Callege of City
The cafeteria smelled of overcooked pasta, cheap coffee, and the faint tang of antiseptic from the bathrooms nearby. Students clustered at tables, laptops open, voices low, but the murmur was alive—twitching, shifting, like static in the air before a storm. Klein sat at the edge of the room, notebook open but untouched, pencil hovering uselessly above the page. He could feel it before anyone spoke: the gaze, the tension. Even here, even in the midst of ordinary teenagers, he carried the weight of a name.
"Heard about the uploader?" whispered a voice from across the room. A boy with messy hair leaned closer to his friend, careful not to draw attention. Klein didn't need to look; the words were a brushstroke against the fabric of the day.
"Yeah," the friend replied, barely audible. "They say… they say he's in custody now, at the station. But… you know what happens when the Morettis get involved."
Klein's stomach tightened. Not because he feared the Morettis themselves—he knew the family, knew his cousin Vincenzo—but because he knew what those words could do to people like him. To the outside world, the Moretti name was a shadow that stretched, cold and unrelenting, over everyone who even whispered it.
From the corner of his eye, Klein caught the subtle glances of others: a girl biting her lip nervously, two boys pretending to argue about sports but casting rapid, flicking looks in his direction. The room had divided itself into careful groups. Everyone was watching, listening, judging, trying to gauge if he would react.
He forced himself to breathe. This was college. This was supposed to be ordinary. Yet, ordinary had no hold here. Every rumor, every whisper of Vincenzo's latest act, crept in like smoke through the cracks.
"They say the uploader—Matteo, right?—he uploaded that park video. Calm as stone. No panic. Can you even imagine? Sitting there, and everyone's losing their minds?" Another student murmured, leaning toward the table beside him.
Klein's pencil hovered above the notebook. He didn't write. Writing would mark him, would suggest attention. He simply listened. The story was growing. Each retelling added detail, horror, exaggeration, and disbelief.
"And now he's in the station," a third voice added, a girl whispering into a friend's ear. "Do you think… I mean, can the police even keep him safe? What if he decides to—" She trailed off, eyes wide, scanning the cafeteria as if the thought itself might summon the boy in question.
Klein's hands clenched slightly. He remembered dinners at the Moretti estate, evenings punctuated with silence from Vincenzo, Luca and Enzo smoking quietly in the corners, Vincenzo's eyes cold as steel when they met his own. The city saw the monster, but Klein had seen the boy. The quiet, calculating boy. The one who sometimes smiled like any teenager, before the rumors began, before the disappearances.
He forced himself to look down at his notebook. Pretend to write. Pretend to be doing calculus homework. But the words swirled in his mind: Matteo is in custody. Will he—?
Across the table, Davide leaned in. "Klein… you hear this? What's he going to do? I mean, if… you know, the rumors are true… can the police even—"
Klein shook his head slightly, a gesture of both denial and warning. "I don't know. Nobody knows," he murmured. The words tasted bitter. He had rehearsed ways to deflect these conversations, ways to appear normal. But here, normal was an impossible act.
The rumors shifted again, now swirling like smoke caught in a draft. Someone claimed they'd heard Vincenzo started young. Fifteen, they said. Fifteen years old, already leaving bodies in alleys. Klein felt a chill. Fifteen. The boy he had known at fifteen seemed innocent—books tucked under his arm, quiet in the corner of the dining hall. How could coincidence and fear become myth?
Stefano, sitting across, whispered, "They say he doesn't need to touch anyone. One look, one word, and people… disappear. You've read it, right? Stories from the docks, the alleys…" His voice trembled.
Klein glanced around. No one else noticed him yet. That was a small mercy. He wanted to tell them it wasn't like that—not fully. That Enzo and Luca were different. Protective. Bound by loyalty, not cruelty. But the rumor was stronger than explanation. The weight of the Moretti name pressed down on him like iron.
A girl at the next table shivered. "And now he's twenty-one. Everything he touches… fear. Even at the police station… Matteo…" Her words stopped, hanging in the air like smoke.
Klein's breath caught. Matteo. The uploader. Safe in custody, supposedly. But the story had already left the mouths of students, and fear had begun its own life.
Davide leaned closer. "So… what happens now? Do you think—" He stopped, eyes flicking to Klein, measuring. Could he ask the question? Could he hope for an answer?
Klein looked at them, his expression neutral. "I don't know," he repeated, softly, a warning in the tone. "Nobody knows."
The bell rang for the next class, but the tension lingered. Students moved, chairs scraped, but the whispers persisted, sliding along corridors and through lecture halls. Klein followed them with his eyes, the weight of being a Moretti pressing him down with every step.
He remembered dinner conversations in the estate, the quiet, controlled world inside the family home, Luca's calm and measured voice, Enzo's aggressive but controlled demeanor. Those cousins, they didn't harm without reason. But even with that knowledge, the outside world didn't care. The name itself carried fear.
By the time Klein reached his lecture hall, the whispers had evolved again. Half the students were discussing the uploader, half were speculating on the Moretti response. And somewhere, in the threads of every rumor, was the echo of the boy who became a monster—or was it the world that made him one?
Sitting down, Klein felt the eyes, the weight, and the impossible expectation. He tried to focus on the professor's words, on law, on logic—but every sentence was drowned by a single, persistent thought: Matteo is inside the station. And Vincenzo knows.
A shiver ran down his spine.
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Law college of the city
The lecture hall emptied slowly, students filing out in clusters, voices low but urgent. Frank remained seated for a moment, eyes tracing the ornate wooden panels along the walls, listening to the whispers of those leaving. Every snippet of conversation felt like a wave crashing against him.
"Did you hear?" someone said, barely above a breath. "Matteo… in police custody. Can they even hold him?"
Another muttered under their breath, sharper, more venomous: "Why is a criminal even allowed on campus?"
The words weren't directed at Frank, but they hovered, tangling around his name because of who he was. Moretti. Blood. Reputation. Power. Fear.
Students sidestepped him in hallways, or leaned away in cafés when he entered, not wanting to be seen close to the family. Some whispered with contempt, their faces hard with disgust, their eyes flicking toward him in suspicion. Others muttered theories about the uploader, about Vincenzo's reach, about how the city could bend to fear and how the Moretti name alone carried the weight of terror.
Frank noticed it all. The thinly veiled hostility, the judgment, the whispered accusations. And it stung. Not because it was unfair — he expected that — but because the more they whispered, the more the world seemed convinced the Morettis were monsters by inheritance, as though fear were genetic.
Some students, braver than others, muttered aloud, just enough for those near them to hear:
"Do you think he… I mean, the Moretti cousin… condones it?"
"Do you think he's involved?"
"Should someone report him? Is this campus… safe?"
Frank's hand gripped his notebook tighter. He could feel the collective judgment like heat pressing against him, suffocating. He wanted to tell them: You don't know. You can't know. And even if you could, the city doesn't work the way you think it does.
Yet he remained silent. He had learned early that silence carried less danger than speech. The family's shadow was long, and fear traveled faster than reason.
Across the courtyard, clusters of students talked in circles. Some shook their heads in disgust, muttering things they would never say to a Moretti directly:
"Why is he allowed to be here?"
"What does he even study here? Law? Justice? Ha!"
"Do you think he'll… do something if someone crosses him?"
And when Frank walked past, their voices fell silent. Not out of respect — fear, yes, but also a guarded hostility. Some cast sideways glances, whispering just low enough that Frank could catch fragments, but not whole sentences.
Inside, Frank's thoughts churned. Law college should be about justice. Rules. Evidence. Ethics. Yet outside the classroom, reality bled in — rumors, fear, legend, and whispered judgment. Some students openly doubted the integrity of the precinct. Others muttered that the uploader might already be punished in ways no law could record.
He recalled moments with Vincenzo, fleeting memories of a boy once innocent, a boy who smiled and joked at family dinners before the father died. That boy had vanished, replaced by the cold figure whose name alone sent shivers through the city. Frank had confronted him once, asking questions, seeking explanations — but Vincenzo had simply said it was coincidence. It had nothing to do with him. How could they believe now, hearing the rumors, seeing the disappearances?
As Frank moved through the campus corridors, the whispers clung like smoke. Some students had the courage to approach his friends, asking, "Do you think he knows about this? Does he approve? What will happen?"
But no one had answers. not Roberto, not Giulia, and certainly not Frank himself. The only thing he knew was that fear had teeth, and rumor had claws, and both dug into the city like roots strangling life from the soil.
Frank's moral compass spun. Law dictated evidence, procedure, restraint. Blood dictated protection, loyalty, readiness. If the family was cornered, he would not abandon them. If the Morettis were threatened, the law could be ignored. And yet, law still mattered — sometimes. Sometimes it had to.
But how could he reconcile law with the whispers, the judgment, the fear — the undeniable presence of the monster his cousin had become?
And all the while, the rumor of the uploader in police custody spread, faster than any official notice, gnawing at the city's nerves. Students debated who would protect him, who could intervene, whether the law itself was enough. Many cast glances at Frank, curious, wary, as though he could answer. As though he even knew.
And he didn't.
He only knew that someone had to be ready. Someone had to be willing.
Because the city whispered, and the city feared, and Vincenzo Moretti's shadow would fall on all of them, sooner or later.