Prologue: No Man’s Land
Buenos Aires — October 2026
The night was cold, the wind dry. The light from the streetlamps illuminated streets that the residents themselves no longer recognized.
When everything began, no one recalled such an intense silence; something invasive and alien had settled upon the land, occupying squares, neighborhoods, and offices. In Congress, it became calculation; in the neighborhoods, distrust. Those who held power felt eyes upon them. Eyes that registered every step.
The country faced difficult days. On the news, President Javier Gastón Freiheit repeated hollow phrases: “Everything is in order, growing, with moral integrity.” In his shadow, Vice President Victoria Inés Cruz D’Albano nodded with a firm expression, dark suit, and unmoving gaze. She maintained her composure unalterably. Some admired her; others feared her. No one knew what she truly thought. But everyone sensed that she was not playing the same game as Freiheit.
Elsewhere in the city, without cameras or flashes, a new voice began to germinate. Among libraries, meeting halls, places where whispers found an echo, words were heard that spoke of sovereignty, homeland, treason, and fire. The voice was young, yet firm, clear; it had learned from defeats, not glories. It did not sign with a name or a party: it only said BIN.
Something else was also being said: She doesn’t know who I really am. But she will know that she is being watched and listened to.
In that climate of simulacra, oblivion, and soft repression, the country began to divide into two. Not by ideologies, but by the unspoken, by the air between the words, by the things no one dared to look at directly anymore.
The story that begins here is not a war. Nor is it exactly a love story. It is a silent rift between two people who should never have met. A long wait, like winter. A promise barely uttered. A gesture that, by itself, was enough to alter the course of the inevitable.
And if anyone asks for names, dates, or flags, let them. But this story, in truth, began with a flower.
