The apartment was a mess. The boxes for the move occupied most of the available space. Some were open with clothes on the inside and others scattered on the floor. The bed, however, being the place where Theo slept, was ridiculously flawless. Though he couldn't say the same about his surroundings. On the night table and under several pieces of clothing, was meticulously placed the pendant necklace that belonged to his mother. Although he was too young to remember her, Theo clung to that piece as constant proof of her existence.

A slight breeze slid out of the window, moving the curtains, and the almost transparent blue of the jewel became even more translucent as the faint rays of sunshine timidly infiltrated through it.

The successive noise of the keys against the lock indicated the arrival of the owner of that chaotic place. The heavy door of the old apartment, as it opened, dragged with it the clothes that lay on the floor next to it. Dodging these garments with a certain clumsiness, Theo made his way to the kitchen, where the disorder seemed to give way. Leaving the supermarket bags on the counter, he set out to quickly put everything he had bought into the small temporary refrigerator. Suddenly, the cell phone in his pocket began to vibrate, and Theo went on to push the food disorderly into the refrigerator in an attempt to hurry. He turned off the programmed alarm and began getting dressed as quickly as he could to get to work, not forgetting, of course, to bring his pendant.

When he arrived at the Café, he snuck in through the back door, hoping to avoid meeting his manager, who would have murdered him if he caught him coming to work late again. Cautiously, he slipped into the locker room to leave his backpack and left with the same speed, while tying his apron. As soon as he approached the counter, his coworker looked at him without an ounce of surprise in his gaze and, pointing backward with his thumb, said to him:

"The manager wants to talk to you when you finish your shift," and continued to take the order from the client in front of him as if nothing had happened. That phrase haunted him all afternoon; tortured him while he waited for the inevitable. He could not afford to lose his job once more since he had not yet paid the rent for the apartment. He would be in a huge problem.

With the bitter aroma of coffee in the air, Theo spent the entire afternoon preparing drinks while Noah, his co-worker, had chosen that day to leave earlier and let him face alone the manager's fury. The tables of the place were crowded. However, the bustle of the crowd helped him distract himself as he took orders. By 9 PM, Theo couldn't stop drumming his fingers on the table; now he was a bundle of nerves, to the point that he couldn't sit still behind the cash register. At that time, there were rarely any clients, and that was the reason why he jumped in his seat when he heard the sound of the wind chimes as the front door opened. A man with a long, dark coat entered and headed straight for the counter. Theo could not help but tremble as his gaze settled on him, a singular, but strangely familiar sensation made him quiver slightly.

“An Espresso, please,” he said in a voice that seemed a little demanding. Then, he walked away to a table to wait for his coffee. 

Theo assumed he was in a hurry, from the way he impatiently glanced at the watch on his wrist. Theo rushed to finish his order and took it to his table. The man, who was staring at the door of the Café with an immutable expression, turned his gaze towards him, murmured a "thank you" and looked back concentrated at the entrance. As he walked away to the counter, Theo gave a quick glance at the door, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary to him; nothing more than people walking in front of the windows of the shop. About fifteen minutes passed and the Espresso, now supposed to be cold, was still intact on the table. The client's suspicious attitude did not help with the creeping nervous attack Theo was suffering at the time. The man, who looked as if he was going to make a hole with his eyes in the gate from looking at it so much, glanced, for so it seemed the tenth time, at his watch and then at him, opening his eyes slightly with an expression of surprise, as if he had forgotten that he was in the room. The man, while Theo was trying to make up some moderately credible excuse to give to the manager, stood up abruptly and prepared to leave the place, without even having touched the coffee. However, half a meter from the door, he turned and scanned him with his eyes. Hesitantly, he walked to where Theo was and slipped him his credit card.

“You didn't charge me for the coffee," he said sighing, exhausted.

"To be honest, if I were the manager, I'd also fire me,” thought Theo as he swiped the card through the dataphone. As he did so, he felt the man's gaze watching him silently; he had never wished so much to be somewhere else as at that moment. His anxiety was rising rapidly. Those seconds went by so slowly, they felt like years. When he returned the card and his hands rubbed together, an electrifying shiver similar to the previous one ran down the entire length of his spine. The man, who was now looking into his eyes unabashedly, quickly grabbed Theo by the arm and squeezed him firmly.

“It's you,” he said stunned, his gaze fluctuating between Theo's face and his chest. “I can't believe it.”

The boy, on the verge of a nervous attack, tried to escape the grip, but the man refused to let him go. He was about to start screaming when he noticed a faint flash coming from his neck. Slowly and cautiously he turned his gaze to where the man had posed his, and astonished, he froze. His mother's pendant was emanating a gleaming blue light that he had never seen before. Now it wasn't the man the only one absorbed. Theo, who couldn't get over his shock, almost staggered backward if it hadn't been for the solid grip of the strange individual. When the man let go of his arm, the light from the pendant began to extinguish to the state it was in before. Theo lifted his head back at the man to find him staring at him intensely, waiting for some movement on his part.

“I've been waiting for you," said the grim man, with a serious countenance, clinging to Theo’s shoulder and squeezing it even tighter as he watched the blue flame sprout from the necklace once again.