For the Rebreanu question, he wrote about the old cherry tree in his grandmother’s yard that saw his uncle leave for Italy and never come back. “The tree didn’t care why he left,” Andrei wrote. “It just shed its leaves anyway. That’s the horror – nature’s indifference.”

Later, in the hallway, she approached him. “How did you answer the last question? I wrote a law about mandatory hermeneutic seminars. You?”

“Hey. I know we don’t talk. But I found that word we used to say – ‘someday.’ It died. Not with a bang, but with a missed birthday. I’m not sending this. But I wrote it down. That counts for something, right?”

“Just read the poems like they are letters from a friend,” she had whispered before he entered the hall. “And stop chewing your pen.”

The gong sounded. He flipped the test.

Andrei froze. He had memorized critics, dates, and literary circles. But this? This was philosophical. He glanced around. The city kids were scribbling furiously, their pens scratching like confident insects. One girl in the front row had already filled two pages.

The gong sounded again. Three hours had passed like a fever dream.