During the following week, Jeldrik was plagued by an inner turmoil on a scale he had never experienced before. Every moment with Viktor felt like someone had wrapped a rope around his heart and tightened the grip with every beat. It was almost unbearable to see his boyfriend smile at him, the person who had done the one thing Viktor had always worried about. And every time he saw Anteo at the office, a mixture of unjustified anger at him, and very justified anger at himself bubbled up inside him.

  When he had come home that Friday evening, he had apologised to Viktor and his friends and told them he felt like he had developed a fever. It was the only way he felt he could hide from Viktor his otherwise obvious guilt. That plan had backfired, though, as Viktor’s friends decided to leave and give Jeldrik the required rest and Viktor himself made it his task to apologise to him countless times over the weekend, while bringing him dinner to bed and taking care of the chores. Jeldrik, more for the sake of his bad conscience growing into intolerability than anything else, wanted to end this madness. But had he stopped his sham of a disease, even in an unsuspicious manner, how could he have explained the bad mood he was unable to hide and his, to other people undoubtedly insincere, peace of mind? Well, there was a very obvious way, of course, but coming clean was such an enormous undertaking that Jeldrik felt it was impossible ever to surmount.

  Surprised by himself, Jeldrik felt as if he managed his slow transition during the week from sick to healthy in a fairly galant manner, overcoming his gnawing conscience at the same time, so that when Friday came, he was able to act quite naturally around Viktor, keeping the pain of living with a lie in the back of his head to come out only at night when he could shake off his pretence and suffer through the long, almost sleepless hours until Viktor’s alarm ripped him out of his semi-conscious slumber.

  While lying in bed, suffering through the malaise whose source was neither virus nor bacteria, he had obsessively refreshed the ABA’s website, hoping for a new article that would shed more light on the Argon case, but he was let down every time. When on Friday evening there had still not been any news on the website nor a call from Merten Stoltz, who he had given his number to at the gathering, his frustration hit a peek. He caught himself typing a message to Anteo, wanting to ask him for advice, and put down his phone again.

  He had also tried to find out more about Argon’s family on his own. But besides the sparse information provided by the ABA on their website, he had only found a few short articles by independent news sites who apparently knew as little about the man as Jeldrik. Nowhere was a wife, or rather ex-wife, or child mentioned.

  “What are you up to?” Viktor put a chips bowl on the sofa table and sat down next to his boyfriend. He had been in a good mood since a successful concert a day before had earned him one of his conductor’s rare praises.

  “Can he even hear you well enough during a concert to single you out for a compliment?” Jeldrik, who, based on numerous anecdotes, had long suspected the hot-headed Erik Moikow of being a bit too interested in Viktor, had asked his boyfriend afterward, not being able to suppress a suggestive tone in his voice. But Viktor, while presuming every man who passed Jeldrik wanted to rip his partner’s clothes off of him, brushed off any suggestion of a person’s attraction towards him, his na?vety on this subject unmatched.

  “I guess he can, he’s an amazing conductor!” Viktor had answered, unknowingly or purposefully overhearing the innuendo, and Jeldrik had left it at that.

  Now, Viktor was looking at Jeldrik’s laptop, asking: “What’s the ABA?”

  Jeldrik, startled by hearing the acronym out of Viktor’s mouth, looked up at him and said: “That man, Argon, who died last week, was a member. They advocate for legalising involving minors in a magical ritual.”

  “And what ritual is that.”

  “It’s called bonding.” Jeldrik yawned. Thinking about that topic made him tired.

  “What’s bonding?” Viktor seemed intrigued.

  “I guess for most adult mages it’s the magical equivalent to marrying, only that it’s actually for life. So it can’t be undone.”

  Viktor looked thoughtfully into the distance for a while. “Don’t mages just marry normally like everyone else?”

  “They do. But it’s not uncommon that mage weddings include bonding.”

  “And what’s the effect?”

  “If you’re a romantic, you’d say you become one person. You feel your partner’s feelings, you can travel to each other as if with a portal – remember portals?”

  “I do, I do.”

  “The travelling obviously only works for mages.”

  Viktor furrowed his brows. “Are you saying non-mages can bond as well?”

  “Sure.” Jeldrik yawned again. “But one has to be a mage, someone has to do the magic after all.”

  Viktor nodded slowly. “Sounds romantic.”

  “Sounds risky,” Jeldrik responded. “I mean, who ever knows if they will stay together forever?”

  Viktor sat up. “I’m going to bed.” He left the room and Jeldrik heard the water running in the bathroom. He knew he had said the wrong thing before the words had left his mouth. It did not matter that Viktor knew perfectly well that nobody ever knew how long a relationship lasted, but to say it out loud had likely sounded like a deadline to their relationship to him.

  “Whatever,” Jeldrik mumbled to himself. He could hardly be angry at Viktor, when, in fact, there was some sort of expiration date to their relationship: the day Jeldrik confessed to Viktor what had happened between him and Anteo. He could not imagine their relationship to recover from this. Even when he told himself that it was barely a kiss and he had only reciprocated it out of surprise, it did not change his prediction. Those details, wrong or right, would not matter to Viktor. And if Jeldrik would indeed come forward with what happened, he would not keep half of what happened to himself, just to safe his relationship. It would be full honesty, no matter the consequences. Jeldrik shuddered at the thought of it and decided to refresh the ABA’s website again. But nothing. He heard Viktor leaving the bathroom and closing the bedroom door behind him. He contemplated going to bed too, when his phone vibrated and he saw a message from Anteo:

  Jeldrik stared at the message for a good minute, trying to phrase an answer in his mind, when a second message arrived:

  After another minute, Jeldrik wrote back:

  He wanted to add “I actually feel awful, I don’t know how to save my relationship,” but he did not want to involve Anteo in his drama, since none of it was his fault. He already regretted even having written “Let’s eat lunch together next week.” He should have waited to see how he felt in Anteo’s presence before jumping right into a one-on-one situation again. He could tell Anteo was a gentleman and would not attempt anything again, but the fact was that Jeldrik was attracted to his colleague. He did not have any feelings for him exceeding general fondness, but would physical attraction and like-mindedness not eventually lead to a romantic connection and thus make his whole situation ten times more complicated?

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  When, after a frustrating weekend of no progress in the case and icy atmosphere between the couple, Jeldrik arrived at the office on Monday, Helma and Gabriel greeted him happily and asked if he was feeling well again.

  “You should probably upgrade your health rune,” Gabriel advised him.

  “I will!” Jeldrik replied, aware that he had just done that a month ago and could not possibly have been sick, and happy that Gabriel did not know that.

  Just when he had brewed his tea and left the kitchen, the front door opened and in came Anteo, a soggy umbrella in his hand.

  “Good morning,” Jeldrik exclaimed, happy to have sounded relaxed, at least to his own ears. The two locked eyes for a split second and Anteo answered with a faint trace of nervousness in his voice that nobody unbeknownst to their situation would have been able to hear. He looked away and proceeded to take of his wet coat. “Great your back!”

  “Thanks.” Feeling weird, standing in front of Anteo and watching him, Jeldrik walked back to his desk and sat down. When Anteo had placed himself on the desk next to him, Jeldrik asked: “How’s that gambling case going?”

  “Found him!” Anteo said proudly between sips of his coffee. “He wasn’t so smart after all.”

  He continued to tell Jeldrik how he had managed to catch the fraud while they were drinking their tea and coffee, and Jeldrik was relieved to observe that the insecure tension between them had already vanished. It took away some of the stress he felt, thinking that going to work from now on would become a daily challenge of not breaking down. Seeing easy it was again to talk to Anteo, he felt more confident in somehow solving the issue with Viktor.

  Though half an hour later, as he was taking a pee and had time to think for a minute, his confidence had almost entirely dissolved and made space again for despair.

  Around twelve, Jeldrik and Anteo decided to eat lunch at a Thai restaurant nearby that they both liked. As they sat at their table, waiting for the food, Jeldrik told his colleague about his fruitless search for Argon’s family members.

  “There’s no trace of them online. If I could think of a reason why, I would say Mia made them up.”

  “I guess we have to wait for that Stoltz guy then to call you. In some countries, they have public databases of every registered mage. But not us. Generally, I’m happy about that, but it makes private sleuthing pretty difficult.”

  The food arrived.

  Between bites, Jeldrik said: “I guess you have access to some databases through the DMCI?”

  “I do,” Anteo answered, and when he did not elaborate, Jeldrik asked: “And there’s no way you can use your hacker skills to see if you find something out about them?”

  Anteo grinned and put his fork down. “Don’t call it hacker skills, you sound like my dad.” After a sip of his coke, he added: “And you know that I can’t. I would break dozens of privacy laws.”

  “I know,” Jeldrik sighed. “I’m just frustrated that I make no progress. This whole case stresses me out, especially because I have the option to just let it go. But … that would feel wrong.”

  “I understand.” Anteo looked down at his food and seemed to want to say something more. Jeldrik continued eating, giving him time to make up his mind.

  “Jeldrik, that kiss …” He cleared his throat and moved around nervously on his chair. Jeldrik felt himself blush. “I hope it didn’t cause any trouble between you and your boyfriend.”

  “Oh, forget about that.” Jeldrik had replied too fast to sound natural, and Anteo looked at him with an expression that told Jeldrik he knew something was up. Now Jeldrik put down his fork, sighed and said: “There isn’t exactly trouble. I mean, I didn’t tell Viktor about what happened.”

  Anteo nodded, his expression telling Jeldrik to go on.

  “Viktor has … He’s insecure. And I know that if he finds out about it, he’ll be devastated and our relationship will be over and …” Jeldrik shook his head and looked at the ceiling. “He won’t understand no matter if I tell him that I didn’t kiss you back or that I put my tongue down your throat. It won’t make a difference to him.”

  “I’m sorry!” Anteo said, leaned back on his chair and put his hands over his face.

  “What for?”

  “I kissed you. I should’ve asked if you’re single. I wish I could do something to make it easier for you.”

  “Like I said, don’t worry. And the issue’s not that you kissed me. The issue is that I wanted …” Jeldrik felt his cheeks grow hot. He looked at Anteo for a second, who again had a questioning look on his face. Jeldrik took his glass in his hand and said: “I wanted it.” Then he drank. When he had put his glass back on the table, he met Anteo’s gaze and smiled sadly.

  They did not speak much after that confession. Jeldrik felt oddly empty after having said it out loud. He assumed he should have felt even more guilty, but he did not. There was no point in denying facts. And though Anteo might have been a weird choice to confess them to – the person they concerned – it had felt right to say it in that moment. They walked silently next to each other back to the office. Suddenly, Anteo said: “At the risk of making you angry, don’t you think it might be an option to not tell Viktor about what happened?”

  Jeldrik jerked to a halt and looked at the other man. “To never tell Viktor that he was cheated? Don’t you think that’s unfair?”

  “What I mean is, I didn’t really feel that you reciprocated my kiss. Did you really cheat? Isn’t that word a bit too strong?”

  “But I wanted to kiss you back,” Jeldrik argued stupidly.

  “Since when is wanting to kiss someone cheating?”

  A spark of hope lit up in Jeldrik. He wondered if he had blown the situation out of proportion. He was not entirely convinced, knowing that Viktor would have told him if he had been in that situation.

  They continued walking, Jeldrik buried in thoughts. After a while, he said: “If you had a boyfriend, would you tell him what happened, even if you hadn’t kissed back?”

  “I think I would. But if Viktor really is that insecure, it will probably look suspicious to him if you told him more than a week later. Don’t get me wrong, I think honesty is the way to go. I just wonder if, at this point, it would cause disproportionate harm, if nothing immoral really happened anyway.”

  Back in the office, Gabriel asked Jeldrik into his office.

  “I decided that tomorrow you should follow Kordian to the side street where that power robbery happened,” he said.

  Jeldrik was surprised. “Oh, you haven’t been there before?”

  “We have, on the day the witness called us. But Kordian hasn’t been there yet. Maybe he has some tricks up his sleeve to find out who was involved.”

  “Isn’t it risky to wait that long? Don’t magical traces faint after a while?”

  Gabriel nodded. “They can. But usually not that fast, unless someone intentionally makes them vanish. We had so much else to do. And since no victim came forward to report the crime, we couldn’t give the case a very high priority. From what the witness told us, it’s very likely the crime happened, but still …” Gabriel shrugged in a guilty manner.

  “Alright then,” Jeldrik said. “When will we go tomorrow?”

  “Oh, you just come to the office as usual. I assume sometime before lunch.”

  Before Jeldrik rose from his chair, he said: “Gabriel, I hope you don’t mind me asking. I’m just curious if you know anything more about that Argon case.”

  “Argon?” For a split second, Gabriel did not seem to know who Jeldrik was referring to. “Oh, Argon! No, no. There is nothing new. I assume you followed the public news outlets. I still think it’s likely the MMS keeps it away from the public eye.”

  Jeldrik nodded and rose from his chair. Before he reached the door, Gabriel spoke again. “Oh, and Jeldrik: Don’t get too involved.”

  The intern tried to look innocent, and Gabriel smiled slightly and raised his brows. “It’s not healthy to perform an impossible task. You should concentrate on coming to terms with what you’ve experienced, which I hope is going well?”

  “It is,” Jeldrik said, smiling too.

  “Good, good.”

  Jeldrik turned around, feeling translucent under Gabriel’s gaze, and left the room.

  On his way to the metro, Jeldrik’s phone rang.

  “Is this Mr Goldtau, that man who wanted to speak with me?”

  For the fracture of a second, Jeldrik was unable to tell who was talking, then he remembered.

  “Is this Mr Stoltz?”

  “Yes, it is. So?”

  “Yes, that’s me. You can call me Jeldrik.”

  “Well, you can call me Mr Stoltz. Anyway, I’ve got some spare time tomorrow, if you still care to help.”