Marco had been staring at the same sentence for forty-seven minutes. The words swam on the page— "Il sistema scheletrico è composto da 206 ossa nell'adulto" —but they refused to lodge themselves in his brain. Around him, the university library of Bologna hummed with the quiet desperation of exam season.

"Yes. Then?"

"What's this?"

Chiara finally turned. She had dark circles under her eyes, but her gaze was sharp. "You don't read Martini, Marco. You survive Martini. Here." She slid a crumpled piece of paper across the table. It was a list of page numbers.

Marco grabbed his pen. He looked at his tablet, at the PDF of Fondamenti Di Anatomia E Fisiologia by Martini, Edises. For the first time, it didn't look like a monster. It looked like a map.

He rubbed his eyes and looked around. To his left, Chiara was highlighting the brachial plexus with the focused intensity of a bomb disposal expert. To his right, Lorenzo had given up entirely and was watching a video of a cat playing the piano on his phone.