On the day of the presentation, the air in the classroom was stale with collective nervousness. The previous groups had been mediocre: slides full of text copied from Wikipedia, trembling voices, and graphs that explained nothing. Dr. Montero had torn them apart with surgical questions, dismantling their arguments with the ease of someone crushing an ant.
Valeria and I were the last ones.
When the professor called "Group 12," we stood up in unison.
Valeria wore a pearl-grey tailored suit, impeccable as always, but she had swapped her stilettos for slightly more sensible heels. I wore my only tie—a dark blue one I'd bought at a thrift store—and my white shirt, ironed to the point of obsession.
We walked to the podium. When our eyes met, there were no smiles, but there was an almost imperceptible nod. We are ready.
Valeria connected her laptop to the projector. The first slide had no title. It only had a photo: a box of rotten tomatoes on the floor of the central market, with a handwritten price tag.
The silence in the room was instant.
"Economic theory tells us that price is the meeting point between supply and demand," Valeria began. Her voice was clear, authoritative—the voice of the Empress. "But theory assumes the market is rational. That actors have perfect information."
She paused, looked at the audience, and then yielded the floor to me with a fluid gesture of her hand.
"The reality," I said, stepping forward and resting my hands on the lectern, "is that on the periphery, the market isn't rational. It is visceral."
I started speaking. I didn't read notes. I didn't look at the screen. I looked my classmates in the eye.
I told them about the vegetable lady who raised prices at five in the afternoon not because of inflation, but because she knew the laborers got off work hungry at that hour. I told them how the price of oil fluctuated depending on whether the police had raided that morning.
I used my voice. That voice I had learned to project in the warehouse to be heard over the machines, but modulated with the technical vocabulary I had devoured from books.
"You call this the 'shadow economy,'" I said, pointing to the photo. "We call it 'survival.' And it moves more cash in a single day than many of your parents' companies do in a fiscal week."
I saw Dr. Montero slowly take off her glasses, placing them on the table. She leaned forward, resting her chin on her hands. Her eyes didn't leave me. There was a glint in them, a mixture of intellectual fascination and... something else. Something denser.
When I finished the narrative part, Valeria took back control to present the hard data.
"Based on field interviews," she said, projecting complex graphs we had designed together, "we have established a direct correlation between job precariousness and price elasticity in basic goods."
She was perfect. Cold, precise, lethal with the numbers. While she explained standard deviations, I watched her out of the corner of my eye. There was no trace of the scared girl in the parking lot. Julián could try to make her feel small, but here, in her element and with a partner watching her back, Valeria was a giant.
When we finished, there was a three-second silence.
"Questions," said Dr. Montero.
A hand went up in the second row. It was Alarcón, the guy in the branded polo shirt who always tried to act smart.
"That all sounds very... romantic," Alarcón said with a smug smile. "But at the end of the day, those people don't pay taxes. They are parasites of the system. How do you justify basing an academic analysis on illegal activity?"
I felt Valeria tense up beside me, ready to spit some classist venom. I put a hand on her arm, stopping her gently. Leave him to me.
I smiled. It was a slow, predatory smile.
"It's an interesting question, Alarcón," I said, relaxed. "Although it reveals more about your zip code than your economic knowledge."
There were some stifled laughs in the back.
"Tax evasion is a crime, yes," I continued, walking to the edge of the stage to look down at him. "But when a multinational uses tax havens to avoid paying millions, we call it 'financial engineering.' When a lady sells tomatoes without a receipt to feed her children, you call her a 'parasite.'"
The silence in the classroom became absolute. Alarcón turned red.
"Our job is not to judge the morality of survival," I concluded, my voice cold. "Our job is to analyze capital flow. And if you ignore 40% of the economy because it offends you that they don't pay VAT, then, buddy, you're going to bankrupt your first company before the first quarter."
Alarcón opened his mouth to reply, but closed it. He had nothing. I had disarmed him with his own logic.
Valeria looked at me. There was a spark of triumph in her eyes. For the first time, we were on the same side of the trench.
"Excellent," Dr. Montero's voice broke the tension.
She stood up. She clapped. It was a slow, solitary applause, but coming from her, it was worth more than a stadium ovation.
"This," she said, pointing at us, "is what I asked for. Data backed by reality. Analysis without prejudice. Group 12 has set the standard. The rest of you... I hope you took notes."
The class ended shortly after. As we gathered our things, I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Valeria.
"Not bad, scholarship boy," she said. Her tone was the usual mocking one, but her eyes said something else. They said respect.
"You neither, Castillo. Those graphs saved my speech."
"I know," she smiled, arrogant. "See you tomorrow. I have to go to... " her smile faltered for a second, "I have things to do."
I knew she was going to see Julián. I knew that brilliance she had just shown was going to be snuffed out again. But today, at least, she was leaving with her head held high.
When Valeria left, I stayed behind to finish packing the cables.
"Mr. Lucas."
I turned. Dr. Montero was sitting on the edge of her desk, legs crossed. She had let her hair down. That detail, so small, changed her appearance completely. The severe bun was gone, and now her chestnut hair fell over her shoulders, softening her features, making her look like... a woman.
"Dr. Montero," I said, approaching.
"Elisa," she corrected softly. Then, she seemed to realize what she had said and cleared her throat. "I mean... outside of class hours, you can use my first name if there are no other students. We are almost contemporaries, after all."
"I'm twenty-three, Doctor. You are the authority here."
She looked at me over her glasses, which she now held in her hand.
"Today you didn't seem like a twenty-three-year-old student, Lucas. The way you handled Alarcón..." She bit her lower lip, an unconscious gesture that sent an electric shock straight to my spine. "It was impressive. You have a dangerous oratory style."
"I just speak the truth. Sometimes the truth is dangerous."
She hopped off the desk and stepped closer to me. She smelled of old books and something citrusy, clean. She was too close to be just a professor congratulating a student.
"Your report is a ten," she said in a low voice. "But I'm worried about something."
"What?"
"That this place will burn you out. You have too much fire inside, Lucas. And people here..." she made a vague gesture toward the hallway, "people here tend to extinguish anything that shines too bright."
She held my gaze. There was an intensity in her dark eyes that made me forget for a moment that I had to go to the warehouse. She was a beautiful, intelligent, and powerful woman, and she was looking at me as if I were the only real thing in her world of theory.
"I know how to take care of myself, Elisa," I said, testing her name on my tongue. It sounded good. It sounded forbidden.
Her pupils dilated slightly upon hearing her name.
"I know," she whispered. "But even fires need to be controlled. If you ever need... to talk. Or a quiet place to study. My office has better coffee than the cafeteria."
It was an invitation. Clear, though veiled by academic decorum.
"I'll keep it in mind," I said, taking a step back. The air between us was becoming too dense, too hot.
"Do that," she said, recovering a bit of her composure. "Good work today, Lucas."
I left the classroom with my heart beating fast, not from the stress of the presentation, but from the promise implied in that conversation.
Outside, Elena was waiting for me. She saw me come out and ran toward me, hugging me tightly.
"You were incredible!" she shouted. "You shut Alarcón up! It was epic!"
I returned the hug, feeling her familiar warmth. But my mind was divided. One part was still in the car with a vulnerable Valeria, and the other had stayed in the classroom with a professor who had just let her hair down for me.
"Let's go eat, Lucas," Elena said, pulling my arm. "My treat. To celebrate. And I won't take no for an answer."
"Alright," I said, smiling. "But I pick the place. Nothing expensive."
As we walked, I realized something. My life, which until a few weeks ago was a straight line of survival, had become a complex knot of expectations, desires, and tensions.
And worst of all, or perhaps best of all, was that I was starting to like the chaos.