Lyon opened the apartment door, stepped inside, closed it behind him harder than necessary, and let himself slide down against it until he ended up sitting on the floor.
He was wrecked. His legs were burning in a way they hadn’t burned in years. The white T-shirt, which already hadn’t been his best choice for the day, was now stuck to his back with sweat.
Lyon lived on the fifteenth floor, and he had run up all fifteen floors through the stairs.
'Never again,' Lyon thought, eyes closed and his head resting against the door. 'Never again. Never. Never. I’m going to die. I’m going to die young. I’m going to die because of some stairs.'
And as if the physical suffering wasn’t enough, inside his head, the female voice still hadn’t gotten tired of laughing.
"Hehehehehehe… ah, ah, ah… no, seriously, I can’t, I can’t…"
'Enough, please. Please, stop. You’ve been at it for twenty minutes.'
"It’s just… it’s just her face… her face…"
'Don’t talk to me about her face.'
"The little wide eyes… the little open mouth… processing the word…"
'No.'
"DIARRHEA!"
'ENOUGH.'
The voice laughed so hard that Lyon could almost feel the inside of his skull vibrating.
A few minutes passed before she finally managed, with effort, to control herself a little. And when she did, she changed the subject with the naturalness of someone who wanted to keep annoying him from another angle.
"Hey, serious question," the voice said, still sounding amused. "Why did you take the stairs? This building has an elevator. I’m telling you. I saw it when we came in a few hours ago. It looked like a big elevator."
Lyon let out a long sigh from the floor.
"I hate elevators," he answered in a low voice, without opening his eyes.
"You hate them?"
"I hate them."
"Why?"
"Because they’re closed boxes, with no windows, that depend on a cable, with strangers inside, and if they break you get trapped," Lyon said while counting on his fingers. "And I don’t like the music they play. It’s horrible."
"Uh-huh."
"And…"
Lyon paused. He lifted one hand and ran his fingers through his damp hair, pushing it away from his forehead.
"…and they have cameras," he finished, his voice a little lower now.
"There it is."
"It’s not just that."
"It is just that."
"It’s not just that," Lyon insisted, finally opening his eyes and staring at the apartment ceiling with a resigned expression. "But yes, okay, it’s one of the reasons. If something weird ever happens to me inside the elevator, if for some reason I transform by accident, or if someone attacks me in there, there’s no way the cameras won’t record me. I’d be trapped with the video capturing everything. It would be the end. Normal life over. Everything over."
Lyon took a deep breath.
"Meanwhile, in the stairs," he continued, "the cameras are only on the landing of each floor. And I’ve studied those. I know which ones belong to the building management, which ones are old and nobody checks anymore, and which ones have been broken for months. I can pass through without anyone knowing exactly which staircase I used."
There was a brief silence inside his head.
"…Wait, wait, wait," the voice said, no longer mocking him but genuinely surprised. "You seriously studied the building’s cameras?"
"Yes."
"Every single one?"
"Yes."
"When?"
"When I moved in."
"…And how long have you been living here?"
"Almost two years."
"…"
"…"
"My love," the voice said, in a tone that hovered somewhere between pride and pity. "You have problems."
"I have priorities," Lyon corrected.
"You have problems."
"Priorities."
"Okay, if you say so."
With enormous effort, Lyon managed to stand up. One of his knees cracked as he did, a dry sound that made him grimace, and he limped a little as he walked toward the living room.
Lyon left his keys on the table. He placed the phone’s metallic box, very carefully, on the couch, as if it were a work of art that shouldn’t be touched yet. Then he went to the kitchen to drink water directly from the faucet, because he didn’t have bottles or anything resembling one.
While he drank, the voice picked the conversation back up from another angle.
"Hey. Seriously, why are you so obsessed with hiding your identity?"
Lyon turned off the faucet, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and leaned against the counter.
"Again with that?"
"It’s just that I don’t get it. You have one of the best powers in this city. You could go to the Association tomorrow, register, and in a month you’d be one of the most famous hunters in the region. A high salary, fans, advertising contracts. Everything you could want."
"You don’t understand," Lyon said, sounding tired.
"Then explain it to me."
"I already explained it before."
"Explain it again. I wasn’t paying attention that time."
Lyon sighed.
"You don’t understand because you don’t have a life," Lyon said with resignation. "You live in my head. You’re some kind of conscious parasite. You don’t have a body. You don’t have friends. You don’t have family. You don’t have professors who are going to ask you for an assignment next week, or classmates who are going to message you asking why you missed the exam, or a mother who calls you at night to ask if you ate."
Lyon walked slowly toward the couch. He sat down beside the phone box, still without opening it, and ran both hands over his face.
"You don’t know what it’s like to be a hunter," he continued. "Hunters don’t have private lives. Their faces are everywhere. People look for them on the street, record them, recognize them at the neighborhood store, come up to ask for photos, autographs, favors. And not just that. Hunters have enemies. Other guilds that want to steal your information. Criminal groups trying to blackmail you. Relatives of people who died in an incident and blame the hunters who didn’t arrive in time. All of that on top of everything else. All the time."
Lyon stared at the ceiling for a moment.
"I don’t want that," he said, softer. "I want to finish my degree. I want to graduate. I want to have my own small graphic design studio, make a living designing logos and simple things, and have time to play my video games. That’s all. That’s the only thing I want. And for that, I need nobody to know who I am."
There was silence. And then the voice, in a tone that was no longer mocking but almost patient, answered.
"You’re dramatic."
Lyon let out a small huff.
"And besides," she continued, ignoring the huff, "you’re wrong about something. Whether you want it or not… you and I are part of the royal family. Through the queen. You can’t change that. And someday you’re going to have to accept it."
Lyon clenched his jaw slightly.
"Don’t talk to me about that damn woman."
"'That damn woman' gave you half of what you are, you know?"
"Don’t talk to me about that damn woman."
"These powers you use so much," the voice continued, without raising her tone but without backing down either. "The strength, the speed, the wings, the blood, the transformation, everything, absolutely everything that saved your life today in that store that collapsed, comes from her. It comes from the queen. If she hadn’t blessed you that night, you would just be a normal human. A normal university student. You wouldn’t have even been able to raise your hand that day when you went camping with those noisy friends of yours and that thing came out of the forest."
Lyon closed his eyes. And for one very short second, the image returned to him.
The image of the forest at night. The image of his classmates’ screams as they ran between the trees. The image of that enormous thing, with eyes emerging from among the roots.
Lyon opened his eyes at once.
"Enough," he said firmly. "Enough. I don’t want to discuss this with you again. Not today. I’m tired."
The voice stayed quiet for a moment.
"…Fine," she finally said. "We’ll continue another day."
"Yes."
"…But don’t forget, okay?"
"I don’t forget."
"Good."
And with that, the voice retreated to the back of his mind, leaving Lyon in a silence that, for the first time all day, felt more or less peaceful.
Lyon took a deep breath. And then he looked at the metallic box beside him.
'Well,' he thought. 'Let’s see what this famous phone is like.'
The box weighed more than Lyon expected. Carefully, he lifted it and placed it on his lap.
The metallic finish was cold to the touch. The golden logo in the center had a soft relief, almost imperceptible to the eye but very clear when he ran his finger over it.
Lyon slowly opened the lid. The inside was divided into compartments. Everything perfectly arranged. Nothing loose. Nothing out of place.
In the center, held by a custom-made black foam base, was the phone.
And for one second, Lyon forgot about everything else.
It was a deep black, with a side strip in a slightly lighter gray running along the edge. It didn’t shine and it wasn’t flashy.
Lyon picked it up with both hands, and it had weight. Not like a cheap phone, and not like the light plastic phones that had accompanied him throughout his entire university life.
This had the weight of a solid object. The weight of something designed not to break. The weight of something that cost more than his rent for an entire year.
Lyon turned it in his hands. The back had a gently rough texture, as if to keep it from slipping. The edges were rounded with precision. The side buttons were perfectly aligned, without even the slightest unevenness between them and the casing.
Lyon ran his finger over the power button.
'Well,' he thought. 'Let’s see.'
Click.
The button sank with minimal, precise resistance, and then returned to its position with such a satisfying little snap that Lyon, without meaning to, pressed it a second time just to hear it again.
Click.
And a third time.
Click.
'Okay, this is a little addictive.'
"Are you playing with the button?" the voice inside his head asked, with an amused but gentle tone, without the loud laughter from before.
"I’m not playing," Lyon answered.
Click.
"You’re playing."
"I’m… I’m testing the build quality."
"Uh-huh."
Lyon left the button alone before the voice could ruin the moment for him, and instead kept his thumb pressed on it to turn the device on.
The screen, which until a second ago had been a perfectly black rectangle, began to light up very slowly with a soft, almost warm tone.
While the phone loaded, Lyon looked back at the box. And he noticed that beside the phone compartment, there was a smaller one with the instruction manual inside.
A thin manual, with the golden logo on the cover. But on top of the manual, there was a folded piece of paper.
A piece of paper that didn’t look like it belonged to the manual. It wasn’t the same type of material. It was slightly wrinkled in one corner, as if someone had placed it there by hand and not as part of the original packaging.
Lyon frowned.
'And what’s this?'
Lyon picked it up carefully and unfolded it. It was a small sheet, with a simple letterhead at the top. No decorations. No colors. And in the center of the page, written in clear, careful handwriting, almost like print but done by hand, there was a name and a number.
Cya Hogwarts.
And below the name, the phone number. With the international code and the full prefix written without abbreviations, digit by digit, as if whoever had written it wanted to make sure there was no possible mistake.
Lyon stared at the paper for a good while.
'…Hogwarts?' he thought. 'That’s her last name. Cya Hogwarts.'
He repeated the name in his head two or three times.
Cya Hogwarts.
Cya Hogwarts.
It didn’t sound familiar at all. But it also wasn’t the kind of name someone forgot easily.
'Well,' Lyon thought, carefully folding the paper and leaving it on top of the manual. 'At least now I know her full name.'
"Cya Hogwarts," the voice repeated in his head, in a thoughtful tone. "Sounds elegant."
"Everything about her sounds elegant," Lyon answered in a low voice. "And everything about her is terrifying. Apparently those two things go together."
"An interesting combination."
"A dangerous combination."
At that moment, the phone finished turning on.
And this was when Lyon stopped smiling.
The screen lit up completely, with a soft tone that rose in intensity until reaching normal brightness. And in the center, a welcome animation appeared.
But it wasn’t a normal animation.
It was an animation… carefully made. A small scene drawn in a delicate style, with pastel colors, with details that made it obvious someone had specifically requested it.
In the center of the drawing, there were kittens. Several kittens. One gray, one black, one white, one orange. The kittens played with one another, jumping, chasing each other, with soft and adorable movements accompanied by a short, sweet little tune, almost like a music box.
And above the kittens, in a thin, elegant, and very clearly feminine font, a message appeared.
[Welcome, Cya.]
[This device has been prepared especially for you.]
Lyon went completely still.
"…"
"…"
"…"
Lyon took a deep breath and decided, for the sake of his own mental health, to ignore the welcome animation and move on.
The screen, after a few seconds, finished the animation and showed him the phone’s home screen. Which, thankfully, was normal.
The standard icons of a standard operating system. Nothing weird. Nothing with kittens.
Lyon breathed in relief.
'Good. That’s it. It was just the welcome screen. Nothing else.'
Lyon was about to lock the phone and leave it charging when, suddenly, a notification appeared in the center of the screen.
A small window, with a simple message, written in the same elegant font that had appeared before.
And the message said:
[Would you like to sync the data from your previous device?]