From the torrid, insipid morning of early March. After an extensive stretch of imperious leisure—justly deserving to bear the most primal needs of another flesh upon my back. From my gaze, accustomed to the gloom, they noticed that light had returned to Las Caleduñas Street. The streetlights had long since died, their duty expired. Then, a new universe of voices concealed itself, far away, along Miravalles Avenue; and I noticed the room felt increasingly less sad—without lapsing into sentimentality—rather, I found it peculiarly pale, frozen in time.
I rose, straightening up as best I could, simultaneous with my unconsciousness, and then—like someone leaving a dream behind—I stepped out of that world enclosed within my room. Perhaps my only distraction for two years since I turned eighteen, my only labyrinth. I take pride in my nocturnal life, in my vigils among books and shadows.
I need to wake up.
It was complicated. To arrange the curtains, push them aside, face the light, learn of the world again. I would trade anything from the little I had for more hours in the night, because I found the noise of people repulsive, their voices scraping through my brain. It drowns out my other "self," the one made of ideas. It was March, and in my stubbornness, in my devotion to not surrendering, that was the "self" that worked, the one that persisted.
I was barely 18 years old, and my resentment toward life was lukewarm at best.
By noon, the sounds of the Market Colonial Ignacio were already buzzing—a place that had lost its soul some time ago. I'm talking about the clamor, the mingled stench of meat and street food, the vendors huddled under faded blue tents with dented brass counters, others perched on long cloth spreads, their wares stuffed into burlap sacks. It was undeniably chaotic: a ragged, informal society that had claimed the streets as its own, turning them into a home.
Yet there was a strange, visceral harmony to it all—something unsettling yet magnetic. Ever since I was a child, I'd lose myself in those alleyways, that incomprehensible labyrinth threading through buildings and sometimes burrowing underground. Back then, I'd trail behind my mother; by adulthood, I'd memorized every crooked turn.
Still, it was surreal how abruptly it all ended. The change came with the new District Mayor, a man named Ernest Ford. He was an outsider—born in our country but with a foreign grandfather who'd arrived decades earlier, supposedly for a woman he'd loved since childhood. Truthfully, I didn't know if that had anything to do with anything, or if it was even true, but I'd overheard the rumor while watching, as curious as the neighbors, the forced eviction of the vendors. It was a scandal, no question. Many resisted, but the police were unusually ruthless. They showed up one day, barricaded the area, and just... stood there. For days. Motionless. To ensure no one slipped back in.
I think Ford's story might be true. Back then, it was when many foreign-born men began arriving in the country seeking their fortune. Meanwhile, in my own reality, though many areas of the city started being renovated—made more pleasing to the eye, more glamorous, more orderly. For the residents of Las Flores district, it was an unusual idea. Like many, I never thought we could be reformed. But it seems I was wrong. I hadn't fully grasped the power of progress.
To return to the story of my life—and not dwell on trivialities—when I turned sixteen (or perhaps I never truly did, in some forgotten morning between April and January, on a Monday or a September), it was jarring to realize every possibility was real, even starving to death. I began sleeping less, then even less. The world snored, and dawn etched itself into my memory as something almost beautiful. I lived among streetlamps, doing a thousand things. I worked through afternoons and felt, in those days, four times older than I was. I never finished high school, though I suspect complaining about it might have given me some grim satisfaction. It was no mystery that I had to stay steadfast for the only family I had left.
It was during those workday evenings that I met Miguel Borja and his wife, and their daughter too—Lucía Borja, the most fragile and noblest-hearted person I've ever known. Tolerant like no one else, odd in her way of speaking, but singular, like a sister to me. Maybe I fell a little in love, though not as much as I imagine. She studied at some private culinary institute, and it shamed me to think that if I asked her out, she might actually want to be with someone as me.
I never want to work again…
I had already said my goodbyes to certain friendships. Then I walked to my younger sister's room. When I opened the door, the trapped air inside—stale and motionless—revealed itself like a clumsy brushstroke on a forgotten painting. In the background, barely visible, a bluish light sketched its faint presence. It was a painting. A threshold. Something I still don't understand, yet it has stayed with me ever since.
"María."
Her hair was like a nest undone by the wind, long and unruly, with bangs that veiled the face I'd spent so many hours of my life contemplating. Or rather, her entire being embodied, with majestic indolence, the art of idleness. She exuded drowsiness, and every time I looked at her, I remembered how much of myself I burned away just caring for her. My sister, María Vilcanoba—her skin translucent and fragile as rice paper—was, among the countless ways I liked to define her, most accurately described in her role as a genius.
She looked at me again with that expression of hers—inexhaustible in its mystery—one I'd spent years trying to decipher. In the map of her face, in the fleeting creases of her forehead, I traced the labyrinth of her thoughts. I left this interpretation to my other self: the daylight version, diligent and devoted to his only family—the one thing all my fractured "selves" shared in the imaginary world I'd constructed.
Truthfully, I was all of them at once. But that was just the story I told myself to keep living, to keep pushing forward, to keep my lives compartmentalized.
She had turned sixteen and was, with cruel irony, our sole means of support while I searched for another job.
"Time for breakfast. It's already noon."
"Shhh, I'm thinking."
"Come on, you can think at the table."
"Shhh—if I stop now, I'll never recapture this thought. It'll change. So just… never mind, I've already lost it. I was in a meadow, and a dragon was singing me an Irish song mixed with opera, and then…"
I nodded and approached the bed where her body lay, arranged in an artificial pose. Her head tilted toward the floor as if in some deliberate attempt to seem interesting. She was a marionette with its strings cut, sprawled across a velvet bedspread (a relic of better days) that dwarfed her fragile frame. The furniture felt insubstantial, almost mocking her essence, so at odds with the coded language of her room: that "I-don't-know-what-to-say" made tangible, a stubborn chaos fused into a space that couldn't even be called disorder—for that would imply some system, and here everything seemed governed by a perfection too random.
My sister inhabits a world of shadows, cloistered in her bedroom-turned-studio where sunlight is a distant memory. Her jet-black hair frames a face she herself hides, as if afraid beauty might disrupt the purity of her art.
I didn't want to dwell on that. Better to focus on more mundane—and less tedious—things. Like how, from the hallway window, I'd noticed Mr. Borja leaving for work unusually late, his wife and daughter Lucía seeing him off at the door while letting the dog out. It struck me as what all humans ought to do: stretch their legs, live placidly in health, blissfully unaware of everything else.
"You're not fooling anyone, let's go"
"Clothes," she said, raising her arms like a child as I helped her dress—pulling on another shirt, adjusting her stockings, and other garments I won't name out of dignity for my own bloodline.
She began to hum.
"Did you stay up late recording?"
"I didn't like how my voice sounded," she replied.
"I really liked your last song. My internet friends did too, but I think this new one might be their favorite."
"Glad to hear it—" she said flatly.
To anyone else, she might have sounded curt, but as her brother, I'd learned to distinguish the subtle shifts in her repertoire of expressions and tones. It was the only way to communicate with her properly. Here, despite the distance in her voice, she was genuinely happy.
Once dressed, we moved to the dining area—though calling it that was an act of vanity. It was nothing more than two plastic monobloc chairs and a repurposed mahogany nightstand, now serving as an altar for our daily meals.
She sat with her usual air of a creature straddling two worlds, humming the melody she'd been composing in her head for months. With a glance, she let me know it had finally taken its definitive form. Meanwhile, she waited patiently as I finished preparing a sorry excuse for breakfast: a murky broth of offal. Unpleasant, and no one was going to argue otherwise. The reason for this, of course, was that we were now truly broke after buying María's microphone and attempting to soundproof her room.
"I like what I did with that piece. It's about loneliness, I think. I'm not sure how I felt when I wrote it, but at the time, it was like I was someone else—like everyone was just like me, and I could only understand myself because everyone was me. But I wasn't me. So it felt nice, imagining someone caring about you."
"That's needlessly convoluted. No wonder you don't have friends."
"Look who's talking, you filthy hypocrite."
"I have internet friends."
"Those don't count. They're just close acquaintances who've never seen your face and play video games together because none of you have real friends."
"At least I have someone to talk to about my day."
"So do I. I have you, Lucía, and Fido the dog."
My sister had done her part. Now it was my turn to fulfill the other half—refining her voice, synthesizing that metaphysical realm where she peacefully told stories. I'd translate it into ones and zeros, upload it to her network-connected account, and we'd pray it earned us enough to stifle the appetites neither of us wanted to confront.
"What's for dinner?"
"Same as last Tuesday. We're out of stew."
"You ate it all, you selfish bastard. You know I love stew more than you do."
Hers was one of those obscure accounts—the kind where singers hid behind virtual avatars, a trend that had taken off in Asia. A futile representation of… what, exactly? Her persona? I doubted it. For my sister, it was just an excuse to keep her face hidden, and that was enough for us.
From our long surname, we carved out her alias: VILCA. Every few months, my sister composed and produced new art. She'd record it, and I'd scrub the audio in some barely-understood software: noise reduction, reverb removal, pitch correction. I wanted fidelity—for the world to hear what she was capable of. So we bought a new microphone and tried to soundproof María's room. Bit by bit, our makeshift enterprise took shape.
I thought we could live like this. Even if I got tossed into the street like some stray dog from whatever job I scraped together, I trusted the genius I shared blood with.
That said, María was utterly useless at life: she struggled to talk to people, cared about nothing but music, couldn't cook, and had no desire to leave the house. Not that I was some paragon of motivation, but at least I was more normal than her.
"But… Brother, if your friends liked that song, it's because they feel weird. When I wrote it, I felt like everyone was me. So your friends are a bunch of 'Maria' men—they also don't like talking to people for too long, or…"
She rambled with unusual empathy, contained only in her speech, in her linguistic precision. There wasn't a hint of emotion in her tone. Again, like her brother, after spending so much time with such a natural phenomenon, he could decipher her contradictory way of speaking.
"Well, yeah, they're like us. That's why I get along with them. Eat your food, it's going to get cold."
"Okay." And she returned to her plate.
"But those thoughts are temporary. Honestly, I don't feel as lonely when you're here," she began to say.
I was actually a little moved by that comment, so I buried my face in my soup so she wouldn't notice—though it was useless. I understood Maria, but she understood me better.
When Lucía Borja knocked on our door with the dog's leash in hand, I greeted her with a smile. She, a sharp observer of other people's habits, had already deduced that the Vilcanoba siblings didn't know the discipline of sleep. I had tried to tidy myself up for her visit, but my face bore the marks of too many sleepless nights. In any case, it was hard for me to look presentable. She didn't care much. She was one of those rare people who practiced kindness without fanfare, often bringing us leftovers from what she cooked in class or at home, like the Thursday stew that Maria and I loved so much. She did it as a transaction—I walked her dog from time to time.
She was probably worried about how little we left the house. I appreciated it. Conscientiously, on days like this, I would go out with María to get some fresh air, if only for the little animal that played with me, the one that motivated Maria to stretch her legs.
"Mr. Lucas, how's life treating you?"
"Same as always, you know. Taking care of this good-for-nothing here."
"Oh, María is our dear fluffball. You should cut your hair to show the world how pretty you really are."
María heard from afar and averted her gaze toward her room as if trying to escape.
"NO! NO! LET ME GOOO!"
"You little devil, you treat your brother so badly."
"He deserves it for not giving me more of your food!"
Lucia began laughing at María's antics. When provoked like this, her facial expressions became more human.
"Ugh, whatever. Have a nice holiday - I need to cook for my brothers and mother. Take care, Mr. Lucas. I'm leaving this little one in your hands."
She said goodbye by suddenly grabbing my hand and forcing a handshake. It probably meant something like "hang in there" or "you can do this." It was comforting to know I wasn't the only one with demanding siblings.
"Bye Lucy," María bid farewell with a peace sign, completely forgetting that mere seconds ago she'd been trying to escape her grasp.
As I said goodbye to Lucia Borja, María continued humming. I often thought that if she weren't my sister, I might never have encountered such tremendous talent. Many people might underestimate her because she doesn't show her face, because she only has a small fanbase online - but that doesn't do justice to her true ability. It's not some brotherly bias clouding my judgment. Genuinely, if I were a stranger or anyone else, I'd be enchanted a thousand times over by that angelic voice, her ingenious compositions, her revealing lyrics.
I'm Lucas Vilcanoba, a poor guy from the district farthest from downtown, with a genius sister and me - a completely talentless nobody. Still, I call myself María's manager, but it would be more accurate to call me the observer, the narrator of her story, of everything that would unfold in the coming years. I didn't know it then, but my sister was about to collide with the most prominent artistic talents in the industry. She would form rivalries, build alliances, make friends, carve her path in the entertainment world and eventually reign over it. Meanwhile, from afar, behind the scenes, I'd handle the dirty work. Who knows what my own story might be - not that it matters. Maybe I'd gain some reputation or sympathy from certain industry figures. But this is the story of María Vilcanoba, the greatest singer and composer in history, the undisputed genius of music, and her brother - a nobody.