Chapter One

The beginning of The Endless World

Not too far from here, actually just a few atoms away from our reality, in the boundless ocean of the multiverse, floats another dimension. And although, in some ways, it is very similar to our universe, in general, it is infinitely different. Squeezed into the mess of countless parallel realities, it is so tightly attached to ours that the situation is identical to a crowded bus. One wrong move by the driver, and the elbow of one dimension easily and painfully gets stuck in the belly of the unsuspecting other dimension.

And in this world, as usual in ours, there were two elbows, and they were called Crabby and Handy. The Golden Tandem, as they are known.

To gain a clearer picture of them, we should note that unlike here, the real name is not given immediately to the newborn, but is waited for 456 water cycles to pass, or about 5 of our years. Enough time for every child to show their talents and earn their name. And when this happens, their education begins in a field suitable for their personality traits.

Crabby was trained, with many caveats, to be a defender (currently suspended), and Handy, due to a lack of a more suitable position, was assigned to the new addition to the support staff as a… “theoretician” specialist. Until one bright day, they met, hit it off, and discovered their common mission in life: to stand up to fate, including its protégé, society, and... to give it the middle finger.

These two were the happiest people in all the nearby dimensions, at the expense, of course, of the people around them. They complemented each other so well that… when, for example, Handy accidentally broke something—which happened to him quite often—the other immediately declared the event a natural course of fate and was ready to jump on the eyebrows of anyone who didn't see things that way. And vice versa, whenever Crabby came up with some ingenious foolery, Handy immediately got involved in its implementation as if it were his life's mission and, like everything in it so far, managed to embellish it beyond recognition.

We might never have known about the existence of this intriguing new world if one wonderful day…

Leonard was enjoying the perfect arrangement of the bedroom. He had put brand new sheets on the bed, dusted, perfumed, arranged the books in the bookcase, and even placed flowers in a vase on the small table by the window. His gaze stopped at the large wall mirror. From there, a tall, blond man with a pleasantly toned posture was smiling happily at him.

“You look gorgeous,” he told himself, and smiled even wider.

From the children's room above him, the first chords of "that" Billie Eilish song sounded. There were quick footsteps, and the sound instantly grew louder, a lot, as did the pounding that followed.

However, the smile didn't leave his face even for a moment. He just closed his eyes and imagined that tonight this uproar wouldn't be there at all.

Yes, he had organized things well. The little daughter was with her grandparents, and this crazy teenager, who was currently jumping with all her might on the floor above him, was going to sleep at her best friend's house. So, he is going to play some soft, pleasant music, maybe jazz, dim the lights, and, yes, for the first time in a very long time, he had a date with a woman.

“Everything had to be okay.” He had invited her to a romantic candlelit dinner. Just him and her. Finally.

“No,” he corrected himself, "it doesn't have to be okay, it should be perf…" and right at this moment somewhere above him, a sharp and deafeningly loud sound rang out. It was hard for him to liken it to anything he knew, but his associative thinking persistently pointed to something that had been torn. Leonard instinctively covered his head with hands, pressed his ears, crouched down, and stayed like that for a few seconds, not daring to move. Only his eyes tried to look up despite the position of his head, and after failing, they left room for thoughts to operate.

“What was that?” he asked himself, and at the same time, another part of his mind, on the contrary, didn't want to know at all. Finally, they still reached an agreement and came up with a hypothesis: “It sounded like… well, if the universe had trousers at all, that might be the sound of them being split.”

A few more moments passed, and the sound ceased as suddenly as it had appeared. And now, in its place, only a soft crack remained. “Besides, such a sight was impossible to miss,” he urged himself, slowly raising his head. He looked up just as a huge black hole opened in the ceiling, and some objects started falling from it.

“Argh,” he groaned, “a crazy teenager! What did you do this time?”

He jumped nimbly out of reach of the falling objects, slammed the door behind him, and hurriedly climbed the stairs to the second floor. Somewhere along the way up, he lost his breath from the speed and anxiety. He leaned against the door and knocked hurriedly a few times, waited, and then knocked again.

“Daisy!” he cried with some difficulty and repeated the knock again, this time louder. “Daisy!”

Finally, the door opened slightly, and two large emerald-green eyes peered out, followed by a strand of cool brown hair.

“What?” his daughter said in a mixture of surprise and slight irritation.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes,” she replied, narrowing her eyes in even greater surprise… “was.”

“Oh, thank God. Uh, I mean, I'm glad you're okay. But what's going on here?” He tried to peek inside, but she didn't seem to want to.

“Oh,” she thought, “now he’ll start with ‘Look what your room looks like…’ again.”

“Nothing,” she said instead. “I listen to music... and dance.”

“Or maybe you've gone wild with that dancing. I want to see.”

"What do you want to see?” She was not giving up.

“What's going on here? Where's the hole? Something fell from here into the bedroom,” he shot quickly.

“You must be overtired!” she said in a softer voice and opened the door to get a better look at him. “You can't stand this date at all, can you?”

“You are talking nonsense. I want to see!”

“Am I talking nonsense? What do you want to see?” she repeated, but still opened the door completely.

“Did you bore the floor?”

“Dad?” she almost screamed, completely confused now.

“I'm telling you, something fell in the bedroom from the ceiling... from here.” He pointed up, then down, then repeated…

“Dad?”

He looked around every corner, groping with his foot. Then he even slightly lifted the small decorative rug.

“Don't look at me like I'm crazy,” he said, and then involuntarily considered that possibility for a moment.

“Okay!” he finally said, rather to himself, after finding nothing suspicious. “Come and I will show you.”

“Okay, let's go see the huge piece of plaster that was going to crush you,” she replied sharply and rushed down the stairs.

“Daisy, please be careful!” he shouted hurriedly, trying to catch up with her. “There might be…”

Still, she reached the bedroom first and flung the door open.

“Wow!” she exclaimed, her eyes wide open. “There's a goat in your bedroom. Ha ha ha!”

“What?” He peeked in too.

“Oh no! It’s true! There’s a goat on my bed.”

“Dad? I don't know what you're doing,” she’s still laughing, “but... look, there’s no hole in the ceiling. There's only one huge, colorful goat,” she laughed again. “It has big curved horns, a beard, legs, a tail, and... and what is that?”

“Well, um,” he stammered. “It's a ram, a male goat, and…”

“Wow! Ha ha ha,” she laughed loudly again.

“Oh, come on! Get out of here!” He slammed the door and sent her away with a stern look.

She continued to giggle defiantly as she climbed up to her room.

“What am I doing?” he muttered to himself. “But I haven't done anything. Whatever it is, this thing has to get out of there, NOW!”

He opened the door again, decisively. Facing him there was still that huge, hunched goat with….

“What the...” He couldn’t believe his eyes. He took a deep breath and entered the room. Carefully slid along the wall to get a better look at it from all sides, but the image somehow lost focus and gradually disintegrated into separate details.

“Oh, I know those installations,” he said to himself. When you look at them from a certain angle, they take on a meaningful image, but when you turn around a bit, you see just a series of scattered, shapeless details. But that wasn't exactly the case. What was visible was, by no means, a meaningless mess. He slid in a little further for a better view. From this perspective, the thing took up almost the entire room. It was… perhaps something like a giant balance swing made of an iridescent, glassy material.

In some places, it was thick, and in others, it was translucent—almost like a jelly cheesecake slice.

It depicted a cut relief of some strange, flat geography. Leonard slowly approached to examine it. At one end, it began with the deep desert orange of sand dunes. They occupied about a third of the entire length of the swing and then smoothly formed one shore of the crystal blue sea.

On the opposite bank began a green zone. There were fresh, lush meadows, gradually giving way to dense forests, cut by tiny, meandering streams that originated from rocky mountain peaks covered in eternal snow.

That was the other end from which the goat's horns seemed to be forming.

He stepped back a little to examine the center of the swing, where a helix of thin glass tubing emerged from the sea, and swirling like a crystal-clear tornado. As it rose upward, this vortex gradually narrowed and finally turned into a bright, glowing, slowly rotating sphere the size of a tennis ball.

A beam of concentrated light descended from it and passed through the center, along the entire height of the helix, and finally sank back into the sea.

This entire installation was supported by a massive pyramidal base in an all-consuming black color. On one side, it seemed to be inlaid with silver symbols and, perhaps unknown to him, letters. Some of the symbols were quite understandable. He could clearly distinguish between types of food, fruits, and perhaps some tools, as well as something round, an ugly face, a pretty face, and... a bed. The scribbles attached to them, however, were completely unfamiliar to Leonard. They somewhat resembled Asian hieroglyphics but were somehow more narrative. Here and there was a hint of a stylized hand, eyes, and… various other human parts.

He ran his fingers through the curls and abruptly pulled his hand back. The black material the base was made of was burning cold, and he could already see it quickly covering in frost. That cooled his desire to explore the glowing sphere, but what caught his attention again was that the glass helix beneath it was filled with liquid... to some extent. And he could have sworn that a moment ago, the liquid inside was a little less. Whatever this thing was, it had to disappear from his bedroom at that moment.

He looked at the ceiling. There was a chance he had imagined it because there really wasn't a hole there. The plaster was intact, except for… a thin, spiderweb-like line…

“Well,” he said to himself resolutely, “I don't know how you got in there, but now you're going out the door.”

He rolled up his sleeves, grabbed the swing, and... it didn't move even an inch. He tried again, this time to push it, and... again, nothing. He stood under it, leaned his shoulders against the glassy material, and pushed with all his might. The floorboards creaked under his feet, and his joints crackled here and there too, but the result was the same. This thing was like concrete. It was like trying to move the house.

While he was striving to catch his breath, his daughter came downstairs, opened the door, and said hurriedly, “Dad, will you give me a ride? I think I'm going to be late?”

“What are you… going… to be late for?” he asked hoarsely.

“I told you. We're going to the movies.”

“I don't remember. You were supposed to be at Amity’s home, having a pajama party?”

“Dad! It's still noon.”

“Oh, yes. You're right. You'd better get out of here anyway. This thing could be dangerous…”

“The goat? Ha ha ha!”

“It's not just….”

“Don't you think,” she squinted, “that its posture has changed a bit? It's like… it's going to stand up on its hind legs... and... that thing...?”

“Ah! You're right. You're absolutely right. Let's get out of here. I'll give you a ride. I'll go buy some things from the supermarket later... for tonight. Come on, go. I'll just get my keys.”

It took a while for Leonard, on full autopilot, to get into the car, start it, and drive off. During that time, he was frantically thinking about how to get rid of the thing in question. Time his daughter spent in indecision and nervously parting her hair.

And yet, finally, she formed a slight mocking smile on her plump lips and said:

“But won't the goat get in your way?”

“Which 'us'?” he fell right into her trap.

“To you and your… friend.” She spat out the last word as if she had found something slimy in her salad.

“How could he be interfering with us?” He acted naïve. Although he usually liked to be distracted while driving and looked more at his interlocutor than at the road, at that moment, the streets ahead of him turned out to be irresistibly attractive. “It is in the bedroom. We, uh, are just going to have dinner. Maybe we'll watch a movie,” he said out loud, but inwardly, he cursed most eloquently the fact that the bedroom was completely unavailable at the moment.

He probably hadn't played it very convincingly because, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed her unpleasant smile appeared again.

“Oh, yes.” She laughed, not very cheerfully. “You'll probably kiss her on the cheek when you see her off.”

“Well, you… you're not angry, are you… that I… you know…” he muttered, his gaze fixed ahead again.

“It's your life. You can ruin it however you want,” she said, indifference almost dripping from her words.

“Listen… Daisy, I think we've talked about this before. Your mother was the most wonderful person in the world, but a lot of time has passed since…”

“And you want to replace her, don't you? You want this… colleague of yours to play the role of a mother… and start teaching me how to live. No! One whiner is enough for me, if you want to know.”

“But I don't at all... i.e., she's not…”

“And don't talk about my mom in the past tense!” She got out of the car and slammed the door. “She's not dead! She's just disappeared.”

“Do you think I forgot?” he said, more to himself. “Have a nice time!” He smiled as a sign of reconciliation.

She made a sour face.

“Greet Amity for me,” he shouts after her.

“Oh, what am I doing?" he sighed softly when he was left alone. She has every right to react this way. Five years is obviously not enough for her to overcome the absence of her mother. On the other hand, when I think about it, even 50 years won't be able to erase a mother's warmth.

“And then, adding the presence of that thing in the bedroom… Yes, maybe it would be better to postpone the date. Why not? It only gives me headaches anyway. No, I'm not hesitating at all,” he was inspiring confidence in himself. “I'm brave. Now I'll tell her…”

The moment he reached for the phone, it was already vibrating. And it was her. “Ah, just in time,” he smiled exaggeratedly, and at the same moment he felt indecision tighten his throat.

“Hi…” he began nervously, “I was just thinking…”

“Oh, yes, I was thinking about you too,” she chirped into the receiver. “What a happy coincidence.”

“Ah, yesss.” He felt himself getting weak.

And as if through a fog, he heard her begin to enthusiastically explain how excited she was about tonight, how impatient she was, and that this would be the most wonderful evening of her life, and… How could he respond to that? How could he refuse her?

Her enthusiastic smile and the way her pleasantly round breasts heaved with excitement surfaced in his mind. A beautiful picture that, however, was at the same moment obscured by the shadow of the goat.

“Uh, wouldn’t it be better… to go to a fancy restaurant?” He glimpsed a lifeboat through the foaming, stormy sea of his mind.

“No way.” She cut him off. “You promised me a romantic candlelit dinner and to cook me an original Italian pasta.”

“Oh yes.” Early in his youth, he had discovered that when you lie, you get into trouble, and when you tell the truth—twice as much. He remembered that excited moment when she had told him that she loved Italian cuisine, and he… hadn't lied to her when he said that he loved it too, and maybe a little that he knew how to cook great pasta.

As a result, he had to watch cooking videos for several days in a row in which that temperamental Italian, Gennaro Contaldo, was doing wonders with a clove of garlic, olive oil, and a few cherry tomatoes.

“Besides, no restaurant can replace the comforts and coziness of home...” she ended on a sweet note.

“Ohhh!” And those hints... There was no way he could resist this temptation.

He came home determined to deal with the situation. He needed his bedroom at all costs.

“I have no idea how you got in here, but you're definitely going to come out in pieces,” he threatened the goat.

He ran to the attic, and after a few minutes of digging around, he came back with a dusty baseball bat. With a satisfied expression and determined steps, he headed to the bedroom. He was just reaching for the doorknob when a blinding light shone through the keyhole, and his ears started vibrating with the sound of at least a hundred bagpipes. A halo of the same sharp light appeared all around the door.

He remained motionless for a few moments while his heart tried to escape through his dry throat. Then, finally, the sound suddenly stopped, and his eyes slowly began to see normally. He strained his ears for a minute or two, but the only sounds came from his still-stressed circulatory system and the city outside. He gripped the club even tighter and opened the door a crack.

“Yes, Daisy was right.” The composite image of a goat kept changing its position, and now he could clearly see it starting to stand on its hind legs.

“What kind of light and sound were those?” he wondered. Whatever it meant, it was clear it came from this installation. Things were definitely going in some direction because the water in the tube, if it was water at all, was definitely rising.

“And what would happen when the level reached that, ouch, burning thing?” His fingers momentarily turned red and throbbed with pain, so he had to dunk them in cold water to ease the discomfort.

“This is living, concentrated fire,” he groaned. “A veritable miniature sun perched on the top of the helix.”

“What if it's some kind of bomb?” He suddenly felt hot. “And when the liquid reached the top…” he imagined it slowly crawling inside the tube. “And what could happen if I didn't wait for that moment and hit it with the club?” He looked at his throbbing fingers. “Most likely very bad things. Damn it!” he cursed.

“I guess I'd better think before doing that. Whatever happens, it will most likely be at a specific time. Let's see. When did this goat arrive? It was about 11:00 AM. Okay, and the liquid in the tube was... somewhere here. And now it's... here. It's not much, but there's definitely progress. And how long has this been going on? It's now 2:00 PM. Let's see, that means three hours. If I mentally divide the rest into similar parts, it will turn out that the water will reach the top somewhere... tomorrow at noon.

“Hooray! It looks like we won't be blowing up today. And tomorrow... if I go to the police and tell them that this thing came out of a hole in... no, that won't end well. The only reasonable explanation is that someone is playing a cruel joke on me. But he chose the wrong moment... and man. I will… I will… I don't know exactly what I'm going to do to him, but he certainly won't like it. Let this evening pass. Just… oh my, I have to cook… and in the meantime, I have to seal the door so that no light can get through the cracks.

After all, when there is no bed, the sofa will be a bed.”

His phone rang just as he was finishing sealing the door. Besides, he had already set the table, made the sauce for the pasta, and now it was simmering quietly on the stove. He had also arranged a large platter of antipasti with ham and cheese.

All he had to do was jump out of the window and meet her. “Ha ha!” he laughed to himself. A small and not-so-convenient detail, but necessary due to the fact that he had taped the door shut. He had bought some insulating black tape and covered all the cracks he found on the bedroom side with it. So, even if that super bright light appeared again, he looked with distaste at the glowing and burning thing at the top of the helix, not even a ray would come out. And from the living room side, the door looked perfectly normal. A smile tugged lightly his lips.

He jumped out of the window and ran to the front door.

“Wow,” he said, appearing from around the corner, "you look breathtaking.” And to make it even more convincing he let his shortness of breath, from the window exercises, visible.

Lindaa laughed, both flattered and charmed by his wit. During all the time they were just colleagues, she had liked his way of expressing, and now that it was directed at her, the feeling was disarming. Even though she was wearing a not-too-revealing evening dress, she now felt quite naked before his thirsty gaze.

“But where do you come from?” she changed the subject to overcome her embarrassment.

“Oh, I had to fill in the last cracks in the perfect plan for the evening.”

“Touché,” she exclaimed, laughing again. “Speaking of plans, I didn't know what kind of pasta you were going to make, so I bought a bottle of white and a bottle of red wine.”

“Maybe,” he laughed too, “the only thing that can compare to your beauty is your sharp mind.”

This time, she couldn't hold it in and blushed massively, rose slightly on her tiptoes, and tenderly kissed him on the cheek. He gently took the bottles from her hands and led her through the front door.

“Mmm, it smells amazing.”

“Oh, the sauce is really stunning. Original Italian guanciale and onions fried in olive oil, deglazed with dry white wine, and then simmered with fresh tomatoes,” he recited. “This is the sauce for pasta all'amatriciana.”

He put the bucatini in boiling water, and while they waited for it to cook, he opened the bottle of red wine. They sipped and continued to chatter happily.

About ten minutes later, when the pasta was ready and on taste, thank Gennaro, truly worth it, his phone rang.

“What’s up, Daisy?” he asked cheerfully.

“How is the goat?” she replied in an unpleasantly amused tone.

“Um, very well,” he said, still smiling and looking blankly but casually at the woman in front of him.

She, of course, thought his daughter was asking about her and was charmed by the attention.

“Linda also greets you,” he said to cover up the situation.

Daisy, however, was not very moved and responded with laughter again. “Are you having a good time?” she asked finally.

“Yes, of course. Is that what you're...?”

“Of course not. I want to ask you a favor.”

“Yes, what is it?”

“Please go to my room and take a photo of my schedule for next week. Then send it to me because we're making a plan, and I can't remember all the tasks I have.”

“Oh, yes, don't worry. I'll be right back,” he told Linda and went to Daisy's room.

“Distracted teenagers,” Leonard said apologetically as he returned a few seconds later. “One day she'll forget her head somewhere. Ha ha ha!”

“Well, at least she can lean on such a devoted father,” she used the opportunity to compliment him with a sweet smile.

Whether it was because of these emotions or the pasta sauce being a bit spicy, the temperature was rising, and it had to be cooled with wine. They were just discussing which bottle to open next when the phone rang again.

“Daisy?” Leonard said, already slightly irritated. “What again…”

“No, I won't ask you how the goat is and whether it's...” he heard on the receiver, followed by the two girls giggling. Suddenly, he felt sick, and with an apologetic gesture, he went back upstairs to the children's room.

“You didn't babble about this, did you? Even I have no idea what…”

“Of course not. We were just joking.”

“Just joking,” he imitated her. “I find these jokes a bit too much. Won't you finally leave me in peace for a while?”

“Okay, sorry. I called you because Amity's father said he wanted to talk to you about something. He asked you to call him tomorrow.”

“Yeah, okay. Thanks! I see you're having a good time, so goodbye.”

During this time, Linda enterprisingly unbuttoned a bit of her neckline.

“I told her ifff,” he protracted when his gaze landed on the right place, “she kept doing this, next time I'll leave her here to serve and entertain us with her sketches.”

“Oh, how clever!” she giggled. “Will it work?”

“Illogical threats often work best.”

“And yet,” she slowly took a deep breath, “let's take advantage of the moment when it's still just the two of us…”

To their greatest surprise and, fortunately, fleeting regret, their first kiss was rudely interrupted by the deafening sound of a hunting horn.

He was no less surprised and shocked than she was. However, the situation, which had become easily flammable, did not allow them to give up on their goals. The daughter's latest folly was both a convenient excuse and an easy-to-accept explanation. Besides, light didn't penetrate from anywhere, and that made Leonard happy.

“Let's go somewhere more comfortable,” she said with a passionate gaze.

“Umm, no,” he stated decisively. “I want you right here, on the couch, and now.”

“Ah, fiery blood,” she said, becoming even more inflamed.

But... what followed was something they couldn't ignore. To Leonard, the sound was familiar, but that in no way made it pleasant or soothing to the ears. This cosmic split boded only trouble. Through his sharply dilated pupils darted one after another the faint possibility that the goat had left and the stronger possibility that something else had landed in the bedroom.

From the trembling of the woman next to him, he knew she was scared, which was normal. He was scared too, but also really angry.

“I'll be right back,” he said, running toward the bedroom. A few moments later, however, he hesitated and changed course.

He had to check out what was going on in the bedroom, but to make it look plausible he had to go through Daisy's room first. And from there… oh, window exercise again. First, he had to climb out of the window and go down.

For this purpose, there was a firmly attached drainpipe, which could turn into a nuisance at some point. The thought of Daisy and her potential suitor climbing up that pipe came suddenly and nearly knocked him to the ground. “Yes,” he told himself as his hair slowly settled back into its normal position, “I would have to consider that possibility later.”

“Hello, neighbor!” he heard a voice somewhere behind him.

“Oh, now this annoyance too!” he whimpered in his mind.

The old man from the next house was tireless in his frantic desire to take in everything that was happening in the neighborhood.

“Is there a problem?” the husky voice insisted.

Leonard slowly turned as he frantically thought about what to say to him.

“Oh, hello, neighbor! What a wonderful evening, huh?”

“Yes?” insists the wrinkled face with small round glasses, questioningly.

“Well... it probably won't be that easy,” Leonard thought to himself. “I'm testing a new door lock,” he tried not to lie, “but somehow I can't get the settings right. Ha ha ha.” He laughed as cheerfully as he could and quickly slipped in through the bedroom window.

“Oof...” he sighed with relief but another surprise awaited him inside.

As he had guessed, the piece of strange flat geography was still there, but in addition, there were now two figures wrapped in long cloaks of light turquoise. He could read from their faces that they were young, somewhere around his daughter's age, as well as their complete disinterest in him.

“Hey, what are you doing here?” he tried to get their attention while not raising his voice too much.

They didn't even look at him. One person just said something to the other in a foreign language. The second one visibly thought for a moment, then seemed to remember something and slowly turned toward Leonard. He was tall, taller than him, with short sandy blonde hair and light eyes. He approached Leonard with phlegmatic steps and held out his hands to him. In his palms lay, what was probably, an oversized… fig. Leonard couldn't decide how to react and just looked confused between the strange man and the fig.

Sensing his hesitation, the young man smiled and invited him to take it.”

“Okay, okay,” Leonard said, and then cautiously took the fruit.

The other smiled once more and returned to his occupation, which involved some phlegmatic fussing around the goat.

“Hey,” Leonard insisted, but the other one just smiled again, made a gesture for silence by putting a finger in front of his lips, and another gesture that possibly meant everything would be okay. Then he urged him anew to get out from where he had come in.

“A devilish smile,” Leonard thought, “mesmerizing.” He tried to look at the other figure, but he received absolutely no attention. He was starting to feel really awkward.

The tall young men repeated the gestures and, at the same time, imperceptibly pushed him toward the window.

“Okay, okay,” he said again while he reluctantly stepped over the windowsill. “I'm leaving now, and I'll let you… get the damn thing back. That's why you came anyway, right?”

The window rolled down behind him. “Everything is going well,” he muttered to himself, while he stupidly held the huge fig in his hands. “Here they come to take the thing. I don't care who they are or what they're doing because soon it'll all be just a bad dream,” he thought to himself.

He decided not to give his neighbor the pleasure of watching him climb the gutter and boldly headed straight for the front door.

Meanwhile, Linda had time to cool down, think a little, and tidy up her dress and hair.

“Hey, what's going on?” she asked, even more confused after he entered through the front door. "What is this?"

“Oh,” he still held the strange fruit in his hands, "this is a gift—a gift for you.”

“Ah, this is a fig! How big and beautiful it is,” she picked it up, and at the same moment, a rather large wasp crawled out of the hole underneath and buzzed around. She screamed and dropped the fig. The ripe fruit fell and splashed on the floor.

“Look,” she said as she moved as far as possible from the buzzing insect, “maybe your daughter doesn't approve of your relationship with another woman.”

“Well, that's exactly what I didn't want to happen,” he sighed and looked down wearily.

“Maybe she still can't get over the loss of her mother and... and that's why she sabotaged our date.”

“Yes, and it's getting worse,” he cried in his mind.

“I think,” she continued in a tone weighed down with regret, “it's best if I go.”

“Unfortunately,” he can't help but agree with her. “I think this would be the most reasonable thing to do, given the development of the situation,” he said, staring angrily at the bedroom. “I…” he turned to her again, “I’ll talk to her about it,” he said quietly, and he really meant it. “I…” He took her small, delicate hands in his palms. “I really like you, and I’m sure she will too when she gets over her teenage stubbornness.”

“And when all this horror is over,” he thought as he called a taxi and sent her away.

She kissed him reservedly on the cheek, and he was left alone outside in the darkness, with the bitterness and rage rising within him. A fury that made his steps decisive, he rushed into the bedroom despite the creaking of adhesives, seals, and plaster. However, there was not much effect among the newcomers. The blond one had climbed high up on a chair and was poking around in the ceiling.

“Hey, listen!” Leonard blurted out this time, already extremely angry. “Is this noisy, flashing… thing yours?” And he continued without waiting for an answer, “Come on, take it and be gone!”

The other youth, who was a little shorter but twice as wide, with darker skin and black curly hair, approached him busily and lightly placed his big hand on Leonard’s shoulder. He felt only a slight pressure, then lights exploded before his eyes and... the world shrank to a point.

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