THE BUILDING · Chapter 9 · Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
The building started moving differently.
Not faster.
Differently.
Not all of them — only those who had done it consistently.
That night Hugo looked for his name on the mailbox.
It was there.
But the handwriting was wrong.
Not his.
Someone else’s.
He went to the management office.
A new administrator. A woman, early forties. The same kind of tie that matched nothing else. The same cacti. The same laminated sign with the office hours.
Everything the same.
Except Mateo.
“I’m looking for the previous manager,” said Hugo. “Mateo.”
She looked at him.
“We have no record of anyone with that name in this position.”
“He was here for years.”
“I’ve held this role for three years,” she said. “Before me I can’t say.”
Hugo looked at the cacti.
The same cacti.
“Can I see my resident file?”
She typed. Waited. Typed again.
“There’s a problem,” she said.
“What problem?”
“You appear twice in the system.”
Hugo said nothing.
“Two entries,” she said. “Different dates. Same name. Same flat.”
“What are the dates?”
She turned the monitor.
Hugo looked.
Two records.
The first with the date he had moved into the building.
The second dated three weeks earlier — three weeks before he had arrived.
“Which is correct?” she asked.
Hugo looked at both dates.
“The first,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
She nodded. Typed something.
“And the departure date?” she asked.
He looked at her.
“I don’t have a departure date. I’m still here.”
“The second record has one.”
“What date?”
She looked at the screen.
Frowned.
“Tomorrow.”
He took the elevator.
Not to the third floor.
To the button with no number.
In the elevator, Hugo looked at his hands.
Counted them.
Ten.
Counted again.
Ten.
He didn’t know why he’d done it twice.
The cab rose more than it should have, those extra seconds the body registers without being able to measure them, and opened onto the same corridor as always — same light, same smell, same carpet with the same worn center — except for one thing.
All three doors were open.
Wide open. Not ajar — fully open, as if someone had left them all in a hurry, or as if they had been opened from the inside to let him choose.
He went to the middle one.
His.
The hallway was his. The jacket on the hook. The umbrella in the corner. The doormat with the lifted edge.
He went through to the living room.
The form was on the table.
This time it wasn’t blank.
He picked it up.
All questions answered. In his handwriting — the same as on the envelope that first night, the same as on Damián’s list. Precise answers. Detailed. As if whoever had written them knew him better than he knew himself.
Or as if he had written them at some point he couldn’t remember.
He turned to the last page.
The same thin rule.
Where it had said Awaiting signature, there was now something different.
A signature.
His.
Unmistakable — the same one he used on contracts, on documents, on letters no one sent anymore.
And beneath the signature, a date.
Today.
Hugo looked at the date.
Then at his hands.
He hadn’t signed anything.
Not today.
Not this.
Not ever.
He put the paper back on the table.
Stepped back.
And then he heard something he hadn’t heard since the first night.
From above.
The dry thud.
The drag.
Three seconds.
A pause.
A shorter drag.
Silence.
The chair.
At 23:12.
He checked the time.
23:12.
He could hear it again.
That should have been a relief.
It wasn’t.
Because the chair wasn’t coming from above.
It was coming from below.
From Hugo’s flat.
From his own living room.
While he stood here, in the duplicate flat, in the flat that didn’t appear on any plan.
Hugo looked at the form on the table.
His signature.
Today’s date.
And beneath the date, something he hadn’t seen before.
A single line added by hand.
In a handwriting that wasn’t his.
Tomorrow you’ll meet the other one.
— END OF CHAPTER 9 —
The next chapter has already been written.
But you haven’t read it.
Yet.
Saturday, May 30. 19:00.
Tomorrow you’ll meet the other one.
© Santiago Copí, 2026. All rights reserved.
