Episode 4

Thiago didn't sleep that night.

He lay on the thin mattress in his studio, staring at the moldy ceiling, listening to the street noise pierce through the poorly sealed window. His chest still ached from the argument with Gael, but it was an old, familiar pain. It wasn't the first time someone had yelled at him as if his existence were a mistake.

The first time was when he was seventeen.

It was a Friday, the day before a holiday. His mother found messages on his cell phone. Simple things: an "I enjoyed seeing you today" from a schoolmate. A heart. A typed kiss. Too small to be a crime. Too big to be accepted in that house.

The conversation was quick.

"Are you... that?"

"That what?"

"You know. That kind of people."

His father said nothing. He just looked, disgusted. As if Thiago had ceased to be a son and become a foreign body.

Two weeks later, the suitcase was on the sidewalk. With it, fifty reais hidden in a pocket, a worn coat, and a warning: "When you want to fix yourself, come back."

He didn't come back.

He slept two days at the house of a friend who shared a room with two others. Then, he got a job in a small market, was helped by a teacher who got him a spot in a social project. He studied in the morning, worked in the afternoon, cleaned offices at night. He took the bus standing, went hungry, cried silently in the bakery bathroom. But he never sold himself. He never kept quiet. And he never apologized for being who he was.

He graduated in Administration with honors, even though no one from his family was there to see it. There were no flowers. No applause. But he had himself—and that, he discovered, was more than many people had.

⸻

Now, at 25, sitting in an uncomfortable chair in a rented studio, Thiago faced his new life. He had a job on the 32nd floor, a boss who seemed made of stone, and a confused mixture in his chest that oscillated between desire, anger, and hope.

And even if the world still hurt him, he was no longer that boy expelled with a suitcase and a broken heart.

He was a man.

Hurt, yes. But forged in abandonment and shaped by resistance.

And he was going to climb as many floors as necessary to prove—not to others, but to himself—that nothing they did to him prevented him from being whole.

The sixth day started strangely.

The tension with Gael still hung in the air like invisible smoke, and although he hadn't said more than two words to Thiago since the argument, it seemed that his gaze was more... attentive. Not more gentle. Just more lingering.

But what really made Thiago's ground shake didn't come from him.

It came from breakfast in the employee cafeteria, where Thiago, exhausted and hungry, exchanged a few words with Rafael, the HR manager—a good-humored, smiling man who had treated him with respect from day one.

A conversation about coffee turned into praise. Praise turned into laughter. Laughter turned into a like on the corporate social network. A like turned into... rumors.

It was after lunch that Thiago heard it.

"Have you seen Doctor Ferraz's new assistant? He's throwing himself at Rafael."

"I saw them exchanging likes. He must be a faggot."

"Of course. Look at the way he is. Too sensitive. I bet he's trying to climb his way up with his ass."

The voice came from the bathroom. Door ajar. Thiago was inside, silent, listening. He recognized the muffled laughter, the venomous tone. One of the voices was from a financial analyst. Another, from the legal department.

He felt his stomach turn.

Not again, he thought. Not here.

He returned to his desk with cold hands. He couldn't type. He couldn't look anyone in the eye.

And then, the worst thing happened.

Gael passed by him. He stopped. He looked.

And in that second, in his eyes, there was a shadow of something Thiago couldn't read. Contempt? Curiosity? Anger?

Or perhaps the most dangerous of all: nothing.

The indifference burned more than any scream.

Thiago wanted to get up, disappear, scream, explain. But he said nothing. He stayed there, as if trying to shrink inside his own skin. Insecurity washed over him like an icy wave.

"They're going to fire me," he whispered to himself.

Because that's what fear did: it made even the strongest doubt their own existence.

But he stayed. Again.

Even with a heavy heart. Even with cold sweat on his back. Even with the certainty that, once again, being who he was could cost him everything.

And in the midst of that oppressive silence, he made a silent promise:

"I'm not going to run. Not this time."

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