The silence in the apartment wasn’t a lack of sound. It was an excess of it.

It huddled in the corners, pressed against her chest, occupied everything before Bea could even think to move. The refrigerator hummed in the kitchen, a low, continuous noise, as if it were exhausted too.

Bea turned over in bed. The thin mattress creaked with a short, dry sound, almost a warning. She remained motionless after that. She didn’t want to test its limits – or her own limits.

She opened his eyes. Dark. Still.

Five in the morning. Always five in the morning. The hour when the day began without asking permission, long before she was ready to exist within it.

She stretched her arm to the bedside table, groping in the dark until she found the radio. The worn plastic beneath her fingers was all too familiar. She carefully turned the button, lowering the volume just enough to fill the space between thoughts. Not to really listen. Just so she wouldn’t be alone with herself.

The presenter’s voice entered the room as it did every day: too clear, too vibrant, out of place.

“…and the cases of attempts to remove names continue to grow. It seems that every week a new clandestine clinic appears promising the impossible. Erasing the name of your soulmate. How crazy is that, isn’t it, Evan?”

Crazy.

The word lodged itself in Bea like an ancient splinter.

“It’s a worrying trend, Ana,” the co-host replied. “People despair. They try everything to escape what they consider inevitable. But the truth is, even with physical separation, the connection persists. It’s almost impossible to escape our soulmate.”

Almost.

Bea felt the weight of that word slowly sinking inside her. There was always an ‘almost’. A tiny space where hope pretended to exist, only to hurt later.

The presenter sighed – a soft, practiced sound, rehearsed to sound like empathy.

“Yes, that’s what they say. But you, Evan, who are the philosopher of our duo… if destiny is so unbreakable, why do so many people try to break it?”

There was a clearing of the throat. A precise, calculated pause.

“As I always say, Ana: between the beginning and the end, destiny is merely the echo of choices. People seek the freedom to choose, even when they seem to have no choice at all.”

Bea turned off the radio before he finished.

She didn’t need to hear the rest. She never needed to.

That phrase had crossed her mind many times before, as everything always did. It would enter, stay, take root. And then rot in silence, leaving the same bitter taste as always.

Choices.

She pressed her lips together and felt the familiar knot forming in her stomach – slow, patient, faithful. The same knot that would accompany her all day. The same one that would never go away, no matter how much she pretended to be normal.

Bea got out of bed before the sun dared to appear. Some people woke up to live – she woke up only because her body awoke, against her will.

When Bea was little, she liked to sit on the floor at her mother’s feet, with pencils and scraps of paper scattered around. The sheets never matched each other. They were leftovers – the back of paid bills, folded advertisements, anything that could still accept a line. She drew without knowing exactly what. Crooked lines, houses that wouldn’t stand up, faceless people. It didn’t matter. The important thing was to keep her hands busy. While she drew, the world became quieter inside.

Her mother would sit on the sofa, almost always with an open book. She would read as if passing through an invisible door, the kind that only exists for those who know where to look. Her gaze would gradually drift away from the present, page by page, until Bea was sure that her mother was no longer there – and, strangely, this never hurt. On the contrary. As long as her mother was inside the stories, it seemed impossible for anything bad to happen.

One of the walls in the room was entirely covered with built-in bookshelves. Old, dark wood, marked by time. The books were crammed against each other: thick and thin volumes, worn covers, crooked spines. Bea believed that wall held up the house. As if, if the books fell, everything would collapse with them.

After lunch, every day, the ritual repeated itself without variation. The mother sat on the sofa, crossed her legs, and opened her book. Bea settled on the floor, close enough to feel her presence, but without touching her. They hardly spoke. And she never missed it. The silence between them was full. A silence that demanded no explanation, no effort. It simply existed.

They awaited her father’s return like this. The mother reading. Bea drawing. Time passing without haste, as if it had no urgency to arrive anywhere. It was a silent, but safe exchange. Bea couldn’t explain it, but she was certain that, while that moment lasted, she was protected from something – something that didn’t yet have a name, but was already lurking.

It was her mother who taught her to love reading. Bea didn’t remember exactly when it started. She only knew it happened on one of those long afternoons when the sun seemed to have stopped in the sky. Her mother had just closed a book and murmured a sentence, so low it seemed meant only for herself. She repeated it more than once, as if testing the weight of the words in the air.

Between the beginning and the end, destiny is merely the echo of choices.

There was something in the way she said it that made Bea lift her head. She asked what it meant. Her mother looked at her with a small, tired smile and replied that she would understand when she was older.

Bea understood, ahead of time.

Just not in the way she’d like.

Now, at her age, Bea knew she disagreed.

Not a little. Not in parts. She disagreed entirely.

If that were true, if destiny were truly just an echo of choices, her life wouldn’t be this repeated emptiness, this feeling of being trapped in an endless reverberation of other people’s decisions. Bea had never chosen anything that truly mattered. She hadn’t chosen to lose her mother. She hadn’t chosen to inherit her father’s debts. She hadn’t chosen to spend his days waiting for something that never came.

Sometimes it seemed like the universe had put her on autopilot and then forgotten about her. She would wake up. He did what needed to be done. She breathed because her body insisted. But she wasn’t going anywhere.

And maybe she never would.

Now she was sitting in an uncomfortable plastic chair, feeling the hard edge pressing against the back of her thighs. She had already changed position twice. It was no use. Nothing in that place seemed made to last long – neither the chairs nor the people who passed by.

Without realizing it, she repeated the phrase in a low voice, almost like a habit too old to be broken.

Between the beginning and the end, destiny is merely the echo of choices.

Her lips moved in a crooked smile that never truly came to be. It was just a bitter reflex, followed by a short, dry laugh that died before it could become a sound. A sigh without faith.

Bea looked up at the clock hanging above the counter. Nine o’clock in the morning. The hand seemed motionless, as if time had decided to punish her personally. Each minute ticked by with the cruel slowness of someone who knows exactly where they’re going – and makes a point of going slowly.

Her gaze drifted to the calendar pinned to the stained wall behind her. The pages were crooked, yellowed at the edges. For a moment, Bea tried to remember what day it was.

Ah. Today. Shit.

Her stomach sank all at once, as if someone had pulled the ground out from under her. Today was no ordinary day. Not that it made much difference. Lately, they’d been doing the same deadlift every day. The difference was that some of them made a point of remembering why.

Bea took a deep breath. The air went in too heavily and came out too weakly. She tried to ignore the unease that was slowly beginning to spread, gnawing at the edges of her mind. She knew that feeling. It wasn’t anxiety, exactly. It was something deeper, more ancient. A wordless warning.

The store was empty – as it almost always was. Dark, stuffy, smelling of cheap alcohol mixed with expired disinfectant. A smell that didn’t clean anything; it only masked the problem. Sometimes, Bea wondered how that place still functioned, forgotten in that neighborhood where only thugs, gangs, and people without choices seemed to thrive.

Perhaps that was why the salary was reasonable.

Perhaps that was why Bea stayed there.

The owner appeared from behind the counter a few minutes later, bringing with her the same sweet, misplaced smile as always. Too small for that place. Too small for that neighborhood. She placed a package of cookies, one of those about to expire, on the counter, as if it were a gesture of care. As if sugar and colorful packaging could fix something broken inside her.

Bea nodded in thanks. She never refused. She never commented.

She never ate there.

Some mornings were bearable. Others, like that one, came laden with a dull tension, an unsettling certainty that something bad was lurking. Bea had learned not to ignore that feeling. Whenever she had ignored it, she had paid dearly.

The doorbell rang.

She looked up.

“Give me two packs of that blue stuff over there…”

Bea nodded silently and turned to get her cigarettes. She didn’t even need to look to know who it was. The voice was unmistakable.

Ballie.

The nickname twitched an involuntary corner of his mouth. Not because she found it funny. It was just… fitting. He wasn’t fat, but the enormous wart on top of his bald head lived up to the name. An impossible detail to ignore. In another life, perhaps Bea would have genuinely laughed. Today, it was just another strange thing in a world that seemed intent on accumulating absurdities.

He was wearing a neon green gym t-shirt, matching pants, and orange sneakers that were far too flashy for any setting other than a visual cry for help. A complete chromatic aberration. Bea didn’t know anything about fashion, but she could recognize an offense against the eyes when she saw one.

Even so, Ballie was one of the few customers who didn’t treat her as if she were disposable. He had his own eccentricities – occasional arrests, guttural laughs, random comments about restaurants Bea would never set foot in – but he never looked at her as if he were assessing someone’s worth.

She handed over the cigarettes. He paid. Their fingers almost touched.

“Bad day?” he asked, bluntly.

Bea looked at the counter. At the empty shop. At the clock that still insisted on showing a little after nine.

“They all are…” she replied.

Ballie laughed, as if it were a joke. Bea didn’t correct him. Some truths weren’t worth the effort.

He took one of the cigarettes from the pack, placed it between his parched lips, and twirled the filter between his fingers, but didn’t light it. He remained there for a few seconds, savoring the silence, as if carefully choosing what to say.

“Hey, girl,” he called, in an almost paternal tone, the kind that doesn’t require an immediate response. “If your dad shows up around here, tell him to watch out. I heard Nico’s pissed at him.”

Bea sighed. It wasn’t a dramatic sigh. It was just the air escaping from a body tired of always hearing the same threat with different words. A weariness so old it had become a constant companion.

“Nico’s always pissed at my dad…” she replied, her voice neutral, almost disinterested. “And luckily, I haven’t seen that bastard in four years. Sometimes I even think he’s dead somewhere.”

Ballie laughed. A short, guttural laugh. The wart on the top of his head wobbled with the movement, reminiscent of those grotesque dolls hanging near the steering wheel. In another era, that would have provoked some reaction. Today, it provoked nothing.

“True,” he agreed, but the laughter died quickly. There was a pause. His gaze softened slightly. “But this time it seems serious. Be careful, okay?”

Bea nodded and forced a smile that went nowhere.

“Thanks…”

Be careful.

As if that were a choice.

As if it were possible to avoid bad luck once he learns his name.

As if it were possible to outsmart fate after it has already decided where you will fall.