Day 38 – Hour 015"Not Yet"
The photograph sat untouched on the worktable.
It hadn't moved since the boy left — face-down, a single crease in the corner, like someone had pressed it between two heavy books for a long time. Marco hadn't spoken since, not directly. Just resumed his methodical rituals: lens cloth, drawer, rag, lens cloth again.
I stood near the table, not reaching.
The silence between us had weight, but no pressure. Like a waiting room where nothing would be said unless someone stood up first.
I didn't.
Marco broke the silence in his way — not with a sentence, but with an action.
He reached beneath the table and pulled out a dented black case. A case I hadn't seen before. He unlatched it, took out a second camera — this one smaller, matte gray, wrapped in tape and time.
He set it on the table beside the photograph.
Then he opened the drawer to the right and pulled out a small piece of folded paper. Not the photo. Something else.
I watched him seal the paper in a plain envelope, then tuck it beside the gray camera.
Still, he said nothing.
But I understood.
That job wasn't for me.
And it never had been.
He picked up both items — camera and envelope — and moved toward the rear of the shop, near the second entrance where the boy had come and gone.
A knock, not at the door, but the wall.
Two short taps. One long.
A pause.
Then, from behind the door: a rustle. A shape. A figure I hadn't seen before.
Marco opened the door halfway. A hand reached in, took the items. No words exchanged.
By the time the shutter creaked closed again, the job was already in motion.
Marco didn't look at me.
Didn't explain himself.
He just returned to the table, wiped a smudge from the glass, and moved on like nothing had happened.
I stared at the spot where the photo had been.
I wasn't angry.
I wasn't even disappointed.
But I was… aware.
Aware that Marco had decided something without asking me. A quiet judgment passed with the clean precision of a blade — no malice, no doubt. Just a line in the dirt, drawn by someone who saw what I couldn't.
"You're not ready," he finally said, not as an insult — but as a fact.
"Not yet."
I nodded.
Nothing else to say.
He slid another film roll across the table. "Back to the stool," he said. "This time, shoot the shadow. Not the shape."
And that was that.
We resumed our lesson like the interruption hadn't happened.
But something had shifted.
I started noticing more — the details Marco never acknowledged but never hid. The scuffed corner near the rear shelf that looked like a hiding spot. The map pinned beneath the toolbox that had three sections of the slums circled in pencil. The broken radio that somehow still clicked twice every morning at 09:03.
And then there was the wall.
The one the boy knocked on.
Thin, patched with old insulation and layered with soundproof tiles that didn't belong in a place this old. That wall had been reinforced — but not for heat.
For secrets.
Marco wasn't just a photographer.
Not just a fixer or a contractor.
He had reach.
But unlike the Club, which moved like shadows with teeth, Marco's power was quiet. Rooted in favor and timing. In people who owed him, or feared him, or trusted him in ways that didn't require explanation.
The boy — the one who dressed like a banker and spoke in riddles — didn't scare him.
Marco hadn't flinched. Hadn't deferred.
He'd sent the task elsewhere without blinking.
Only the Club made Marco nervous.
Not the syndicates. Not the streets.
Only them.
When the afternoon wore thin and light dipped into the golden edges of the window frame, I packed my things without being told. Marco watched as I wrapped the strap around the lens, tucked it carefully into the case.
"You listen well," he said.
It wasn't a compliment.
Just something he'd noticed.
"I'll see you tomorrow," I said.
"You will."
Outside, the air smelled like rusted water and open oil drums. Someone nearby was boiling soup thick enough to coat the air in salt and fat. I walked with the same pace I'd entered, but something burned differently in my chest.
Not embarrassment.
Not envy.
Just a quiet surge of commitment.
Marco didn't think I was ready.
He was probably right.
But that didn't mean I wouldn't be soon.
The next time someone walked in with a mission sealed behind a code and a dead stare — I wouldn't just listen.
I'd understand.