragging, probably clothes or bags being moved from one place to another. Sophia held back a small smile without quite understanding why.

The door opened.

Sophia looked up abruptly, with a cheerful expression before she could fully control it.

"Come in..."

"Yes!"

She went in and remained standing in the middle of the room, looking around the place with genuine astonishment she made no effort to hide, slightly turning her head toward the different corners as if she were cataloguing everything.

"Well?"

Lyan’s question pulled her out of the trance, and when she looked at him head-on, she realized he was wearing a sleeveless shirt, which left his slightly toned arms visible, even though he clearly didn’t work out regularly, enough for them not to go unnoticed.

"Um..." she murmured, looking away.

Lyan didn’t wait.

"Were you the one behind the unknown number?" he asked directly, looking at her without beating around the bush. "You know where I live, so there’s no point in lying."

Sophia looked at him for a moment with wide eyes before quickly shaking her head from side to side.

"No, not at all, that wasn’t me."

"Then how do you know where I live?"

She hesitated, looking off to one side, scratching the back of her neck with one hand and then looking at the floor for a second before looking back at him.

Lyan waited without saying anything.

"We live more or less nearby," she said in a lower tone than before. "I often take a route that overlaps with yours. And a few times I saw you come into this building." A pause. "The apartment number wasn’t hard to get. The man at the front desk is... kind."

Lyan processed this, letting out a heavy sigh before looking at her with an expression that wasn’t entirely trusting, but not hostile either.

"So what are you doing here then?" he said. "Because I don’t know you at all well enough for you to show up at my door at two in the morning..."

Sophia held his gaze for a moment without lowering her eyes, and something in her expression visibly changed.

She looked more serious than before.

Lyan looked at her without saying anything, a little more serious himself because of her reaction.

"It’s about Lyra."