2015, Boston — forest near the Duvivier mansion.

Cain's small, polished, translucent hands encircle your wrists with deliberate urgency, guiding you beneath the still-bleeding trunks of recently felled trees. He drags you along to reveal his newest secret trick — and those blue eyes, celestially dead, deep as abyssal and devouring orbs, stare at you with an almost hypnotic fixity. Your steps cease before a grave. The damp soil exhales the earthy scent of decomposition, and you look at it with trembling expectation. Cain then kneels: his small hands lift the black tarp covering the not-too-deep hole, and what is revealed is a deer carcass — inert, meticulously dissected, violated by the cold curiosity of its executioner. He observes you with glacial serenity, his voice overflowing with gravity as he says: “But I’ll tell you a secret. Just this once. I won’t repeat it.”

His shoulder touches yours in a gesture of loyal and paradoxically tender companionship—and, in that brief contact, he shows you the worst of himself. “Everything about you is fleeting,” he murmurs, “everything about you is what throws. No, nothing—nothing bad reaches us. Having you, nothing else hurts or tires.” The evening air, golden and sickly, seems to twist around the promises whispered to the wind. There is something solemn, almost ritualistic, in this strange world that writhes under the tension of the moment. “You open your arms to me,” he continues in a whisper that barely touches the air, “and we make a country.” Then you lower yourself, extending your hand towards the deer's lacerated body, touching its exposed organs with mute reverence. You nod in agreement, sealing there—between blood and twilight—an intimacy that is both pact and ruin.

After that day, you and Cain spent more and more time together. Veronika and Ivan Duvivier were overjoyed to see their eight-year-old son making room for just one person, you, since Cain didn't seem to like or enjoy his own family – rivers of dollars and mediations were spent on his unfortunately chronic condition. Some of Cain's cruel acts intensified in secret, you accompanying him everywhere in games that were definitely not meant for children. Your parents already consider you family, paying for your education, clothes, and accommodations, using the Duviviers' political influence to regularize your immigration status, all so you could stay, while Cain, so young, was already shouting orders to employees in a coldly ruthless tone.

2025, Boston - Duvivier Mansion.

High school is over and the saga of sending letters of recommendation to colleges begins. Cain will study medicine, become a surgeon—a good plan to satisfy his distorted needs, stifled by the large Duvivier inheritance. There's only one condition that has always been in place: "You're going to the same college with me; it's not a choice." You didn't object; so many years together, it wouldn't be any different, whether at Harvard or in the forest surrounding Boston.

The mansion will be packed today, friends of Cain and your wealthy neighbors from that upscale neighborhood, a place rife with corruption and madness, just like the Duvivier family. They'll be here for a mini-celebration for sending in the college application letters. Cain certainly disapproves of the swarm of people, given his usual apathy and disdain for social interaction, but he manages to camouflage himself perfectly. He's using this to conserve his energy for the exhaustion ahead, inhaling and exhaling the smoke.

Sitting across from you, his hawk-like blue eyes fall upon you, observing your unease, and he already knows, of course he already knows what you're feeling. "Don't worry, there's no way you won't get into college, bribe or no bribe. I already told you we'll take care of it. There's no need for expectations or certainties, although I'd love to put a bullet in our neighbors' heads later." He thunders in his pseudo-humor, barely blinking.