The three friends got off the old bus, which creaked with every move and stop.
The atmosphere was full of anticipation; they had finally reached their destination. It wasn't a traditional station, just a stop on an old street—somewhere Chris and Rodri had never been before.
As soon as the bus's big door opened, a mix of smells spilled out, forming a warm haze due to the heat inside compared to the chill in the outside air.
Joey jumped off the bus first, skipping the steps lightly until his feet hit the solid ground, holding Gary's old notebook in his hands. The notebook had a brown leather cover, like the color of hazelnuts, and its pages were almost cloth-like, numbering over three hundred. It looked ancient, like an artifact worthy of a museum display.
"We're so close to the mark in the notebook. Getting here was easy, you know that? The map clearly shows this place is Manhattan, and that star symbol points to the Statue of Liberty. And this bridge here connects Brooklyn to Manhattan," Joey said excitedly, flipping through the worn-out pages without showing a hint of boredom.
Chris stood nearby, his eyes blank, his expression dull and indifferent, showing little interest. As for Rodri, the last to get off the bus, he left behind the heat of the engine that faded into the distant asphalt road and made his way toward Chris and Joey.
He looked at Joey, then at the notebook the other was holding. He wasn't sure if a book like that, written by some poetry-obsessed lunatic, would be of any help to them. Rodri wondered to himself what he was even doing here. He felt like this wild goose chase wasn't going to lead him anywhere. Still, he couldn't bring himself to say "no." It wasn't that he wanted to go against the group or take a different path, but he just found it really hard to do so.
"Maybe after fifteen minutes," he thought to himself honestly. Five minutes might be enough to see Chris and Joey back out of whatever they were planning, or maybe even for him to finally object and walk away.
Jonathan kept moving forward confidently, relying on the hand-drawn map and the knowledge he had picked up from his dad about geography. This wasn't his first time holding an old, yellowed paper map. But his dedication and care, while studying maps with his dad and sister, clearly showed how much experience he had. Those few maps his parents had taught them were enough to give him a decent level of skill.
They stopped in front of a narrow alleyway beside an old lamp shop. A sign above the entrance read "Candle Paper," which was supposed to be the marked location on the map.
Chris, with every step forward, couldn't see anything but trash and scattered garbage bags—dirty boxes, filthy plastic containers, all scattered between the narrow gap of the buildings. He glanced into the alleyway, stepping onto its crowded edge, but all he could find were piles of trash bags, broken-down dumpsters, and random graffiti covering the walls.
"Is this what we've been searching for since morning? A junk-filled alley and an old building in a fancy, outdated neighborhood! Maybe it's just a sign of how unlucky we are today?" Chris said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
Joey, still holding tightly to his expectations and the notebook clenched between his fingers, replied confidently:
"Why the rush, man? You need to open your eyes wide, look closely, and listen to what's hidden in the rustling wind. Sometimes, the obvious isn't clear unless you really focus. It's kind of like looking into a cookie jar."
Rodri, who didn't look tired yet, shot him a glance that was equal parts disgust and confusion. Then, he turned his attention to the abandoned building near the edge of the alley and the rough pavement. Even though he wasn't entirely convinced, the location, as outlined in the notebook, seemed to indicate that their destination was the old lamp shop, Candle Paper.
Rodri watched Chris and Joey search intently, while he stayed back, keeping his distance. The skeptic of the group, he observed silently, lost in thought about the purpose of him even being there. Sure, his friends had pressured him hard to tag along, but he never really saw himself being tied to this pointless quest.
Chris, noticing his prolonged silence, recalled similar moments: when they were on the bus debating, Rodri hadn't joined in. When they were in the school cafeteria, talking with Jeremiah, Rodri had stayed out of the conversation. This isolation that surrounded Rodri felt strange to someone as social as Chris, who was his complete opposite—a lively and outgoing guy with Latin roots.
Determined, Chris walked up to him, leaving Joey to search on his own, and asked,
"Are you just going to stand there, or are you actually going to help us look? Standing around like that is no different from being a rusty old statue! Have you ever tried being social, working like a team, and going along with how things are supposed to be?"
Chris hoped that his question would break the icy barrier—or rather, the steel wall—that seemed to surround Rodri, with his stifling presence and gloomy sharpness.
Rodri responded calmly and coldly, lowering his gaze to the ground before raising it to the sky.
"And what do I care about the outcome of your search? You both know I came here just to prove that everything Salim saw was nothing but hallucinations—whether it was reptilian men, robot men, or whatever nonsense like that."
His words were blunt and honest. He didn't believe for a second that reuniting with them would lead to anything close to what he despised. His intentions had been clear from the start; Joey knew that, and Chris had realized it too. There wasn't much difference between his cold feelings and his off-putting, indifferent attitude.
Chris felt frustrated by Rodri's response, though he wasn't surprised. They hadn't had many conversations or meaningful discussions before; to Chris, Rodri was merely a "friend of a friend," or, by a more technical definition, just an early acquaintance.
Looking Rodri straight in the eyes, Chris repeated,
"You're right. If you don't believe us, that's not my problem. But at least help us search. You know, I've got this friend who's crazy curious about everything, and it's that curiosity that keeps him going, even when he feels numb."
Rodri de Amalada Silva froze in place, as if paralyzed. If it were up to him, he would've left already. Or maybe, it's better to say, he wished he had done so.
What was this? That spark of enthusiasm he saw in Joey? He'd seen something similar before in Jeremiah and Salim, but he had never received this side of them—from their first encounter to their last conversation.
Finally, Rodri gave a hesitant nod, unsure why he agreed, but he did. However, he felt compelled to set a condition, granting them only ten minutes before he walked away.
"Alright then, it's settled," Chris said with a smile, stepping away to start searching.
But before he and Rodri could even begin, their calm was interrupted by Joey's voice, filled with a mix of moderate excitement and a subtle weight of mystery:
"I found it! Finally, I think I found it!"
His voice carried a tense enthusiasm, as if what he had just discovered was the very thing he had been hoping to find since the break of dawn. Sweat trickled down his face, a mix of excitement and exhaustion, but his determination was unmistakable—there was no way he was backing out now.
It didn't take long for the sound of Chris's hurried steps to echo behind him, followed by Rodri's steady footfalls hitting the stone floor.
"Found what?!" Chris called out, his voice brimming with a mix of curiosity and skepticism, his eyes gleaming with anticipation.
With a light push, Joey moved aside a door that had been hidden behind a pile of old cardboard boxes.
The door was plain and filthy, entirely unremarkable. Its deteriorated state and unassuming dimensions had kept it concealed amidst the cellar's clutter and a dozen old items strewn between the alleyway and the store known as Candle Paper.
This small side door, seemingly forgotten and out of place, was far removed from the main entrance that opened onto the public street where passersby walked under the shadows of one another's steps.
Joey pushed open the ancient door and stepped into the pitch-black darkness, leaving Chris and Rodri standing near the aged threshold, surrounded by the remnants of long-forgotten trash. The two hesitated briefly, reluctant to compare their bravery to Joey's, who had already faced his fears and ventured inside.
Moments later, Rodri instinctively followed Joey's lead, and soon after, Chris—his chestnut-brown hair a stark contrast to Rodri's darker tone—reluctantly stepped in as well.
Joey stood in the middle of the space, surrounded by shelves, walls, and a floor covered with a thick layer of silvery dust. The old shop, though weathered by time, had stubbornly withstood the years.
Joey said contemplatively, stepping on shards of broken glass from old lamps with his "swoosh" branded sneakers:
"A lot of old lamps, from big to small, broken to damaged. Seems like this was a store for lamps and switches, right?"
Chris nodded in agreement after taking a closer look at the small shop. He noticed its simple layout—the main door located at the front, while the small side door they had entered through was to the left of the cashier's counter.
Joey stood in the middle of the store, observing some dust-covered lamps, before his eyes fell on a small printed list on commercial paper detailing the various types and shapes of lamps that had once been sold here. Reaching out, he grabbed one from the second shelf, which was in the middle of four parallel shelves that stretched from top to bottom. These shelves were aligned next to four identical ones, creating a total of 16 shelves distributed symmetrically on both sides of the store.
He glanced at the small list for a moment before slipping it into his pocket. Although it was waterproof and could easily have gone into his bag, he chose otherwise. From where he stood, he noticed Chris examining a stack of papers, while Rodri headed toward a hidden corner of the store.
That corner, Joey thought, would have been easily missed if one entered from the main door. It was tucked away near the cashier's counter, likely out of sight of customers unless one stood in the exact spot where transactions were made.
With a simple deduction, Joey surmised that the restroom and perhaps a break room might be located there—places typically kept away from the customers' view.
Chris said in a low voice as he read the papers:
"Old loan documents, dating back to '94 and '92… and there's also a rejection notice…"
But he didn't finish his sentence, as Joey interrupted him, walking up to him and saying:
"Are they old service receipts or bills?" Joey asked Chris without looking, continuing to read the last paper.
Chris replied, "They're just old records detailing the fall of Candle Paper—a pointless struggle. Henry Blake refused multiple fair offers to sell his small store to a larger tech company. You know Hashtag Line, don't you?" Chris finished as he stretched, his joints relaxed between the darkness and the glow of Joey's phone flashlight.
"Who doesn't know Hashtag Line? Most of the lights in our apartment, even the fridge, have their brand!" Joey added.
"Henry Blake seems like the previous owner of the store. Still, he's so careless. How could he leave this stuff here in a tiny cash drawer? I thought I'd at least find ten dollars, not a dozen crumpled, scaly old papers," Chris said with a mocking tone as he put most of the papers back in their place.
Joey laughed along as he skimmed through some financial papers. "You're right, what is this? If I were him, I wouldn't have sold the store to someone else. Most of the time, it's your choices that bring you trouble. Maybe this choice was the best for him, or maybe not." He placed all the papers down at once on the worn wooden desk, then followed Chris, stepping over the cracking glass scattered across the floor under their shoes.
Chris stopped by the dirty store window covered with a layer of dust. He wiped a small part of it with his hand to get a view of the road and the parking lot where they had gotten off earlier.
From the usual scene of passersby and the number of people walking under the artificial glow of streetlights, he estimated that the time had barely passed 10 p.m.
He raised his phone, and under the dim light, he took silly, childlike pictures of himself and Joey, as if to capture a lighthearted memory.
The stillness of the night sky didn't seep into the deep corners of the store, where a haze of silver dust floated silently. Whenever Joey thought of the word "stillness," the image of the quietest and strangest person he had ever known came to mind. Joey hadn't seen that person in 13 years. That person always lingered in his thoughts, unlike Chris, whom Joey had only gotten to know properly earlier that morning.
"Where did Rodri disappear to?" Joey murmured softly, just before the silence of the place was interrupted by a nearby crashing sound, making Chris and Joey freeze in place for a few seconds.
When the crashing noise repeated over and over, it sounded as if something heavy was being lifted high and then dropped from a height sufficient to create that racket. Their scattered thoughts tried to piece together the situation.
When Joey reached the corner of the store, near the cashier's desk and just a few meters away, he stood frozen while the restroom behind him went unnoticed. Moments later, Chris joined him, his face showing signs of caution, but he quickly recognized the source of the noise—it was Rodri.
Rodri wasn't causing the noise with his hands or feet, but rather, his hand helped guide an iron baseball bat to smash through whatever could break concrete and rocks with ease and without effort.
Rodri's shoulder twitched slightly as he tried to ease it gently after finally managing to open a relatively small cabinet. It hung in the corner of Candle Paper's storage room, quite literally wedged into the corner of a narrow backroom with a wall that was thickly metallic in origin but deceptively flimsy in reality.
"For real, what are you doing? Did you really have to make all that noise?" Chris said, his voice carrying a hint of panic as the sound of the cabinet smashing triggered something inside him—a feeling almost like a restless spirit stirring. Yet deep down, he knew there was no point in addressing it.
Rodri replied, as usual, with a sharp and audacious remark: "Remember, I was supposed to help you two search. But while you were busy digging through a pile of papers, I had an idea. Why not crack open the store's safe and keep everything for myself instead of sharing it?"
Rodri's serious tone and biting words, laced with a subtle sarcasm, only heightened Chris's irritation. Chris stood still, his gaze locked onto Rodri, his stiff expression betraying an ancient anger that simmered beneath the surface but never quite boiled over. He was clearly upset—maybe even more than that—but he swallowed his frustration visibly.
Joey crouched near the wreckage of the rusted steel safe, inhaling a scent that transported him back to the '90s—or perhaps it was just the coarse, rusty tang of the metal itself.
Joey ignored the scattered papers and old coins that had spilled from the safe. What caught his attention—or perhaps captured his subconscious awareness—was a small mural etched into the cold metal. Amid the icy chill and the orange-tinged rust, the mural seemed to whisper a hidden secret.
It wasn't just Joey who noticed it; Rodri and Chris had their eyes on it too. From where they stood, they watched Joey intently as he examined the mural and inspected a series of raised buttons that adorned it.
The buttons had a solid texture, a blend of metal and stone, and were embedded within the mural on the storage room wall. Neither too high nor too low, they were positioned inside the shattered safe, to the right side of the wall—just far enough from the dusty broom and the thick metal partition.
Joey couldn't bring himself to press the buttons. He froze in place, completely still.
The movement played over in his mind. Perhaps it wasn't about pressing but sliding, like rearranging pieces of a fragmented image. He thought he might need to align the symbols to form a coherent pattern. But he knew very well that these weren't Chinese or Japanese characters—this was something entirely different.
He gently tried sliding the pieces with his fingertips. The result didn't impress him; the pieces began to move one by one and then stopped, one after another, in their respective positions.
He kept trying until his hand started to ache from exhaustion. Completely worn out, he stepped back and looked at Chris and Rodri with a tired expression.
With a voice filled with frustration, he said:
"The stone in the middle of the metal panel refusing to move is baffling. While the other pieces from the first row—three separate ones with matching edges—seem to follow some kind of geometric pattern. Any suggestions?"
Joey continued, piecing together his observations:
"The panel consists of four rows, and each row has three geometric shapes that are centered but slightly different around the edges. Some are smooth, while others are riddled with angular complexities."
Chris stepped forward and tried moving all the pieces himself to confirm Joey's claims. Sure enough, all of them shifted in directions they were capable of moving. Chris, exhaling heavily, said, "I'm terrible at solving puzzles or figuring out mind games. These scattered pieces remind me of an old game I played on my mom's phone—rearranging shuffled pictures. I'm such an amateur and always will be."
Joey echoed him, saying, "Honestly, this feels pointless… it doesn't seem like we're making any progress."
But then - As placed his hand on one of the pieces and slid a stone along its track, the larger stone in the third row shifted. This was followed by two loud mechanical clicks from within the panel, and then three stones from the first row slid down to the last row.
Rodri tried again, and as he realized that part of the puzzle had been solved, astonishment spread across Joey and Chris's faces. Rodri didn't lose focus or waver in his attention. Instead, he felt a rush of excitement as he enjoyed the puzzle, which seemed relatively easy to him. Perhaps this was due to his love for modern puzzles—he was certain that he had encountered many similar ones before, ranging from simple to complex. Still, he knew this particular puzzle wasn't among the hardest, nor was it the easiest. In fact, it might not have been a true puzzle at all but something else entirely.
Nine mechanical clicks followed his solution, and he completed it in just under two minutes.
Chris was astonished and impressed. He placed a hand on Rodri's sweat-drenched shoulder and exclaimed enthusiastically, "You've got a natural talent! You're a genius, an absolute genius!"
Rodri flinched slightly at Chris's praise and Joey's amazement, but he couldn't help feeling a sense of pride. A faint smile crossed his face, lifting his otherwise complex mood a little. He stepped back, saying, "So, now what…? I solved it."
---
The old, cracked copper line snapped, followed by the harsh screech of iron scraping against the floor—perhaps from years of wear and light vibrations. The three of them held their breath as they watched the ancient metal wall slowly and ominously retract about a meter backward, revealing decades of darkness.
Stairs emerged, cascading from the entrance into the depths of the dark cellar.
Joey's eyes widened with visible tension, and he wasn't alone; the same look of unease was mirrored on Chris and Rodri's
To be continued in the next chapter…