2 Chapter 2

Insecurely she took her suitcases and went through the doors looking for any familiar face, a tangle of people in a hurry blocking most of her vision, she had already almost lost hope when her parents left one of the most distant cafeterias. About to throw away the suitcases, Eden ran to hug her mother who seemed about to cry when she saw her.

The welcome had been intense and the return home had given them to update them on everything that happened during the course of practices. They both bombarded her relentlessly with questions of all kinds. The journey had been nocturnal and between the fatigue of the trip and the stress, she decided to stay to sleep with her parents. Her room had long since become her mother's sewing room, but in its condition the sofa seemed an even better option than a queen's bed.

The next morning the house was completely silent. Her mother had already gotten up hours ago to go to work and her father would surely be with her friends fixing the car as she enjoyed doing so much. It almost felt like when I was a teenager. A small smile came to her lips, stretching out on the sofa she decided to get up at last. She knew she had just arrived and had barely seen her parents well, but she needed to go home, she needed to hug her boyfriend again and silence the voices in her head.

A coffee and a quick shower later, Eden was looking for some clothes in her old closet, and after leaving a heartfelt note for her parents, she left the family home on edge. The neighborhood was almost as I remembered it. Almost. After a little less than two years it seemed that she had twice the life of what she remembered, all the stores were open, people invaded the entire streets, moving from here to there. She could even see her childhood park full of young children having fun with their grandparents and parents.

The train station was just a few minutes walk away so the walk would be pleasant, seeing familiar surroundings again helped her to clear up.

Arriving at the station, she could see the gigantic posters of the cinema that was in the street in front, offering new movies, new restaurants as well as its entertainment area. Nobody knew how the young woman longed for Wednesdays at the movies with her partner, buying a cold drink at the mall and going to see the first horror movie that appeared on the bill without even bothering to look at what reviews it had.

Eden entered the little station marveling at how changed she was. The last time she had needed to use the train there they did not have two ticket machines, much less a fully operational bar with customers. Getting in line, she waited her turn and once in front of the large machine she prepared to take out her ticket, praying that it had not risen much in price since she was not a woman who used to wear loose.

-Is it going to be for today?

The frustrated voice of the man behind her hurried her. Confused, she stepped away from the machine and went to the bus stop map, which only accentuated her nervousness. Everything was completely changed, half of the stops were gone, not even the train arrived at the middle of the complete route. This new map was as if a small child with scissors had cut it out to his liking, creating new stops and painting everything else gray as if it did not exist, completely eliminating everything that was further south or west.

The capital and everything below it had disappeared. The young woman stared at the silent poster with a knot slowly forming in her stomach.

-What has ...?

After a minute and before the surprised gaze of the customers, Eden ran out, that was not normal, her parents had not told her anything, she had literally not seen anything to indicate that half of Spain had disappeared from the map. Which made him wonder, what could have happened that year for such a situation. The young woman looked in all directions trying to find an answer, her heart seemed to be about to jump out of her chest and without realizing she was back on her street, sitting on the first bench she saw, she tried to take a deep breath and suppress the anxiety attack that struggled to explode inside.

Looking at the sky she tried to clear her mind, she could feel the beginning of a tingling in the tips of her fingers, and if she succumbed she would end up shaking uncontrollably sitting there, which she neither wanted nor would be useful to her at the moment. Slowly inspiring something caught her attention, out of the corner of her eye, on the small balconies of a couple of floors, she could see arranged some flags of Asturias looking like they had been hanging for a long time, it would not be curious if it were not because when she left for Russia, the flags that people put to the windows were those of the country, for political reasons, never the province. Each time things made less sense, Eden wondered if it was possible that at some point a civil war had broken out, on the one hand it would not be entirely unheard of, but then the city and everything around it should be different, there should be signs of this, and it was not the case, quite the opposite, she could even say that Gijón seemed like a utopia compared to when she left.