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“Would you like to go to Grom with me?”
Alador doesn’t look away from his locker, clueless about the social weight of the question.
“I’m already going with Odalia, I think that’s what you do with your girlfriend, right?” he replies, as Darius’s world crumbles down.
“Girlfriend?”
“Yes, she asked me that too,” he adds.
Then he turns, and his expression is the portrait of innocence. It’s useless — Darius thinks — to explain to him that, as his best friend, he would have liked to know about this, nor that he’s heartbroken because Odalia asked first. So he pushes through, as if nothing had happened.
***
32 years later
Everyone raises their glass and cheers to Alador. The madman has done it: he removed the sigils. That wonderful and brilliant idiot has done the impossible, he’s set whole generations free.
Darius looks at him in his moment of triumph and realises he’s never stopped missing his best friend, his first love.
He approaches Alador to congratulate him and realises their friends have given them privacy.
“Alador,” he starts, with the same emotion of their teenage years, “would you like to go out for dinner with me?”.
At first, Alador considers him curiously, as if unsure he understood, then he smiles.
“Yes,” he answers, “I would”.