Some time later the mood changed quite a bit. The agitation they had brought with them from downstairs and had encouraged with all their talk turned out to be kinder than expected, playing alone in the corner without disturbing the adults further. It was a quiet turn of events with no major breakthroughs for the group, but when you pull the rope more than you have to, the risk of breaking it becomes all too realistic.

So, I would say with a dose of cowardice and a dose of courage pretty much equivalent, the gang continued their lunch without thinking about much else. Even the canned food at the end of the day wasn't exactly bad, which helped them tremendously. Well, the beans and the jellied meat had an almost metallic back taste that assaulted your palate, but the heroes who decided to take that burden on their back were Roberto and Mario, so there weren't too many complaints about that.

At a certain point they even decided to open the only two cans of beer they found inside the crate, dividing them very casually in order to further calm their nerves. Roberto took the opportunity to light up another cigarette, not having any worries about finishing them, considering the stock he had made, and enjoyed that moment of good life as only a monk would have known how to do.

In contrast to the meat, the acrid smoke of the blue camels went down his throat with less effort, making him breathe in large, satisfied puffs of grayish air. The smell bothered Mario and Sabrina a little bit, as they were still intent on finishing what they had in their plates, while for Camilla and Alex it was not a novelty at all, so they did not give it a second thought. On the contrary, to be correct, the boy had a little desire to increase his chances of dying young with a fast cancer in his heart, but the dear Camilla took care of it with an elbow to keep those bad temptations at bay.

Hard to imagine that it was she who had offered him a package a good handful of years before. Well, I guess people change.

Back to the important stuff, however, the members of the Alcoholbuster witnessed another magic that was impossible to explain with the normal physical principles they were used to. It was a little show that seemed designed to further mess up what little gray matter they had left.

What was left of the consumed supplies, mainly the plastic of the packages or the bottles or cans of the drinks, decided of its own free will to start glowing intermittently, to quickly become incorporeal as holograms could be, and finally to evaporate from top to bottom in a cloud of phosphorescent powder.

Ah... well, at least we don't have to worry about leaving any mess around. Dear Roberto accepted the news with a not very convinced smile, moving his hands quickly and grabbing the butt that was still hanging from his mouth. By now there was only the filter and a small amount of incinerated tobacco already extinguished so, like the good environmentalist he was, he threw the remains of his moment of pleasure on the ground, then pounding them well.

The others didn't even notice his gesture, having other things to think about, but he instead took care to observe well what would happen. In fact, he ignored the speeches that arose in the meantime with such concentration that he did not hear a single word. A couple of minutes later, however, he declared his experiment over and went back to giving them attention. The butt, after all, had not disappeared at all.

"Do you think it's better if we stay here?" It was the first question that reached the boy's ears as he turned his head again in the direction of his companions. It had been Camilla who had asked it, and from what Roberto had been able to make out with a quick glance, that must have been the answer to another question or remark from Mario; at least considering that she had shifted her gaze in the direction of everyone but him.

"I don't see many other alternatives," the big man replied shortly after, making Roberto's theory even more likely, saying without pausing much and in an annoyed tone, "Right now the only thing we can be sure of is that things don't work the way we're used to here. Taking a trip out there is suicidal. At least this mall gives us a roof over our heads." He then concluded his speech by throwing away, as if it had been some kind of Frisbee, the plastic plate on which he had just eaten, which in the meantime had begun to evaporate.

I guess he wanted to look convincing. Roberto thought as he observed the scene and used it as an excuse to smoke some more. But even I have a hard time taking seriously someone who enjoys throwing plates around for fun. He sneered silently as the scene evolved in front of him.

"What if we found other people out there instead? Maybe they might know something about what happened to us. Don't... don't you think that would be a better plan than just standing here waiting?" Sabrina made an effort to intervene, in a way I would even say was cute, holding her head between her shoulders and raising it only a little.

Camilla immediately gave her a hand, perhaps out of spite towards Mario or perhaps for other reasons, saying with renewed conviction, even though Roberto almost immediately thought she was very insincere: "Sabrina is right! Even if we didn't find anything or anyone for miles, at least by going in person we would be sure. To bad nothing would prohibit us from coming back here, right? What do we have to lose?" He finally asked clenching his fist and giving a few brief and quick glances at the only other girl.

Unfortunately for her though, the male and female minds saw the world in two completely different ways. While the two of them saw opportunity and security in the search and expansion of the group, despite the unknown derived from the lack of information, the boys active in the conversation thought differently.

"We've got some to lose..." Alex commented after a long sigh, scratching his forehead with the knuckle of his index finger and immediately taking an opposite position to his friend. She, shocked, turned with her inner body towards him, staring at him as if she was seeing a stranger. "I would say that in order we have to lose the little we still possess, our freedom, our future and... Well, I guess also our life; it seems to be considered an important stuff," Mario added at the end, speaking with a clearly ironic tone.

The two of them, for the second time since they met, were able to understand each other's thoughts only through a glance, a brief but not at all silent look. Camilla found herself alone in that confrontation, with only one ally who at the moment seemed unable to continue the conversation. Not wanting to throw in the towel in front of the evidence, she swallowed her pride and went in search of Roberto.

Their eyes met just a moment later, making the girl's request for support quite obvious. The smoking jerk, however, put on a crucified expression that seemed to say something like, "Are you sure you want me to say my piece?" But, receiving no objection in response to his attempt to enjoy the mess as a spectator, he reluctantly decided to settle things once and for all.

"They're right," he said bluntly, then taking the cigarette between his fingers and continuing, "We're not in a safe, cuddly place here anymore. Even putting aside all this magical/inexplicable crap, we only need to pretend we're in a place hit by some natural disaster to get our priorities straight. Get it out of your head that you can have police, firefighters, lawyers and human resources ready to go thanks to a phone call."

That was enough to set the record straight and yet, maybe just for spite, Roberto added to conclude: "This is a jungle and no one will come to help you in such a bad place," addressing the girl directly and using a tone of voice that was not at all light.

Perhaps the motivation behind that difference in views was to be found in the natural evolution of the human species, or, less likely, in the social evolution of the individual in society. In any case, since I would say that to put on the same scale a couple of million years, at least, and the childhood or even only the adolescence of an individual seems to me pure madness, I leave to the not ideologically compromised posterity the task to answer to this imbecile question.

In any case, such a cold shower obviously made her retreat, leaving her little more than silent. Slowly, she took to reasoning about what she had been told and, one by one, increasingly unpleasant future possibilities began to come to mind. Left without law or protection people could do just about anything, so blindly seeking the support of a larger group could hardly be a good idea. Relying on others and trusting others sometimes worked in civilized society, but when survival was at stake, the rules changed quickly.

Confronted with the reality of things, she lowered her forehead and clenched her teeth, somehow imitating Sabrina's posture. However, considering the difference in height, the feeling of looking at her was quite different. She didn't fail to move her pupils upwards to find Alex, feeling some sort of annoyance inside since even he hadn't agreed with her.

However, the thought that he had cared for her and the others and had not given her a hard time made her feel somehow happy, almost satisfied. Years had passed, whether she realized it or not. Who knows where the little boy who used to follow her when she was a child had gone. Perhaps, underneath, he had grown up without her realizing it.

Alex, however, cunning as a box of nuts, mistook the wistful expression on her face for something much more serious than it really was. And, concerned but reluctant to show it openly, he cleared his throat so as to draw Roberto's attention to himself and said to him in disappointment: "Don't you think you've gone too far? You can not talk to her like that just because she is a woman," throwing, cowardly, the entire speech in coward accusing him of sexism; with a statement in my opinion also sexist among other things.

In response, Mario, Camilla and even Sabrina for a moment were confused by that hand grenade thrown without a reason. None of the three supported the attempt to exploit the political correctness to launch a dagger in the back. On the contrary, Mario burst out laughing in front of that poorly managed attempt to protect the girl, in a combination of irony that would have made him smile if there weren't people in the world who used that kind of dirty tactics on a daily basis.

Anyway, Roberto didn't get along well with that kind of individuals and, although he never wasted time online arguing with them, when he happened to find them at work or at the bar his first instinct was always to bury them. This time though, leaving aside the murderous look that for the briefest of seconds made Alex's blood run cold, he didn't seem to take it too hard.

"Yeah... You're right," he said a few moments later, hastily lighting another cigarette dripping with kindness and politeness; a sign, obviously, of a chivalrous spirit that was more than unbreakable. "Of course I spoke in that kind of tone not because I would like to avoid having my head on a pike. No, no, no... That would be implausible. I said it because I'm sexist and I don't even conceive of the female brain as a human organ capable of complex thoughts. It's better to get the important things straight right away, otherwise we'll just end up getting confused and heaven forbid." He then concluded by abandoning irony towards the end, if we really want to call it irony to stare someone else straight in the eyeballs with the expression on his face of someone with a loaded gun in his pocket.

Avoiding to think about it anyway, since no one else at that table had more hashtags than neurons in his head, that sad moment ended quickly without the need to add anything else, leaving Roberto the honor, driven by the goodness of his heart of course, to say: "I propose to divide us into two groups. One stays here to set up the shack for tonight and the other explores the mall. Is that a good idea?"