The number they gave him was twenty-seven.

  Kein put it in his pocket and looked for a seat. The building was on North Cahuenga, one of those Hollywood streets where talent agencies share walls with laundromats and rehearsal spaces. Inside, plastic chairs arranged in two rows, a table with an unopened coffee thermos, and a white door at the back with a sign that read ROOM B.

  He found an empty seat at the end of the second row.

  Thirty-four people. Some standing because there were no chairs left. A guy in the front row moved his lips silently with his eyes closed. An older woman reviewed pages with a pencil, underlining things that already had two lines drawn beneath them.

  '178...7 days'

  The indicator flickered at the left edge of his field of vision. He left it off.

  An assistant came out of the white door holding a folder.

  "Number twelve?"

  A man in a plaid shirt stood up abruptly.

  "Yes. David Marsh."

  "Go ahead."

  The door closed.

  Kein observed the pattern over the next twenty minutes. Some came out in three minutes. Others in fifteen. The expression on everyone as they exited was the same variation on the same theme: expectation cooling down.

  He was counting how long until twenty-seven when the chair to his left creaked.

  A guy sat down.

  Blond, sharp jawline, good-looking. Clothes without wrinkles but with the look of someone who had dressed well reluctantly. His face carried an indignation so expressive and accumulated it could only have matured during the entire trip from his house.

  "I can't believe I'm here."

  He said it to the general space, not specifically to Kein. Kein didn't respond.

  "My mom put something in front of me this morning. I'd been awake for five minutes, I signed it, and now—"

  He turned.

  "Did you come on your own?"

  "Yes."

  "Incredible." He said it with the genuine admiration of someone hearing something they don't fully understand. "I had plans. Real plans, with direct impact. Se?or Reyes from the neighborhood has been looking for people for weeks for his community food program. Do you know how many families—"

  "Number eighteen?"

  A man in a suit stood up.

  Leo lowered his voice without reducing his speed.

  "—how many families that program feeds every week? Forty-two. And I'm here."

  "Mmh."

  "'Mmh'? Is that it?"

  "What do you want me to say?"

  Leo looked at him for a second with an expression somewhere between surprise and something that resembled immediate affection.

  "I don't know. Something. One more syllable."

  "It's forty-two families."

  He hit him on the shoulder with the back of his hand. Maybe a little too hard.

  "Exactly! That's it! That's why we have to go with Se?or Reyes. My name's Leo, by the way. Leo Vance."

  "Kein."

  "Kein." He repeated it as if testing the weight. "Where are you from?"

  "Far away."

  "How far?"

  "Very."

  Leo looked at him for a moment.

  "Okay. Mysterious. Got it." He accepted it without difficulty and continued. "Have you been doing this long?"

  "A little."

  "Me? Nothing. Zero. I'd never set foot in a place like this. My mom says I have talent, I say I have other priorities, but nobody asks me, so—"

  "Number twenty-six?"

  Kein looked at the door.

  This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

  'Finally. Just a bit more...'

  A curly-haired girl stood up and went in. Leo continued without pause.

  "—so here I am, when I could be with Se?or Reyes, or with the families on Martínez block who haven't had anyone check on them for three months, or doing basically anything that—"

  "Number twenty-seven."

  Kein stood up.

  Leo cut off mid-sentence.

  "Hey, that's you, right?"

  "Yes."

  "Good luck. Seriously. The part of me that wants company for the Se?or Reyes thing hopes it goes more or less okay, but the good part hopes it goes really well. The good part wins. Good luck, I'll see—"

  Kein was already walking.

  ———//————————————//———

  Room B was larger than the hallway suggested. High ceiling, wooden floor, overhead lighting without shadows. Five chairs in a semicircle facing an empty space. There was no stage. Just the empty space and the five people looking at him from the other side.

  Jackson was at the far right. Folder closed on his knee. He nodded once, without emphasis.

  The woman in the center spoke first. Early forties, short gray hair, pen already in hand.

  "Kein Adler."

  "Yes."

  "Thank you for coming. A reading to start." She extended a few pages. "You have five minutes to learn it."

  Kein took the paper.

  The character was named Ryan. Single scene: Ryan enters a coffee shop and tells his best friend that they called this morning, that he got the job, that he's been waiting for this for two years. Tone indicated in the margin: euphoric. Relieved. Overflowing with something good.

  Kein read the pages twice.

  He searched his memory. Found mission-complete satisfaction. Post-operative relief. The tension that releases when a job comes out clean.

  The five minutes passed.

  "Whenever you're ready."

  Kein started.

  "You know what, wait. Don't say anything yet. Give me a second."

  He breathed.

  "They called, Marco. This morning. Half an hour after you left."

  Pause marked in the script.

  "It's the job. It's the job, man. Two years sending emails to people who probably never opened them, two years waiting for someone to say yes, and today—"

  The smile indicated in the margin. Kein executed it.

  "Today they said yes."

  The words came out correctly. Projection within range. Rhythm acceptable.

  He finished.

  The woman in the center wrote something down.

  The man to her left leaned back in his chair.

  "Technically presentable."

  Another nodded without conviction.

  "The joy didn't arrive. The material came out empty."

  The woman closed the pen.

  "We appreciate your time, Mr. Adler—"

  "One moment."

  Jackson said it from the far right. Without raising his voice.

  "I want to try another piece."

  He opened the folder. The woman in the center didn't respond immediately. She just stared at him for a few seconds too long.

  "Go ahead."

  Jackson stood and handed the pages to him directly. In the second it took, he said quietly:

  "No rush."

  Kein read.

  The character had no name. He was only referred to as He. Scene: a man returns to the park bench where he used to sit with his father as a child. The father died five years ago. The man spent twenty years away, moving constantly, never returning to the same place. Now he is there. The bench hasn't changed. The park hasn't either. He has. The text was a second-person monologue, addressed to the bench as if the bench held something that could no longer be claimed any other way.

  Kein finished reading.

  He didn't look for anything.

  There was no need.

  He had lived in cities that changed while he didn't. Faces that stopped existing. The feeling of always arriving at the wrong place at the wrong time, or at the right place too late for it to matter. Kael's memory didn't wait to be called. It was there, as always, like background noise that never fully shut off.

  He began.

  "You're still here..."

  The voice came out without visible preparation. Without emphasis. Like someone arriving somewhere after a long time and confirming that it still exists.

  "There are things that don't move even when everything else does. You're one of those things."

  The assistant by the wall stopped writing on her tablet.

  "He sat like this. Back straight because it hurt in a different way. I sat like this because that's how he sat."

  Pause. Not long. Just enough time for the sentence to occupy its space.

  "Five years. How long is that? Depends on where you are while they pass. If you're in one specific place, five years are many things. If you've been moving from one place to another..."

  His jaw shifted half a centimeter before continuing. It wasn't calculated.

  "Five years are just the time it takes to realize you've been moving for five years."

  The man who had been leaning back in his chair was no longer leaning back.

  "I came back because I didn't know where else to go."

  A longer pause this time. His eyes didn't search for the audience or flee from them. They looked at the spot on the floor in front of him, as if the bench were there.

  "That sounds worse than it is. Or just as bad. I don't know yet."

  The woman in the center held the pen but didn't use it.

  "What I do know is that this bench is still the same bench."

  He said the last line without lowering his voice or increasing intensity. He just said it.

  "And that's enough for now."

  Silence.

  Four seconds, five, six.

  The assistant by the wall looked at her tablet as if remembering she had it.

  The man on the left cleared his throat.

  "There's something there."

  The woman in the center set the pen on the folder.

  "Technically incomplete. The breathing broke in the middle section. The hands didn't accompany."

  She paused.

  "But there's real material. That can't be taught."

  Jackson hadn't written anything during the entire scene.

  "We agree," he said.

  ———//————————————//———

  The contract was for six months. Conditional. With a review at three months and standard contract clauses. Jackson went through it point by point without hurry.

  Kein read every line.

  The summary was that he would be provisionally contracted to Gerzh Agency. The benefits were training and receiving roles for films or series, whatever roles he was given. He couldn't choose. The reality was that he was just one name on a long list reviewed by someone else.

  "Any questions?"

  "No."

  He signed.

  Jackson gathered the papers with the gesture of someone who had done this hundreds of times, but he didn't close the folder immediately.

  "The first script was the audition piece."

  He said it without special inflection. Information, not criticism.

  "The second wasn't."

  Kein nodded.

  "I'll be in touch this week."

  He went out into the hallway. Turned right toward the main exit and from about twelve meters away saw Leo Vance standing next to the row of empty chairs, no longer holding his number, helping a woman in her seventies with a shopping cart who had clearly entered the wrong building.

  Leo pointed toward the left hallway. The woman nodded. Leo took out his phone and searched for something to show her.

  Kein evaluated the distance, lines of sight, and available exits.

  He turned left. Emergency door at the end. Three flights of service stairs. A side alley smelling of dumpster and hot asphalt.

  The main street was to his right.

  He passed a noodle cart on the sidewalk. The vendor was wrapping foil around something that smelled good. Kein bought a container without fully stopping, opened it while walking.

  Noodles with pork. Too spicy. Good enough.

  The holographic clock read 4:22 PM.

  He had a script to memorize and a rehearsal tomorrow at ten.

  He kept walking.