excerpt
A couple of days later, he went to school and started gathering the
necessary materials for his dissertation. He found what he needed,
and as he headed back to his dorm, he crossed paths with one of his
professors, who stopped him with a smile.
“I see you are getting started with your thesis, Hermes.”
“Yes, if I am to finish at some time, I’d better do this now.”
“But Hermes, a bit of a break is going to do some good too. Give
yourself a short holiday. I’m sure when you start, it won’t take you
long to finish.”
Hermes smiled back, “I will, sir, thank you.” He went back to
his dorm, put all the books on the bed, and sat back to take a deep
breath: “This was it. Two semesters, and this was the last thing keeping
me away from my family and my career. What kind of a break do
I need to give myself? Hell, not a long one.”
He sat by his desk, taking paper and pencil to compose the
outline his thesis had to follow over the next few months before it’d
become presentable to his supervisor.
He ended up sitting in the same spot since midday, studying. It
was now evening. Often, his eyes left the lines of the books to look out
onto the street below his window. The quietness and serenity of the
night gave him a strange sensation. The streetlight on the corner illuminated
a bright circle on the ground. A man passed with his hands
in his pockets, and then he stopped underneath the light, looked at
his watch, and continued his way with a faster pace. There was hardly
any wind, and not even a leaf on the trees moved. Suddenly, he felt an
inexplicable agony: it was as if something squeezed his heart.
He didn’t know what it meant. Maybe someone back home was
not doing well. He put the books aside to write a letter to his parents.
He described what just happened and how he wanted to hear them
tell him that everyone and everything was okay. He begged them
not to hide the truth if anything happened to them.
