The Silver Theater smelled of old wood and coffee forgotten somewhere backstage.

  Kein arrived at 9:52.

  Dustin was already on stage practicing. Ana was below, sitting on the floor with the script open on her knees and the pencil behind her ear that she never used. Kein went up on stage and positioned himself near Dustin.

  He had the script memorized since the night before. He only needed to practice the character.

  And bring up a subject.

  "Punctual. Good."

  "Time waits for no one."

  Dustin looked at him for a second.

  "Last training session I saw your foundations." He paused. "Or well, if you can call them that."

  'There it is.'

  "Can you give me more details?" Kein asked. His expression was that of someone who wanted an honest opinion, nothing more.

  "You're like nature, from my point of view." Dustin crossed his arms. "In the sense that you didn't learn formal acting techniques. It's as if you learned to act through experience, organically. Which doesn't make much sense, because you're young."

  'Perceptive. Let's continue.'

  "What exactly do you mean?"

  Dustin took a moment, as if organizing something he normally didn't need to organize because he didn't usually explain it.

  "Acting is an art, but different from most. In abstract painting you need someone specialized to tell you whether it's good or bad. In acting, you don't. There's no manual that says act like this and you'll be right. It doesn't matter how you do it—when you do it well, even a random passerby feels it. That's what's particular about it."

  "I understand. But the part about nature and experience."

  "I meant that your acting is organic." Dustin looked at him directly. "You lack formal techniques—the symbolic movements, clenching the jaw when serious, fists when angry, when to breathe and when not to, the moments of silence. All of that. But even so, it comes out naturally. Your acting has amateur mistakes. And at the same time, it transmits. That's what I don't know how to explain."

  "So is it talent?"

  "I don't know."

  "You confused me. What do you mean you don't know?"

  "Like I said, I don't know what to call what you do. I'm not an instructor." Dustin lowered his arms. "But watching you act is like watching a… veteran actor."

  'He has good eyes,' Kein thought. 'Or is it that obvious?'

  "You said I don't have acting techniques. How would a veteran actor have no techniques?"

  "Right." Dustin frowned slightly. "I used the wrong word. I meant an old actor."

  Kein didn't respond immediately.

  "At the beginning I said that learning acting has limits," Dustin continued. "There are things you can't imitate. Imagine a script about a man who lost his daughter. There are two actors competing for the role—actor A lost his real daughter. Actor B doesn't have children, but has lost close relatives. Who gets the role?"

  "Actor A."

  "Exactly. Actor B can study how those parents feel, can use the pain of his own losses. But he'll never know what it feels like until he's lived it. That's why actors with years on them get better and better—they have real life to use. That's why I said you seem like an old actor. You act like someone who's already been through those things."

  "Is that why you said at the restaurant that it showed?"

  "Yes." Dustin spoke more slowly now, as if he were seeing something that didn't quite add up. "You have visible mistakes. But even so, it felt as if Claudio really had blood on his hands. As if he wanted to atone for something. The character stepped out to talk to the audience instead of staying on the stage."

  Pause.

  "I don't have siblings," Kein said.

  "..." Dustin didn't respond.

  "..." Neither did Kein.

  It was then that both of them, at the same time, looked down.

  Ana was sitting with the script open on her knees and her mouth open as well. Her eyes very still. The exact expression of someone who has been motionless for several minutes because moving might interrupt something she didn't believe was going to exist.

  "Are you Dustin?" she asked, rubbing her eyes.

  "...Idiot."

  He said it indifferently. But his neck had turned red.

  "First time I've ever heard you talk this much!" Ana pointed at the stage with the pencil she never used. "First time in my life!"

  "Shut up."

  "Could it be..." Ana tilted her head with a smile. "That you're embarrassed?"

  "Shut up."

  Kein watched them from above. The corners of his lips lifted.

  A smile.

  'In the end, they're just kids.'

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  ———//————————————//———

  Marcus arrived twenty minutes later with his usual exhaustion, a half-eaten croissant between his teeth, a bag of food in one hand and a folder in the other.

  "Attention!"

  The three of them looked at him.

  "Today we start rehearsals for The Third Man. We have twenty-six days until opening night. I already got auxiliary actors for the secondary roles—they'll join the week before to rehearse with you. We'll rehearse Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays."

  "Does the script stay the same or are we changing things?" Dustin asked.

  Marcus finished the croissant in one bite.

  "We're changing some things. We're leaning more into comedy." He opened the folder. "So be ready."

  ---

  "First scene. Kein, Dustin. Ana, wait your turn."

  Marcus left the food bag on a chair at the side and opened the folder.

  Dustin was already on stage. Kein went up and took his position.

  Two chairs. One table. The prop cup.

  'Lucas. A man who loves someone and doesn't say it.'

  Kein knew silence. He knew how to carry something without saying it. But Lucas didn't carry mission weight or debt. Lucas carried something smaller and harder to name. The kind of thing Kael had never had time to carry.

  "Whenever you're ready," Marcus said.

  Dustin entered the character with Daniel's slouched posture—someone carrying something inside and not quite knowing how to take it out.

  Kein sat down. Picked up the cup.

  "I need to ask you a favor."

  "Tell me."

  "It's about Sofía."

  Kein set the cup down.

  "What about Sofía?"

  "I think that... I don't know. I think I like her."

  Pause. Kein searched for Lucas's smile—that small smile that wasn't joy but resignation wearing a good face. He found it. He executed it.

  "Wow."

  "'Wow'? Is that all you've got?"

  "What do you want me to say?"

  Marcus raised a hand.

  "Stop."

  Both of them stopped.

  "Kein, that smile is technically fine. The problem is that it arrived before Daniel finished speaking. Lucas already knows what Daniel is going to say before he says it—that's correct—but the smile has to arrive at the moment he confirms it. Not when he anticipates it. The difference is small, but the audience feels it."

  Kein nodded.

  They repeated it from the beginning.

  This time Kein waited. The smile arrived at the right place.

  But something still didn't quite fit.

  "Stop," Marcus said again. He approached the stage. "Do you remember what I told you about Lucas last week?"

  "That he always arrives early."

  "Why does he arrive early?"

  Kein didn't respond immediately.

  "Because he's waiting."

  "Waiting for what?"

  "For Sofía. For something to change."

  "Exactly. Lucas has been waiting for years for something he doesn't know how to ask for. That's not just sadness—it has humor. It has irony. When he helps Daniel win over the woman he himself wants, Lucas does it because somewhere inside he believes that if Daniel is happy, that counts too. It's absurd. And he knows it. That's why the smile isn't just resignation—there's something of Lucas laughing at himself in it."

  Kein processed that.

  'Laughing at oneself.'

  Kael had learned not to laugh at anything that hurt. It was inefficient. It slowed him down.

  Lucas was the opposite.

  They tried again. This time Kein let something else in—not much, just enough for the smile to have a second edge. It landed. Marcus didn't stop him.

  They continued until the sock line.

  "Daniel. You're not normal."

  "I'm perfectly normal!"

  "Last month you organized your socks by fabric density."

  "That's efficiency!"

  Marcus stopped them.

  "Kein."

  "Yes?"

  "That sock line—you said it like a fact. Like you were reporting information."

  "That's what Lucas does."

  "Lucas reports the information, yes. But he chooses it. Out of all the examples he could give for why Daniel isn't normal, he chooses that one. Why that one?"

  Kein didn't respond.

  "Because it's the most absurd," Marcus said. "And Lucas knows it. There's something in how he says it—not cruel, not condescending—that almost sounds like affection. Like when someone points out something ridiculous about the person they love and deep down is proud of them anyway."

  'Affection.'

  Kein knew loyalty. He knew respect. He knew the debt of having survived thanks to someone...

  'I think I know how.'

  "Again," Marcus said.

  He tried it. It came out better than before. But Marcus frowned slightly—not enough to stop him, enough for Kein to notice.

  Ana entered for the park scene.

  It was the one that cost him the most.

  "Reading?"

  "Trying." Kein didn't lift his eyes from the imaginary book. "I get distracted easily."

  "By what?"

  "By things I shouldn't be thinking about."

  "Like what?"

  "Like whether the coffee is too hot to drink yet or if it's worth waiting."

  Ana tilted her head.

  "And?"

  "That it's always worth waiting." Kein turned a page. "Even if it hurts a little."

  Marcus stopped him.

  "That line is the most important one in the scene. And you're saying it like philosophy."

  "Isn't it?"

  "Not for Lucas. For Lucas it's something he feels and is filtering through a metaphor because he doesn't know how to say it directly. The difference is huge. When someone gives you philosophy, you listen. When someone tells you something that truly hurts them disguised as something else, you feel it."

  Kein stayed silent.

  "I've noticed you act from experience, you use emotions you've lived," Marcus continued. "And I believe it. I saw it in the second audition script. I saw it when you played Claudio." He leaned against the side of the stage. "Have you ever waited for something like that? Something you wanted and couldn't ask for?"

  The question was simple. The answer wasn't.

  Kael didn't wait. Kael evaluated, decided, and acted. Waiting was a luxury he couldn't afford—in his old world, anyone who waited left a window open.

  Kein Adler had lived twenty-four years in this world. He was young. Maybe he had waited for things. Kael didn't know them yet.

  "I understand what the scene is asking for," Kein said.

  "I wasn't asking if you understood it." Marcus looked at him. "I was asking if you'd lived it."

  Silence.

  "Not like that."

  Marcus nodded slowly, as if that confirmed something he already suspected.

  "That's normal at your age. Some young actors have that resolved earlier. Others take longer. Don't worry—the nerves of the first weeks fade." He gestured toward the stage. "Again. This time don't think about the line. Think about the coffee."

  They tried four more times.

  The fourth was different. Not perfect, but different. Marcus didn't stop him.

  Ana took out her sandwich. Split it in two. Offered him half.

  "Here."

  "I'm not hungry."

  "I didn't ask if you were hungry."

  Kein took the half.

  Marcus let out a small laugh from the side.

  "That, yes. That was good."

  Ana looked at Marcus.

  "Just that?"

  "For now, yes."

  Ana made a gesture of resignation that was completely Sofía and completely Ana at the same time. Dustin, standing at the side waiting for his entrance, didn't say anything. But he stopped reviewing the text.

  They finished the first act an hour and a half later.

  Marcus gathered them at the edge of the stage.

  "Dustin, Daniel is fine. Keep working the restaurant scene—you're still chasing the laugh instead of letting it arrive." Dustin nodded. "Ana, Sofía is almost there. You've got the sandwich moment. The bench scene is still too conscious. Sofía doesn't know she's saying something important. She says it because she's honest, not because she wants to impact."

  Ana wrote something in the margin of the script.

  "Kein." Marcus looked at him. "Lucas has more layers than you're using. The scenes with Daniel work reasonably well; the dynamic between you two is believable. The scenes with Sofía are still more technical than they should be. It's not a lack of skill. It's that you still haven't found where Lucas enters for you."

  "What do you recommend?"

  "That you keep going. Sometimes the character arrives after you stop looking for him."

  Kein nodded.

  Marcus picked up the folder and the food bag he had left untouched throughout the rehearsal.

  "It's already 6 PM. See you Wednesday, same time. We'll work the second act."

  He exited through backstage.

  Ana packed up the script. Dustin grabbed his backpack.

  Kein stayed a moment longer on the stage.

  'Lucas...'

  With the assassin, he had experiences. Claudio had experiences. Any character that carried real weight, real debt, real silence—those Kein could pull from somewhere that existed.

  Lucas didn't. He didn't have any memory to use as a base. At least none he could remember.

  Kael had never loved anyone that way. He was a solitary old man.

  Which meant that Lucas was the most difficult character he had had so far.

  'Learn it, then.'

  He stepped down from the stage.