Anila placed the laptop on her bed next to Visara, who was lying at the end of it, and picked up the phone to continue working there.

    She looked up when she felt her sister's gaze on her and tried to understand why she was being looked at in that mysterious way.

    "What?" she surrendered, so that Visara could tell herself.

    "I can't get over the fact that you have really given your number to Flutura to get to know Eltoni."

    "You're still thinking about that?" Anila focused on her phone.

    "No, but you don't even know what his physical appearance is like."

    "I found a photo of him on Instagram, at the account of one of his sisters, Adriana."

    "Oh, but why don't you say so?" Visara immediately took out her phone. "What's her username?"

    "@adriana__domi , a public account."

    Visara found the photo in a few seconds and studied his slightly round, light sandy beige face, short black hair, and clear brown eyes.

    "He does look like he's thirty years old," she admitted. "And a very positive person," she added, influenced by Eltoni's seemingly natural smile, and then shook her head. "No, I don't believe that I could agree to be in a relationship with someone as you have agreed. It seems like Flutura has convinced you, to officially admit, that you are ready to legally sleep with Eltoni."

    "Visara!" Anila shot her with a wild, criticising look. "How can you talk like that?"

    Visara laughed. "Well, this is the truth," she excused herself.

    "Out!" Anila commanded firmly. "I agreed for you to stay in my room because you said you wanted to spend time with me, not talk about these kinds of topics."

    "Ugh, and you!" Visara hung her mugs plaintively. "One conversation you don't accept from me. As if we're in blood with each other."

    Anila kept to herself the reason why she didn't feel well at all when she heard such conversations about intimate topics and regretted that she had talked to her sister in that way.

    Both looked at each other when the main doorbell rang, as if to find the answer from one another as to who was visiting them.

    "Has someone announced that they were coming today?" Anila stood up.

    "I know not," Visara followed her towards the exit of the room.

    "Oh, come in, Flutura."

    Their mother's voice told them who the visitor was.

    Visara laughed at her sister, knowing why Flutura had come, while Anila kept a sullen expression as if she didn't care at all.

    "How are you, girls?" Flutura approached with a happy tone and shook their hands.

    "Very well." Visara smiled at her, and they entered the living room.

    Anila started to prepare coffee for her.

    "She's so cute," Visara said with her elbows resting on the kitchen counter as she looked at Flutura, sitting to Etleva's right, wearing black pants and a bronze-coloured linen shirt.

    She was fifty-nine years old, had short, jaw-length blonde hair, and sweet-green blue eyes. From her youth-like face, it seemed as if mercy had been shown to her soul and she hadn't suffered much in life.

    "I'll prepare the coffee; you go and talk to her. She's here for you."

    "OK," Anila left to sit next to her mother.

    Flutura was struggling to tell her what Eltoni's answer had been and wondered how he had rejected such a woman without even agreeing to meet her once, at least. She was very beautiful, dressed classy, seemed down to earth, had a good job, and was very educated. If Flutura had a son of her own, she would have taken Anila for him.

    Only after finishing the coffee prepared by Etleva's second daughter could she talk about why she had come.

    "Eltoni has said that he wants to find the bride himself in America. That's what his mom told me." She tried not to show on her face that she was feeling sorry for Anila, who couldn't even hide the disappointment from the expectations she had.

    "Okay. It's better when they get married themselves, because then if they argue and fight, they blame us for interfering in their lives." Etleva accepted the situation. "Everyone has their destiny. Some things in life don't happen because they're not for our good; we just don't know it yet." She smiled at her daughter to make her feel better with her positivity, but Anila expressed in her gaze that she no longer believed such clichéd quotes, that everything would be fixed, and with time, every wound would be healed.

••••
    "Why are you so affected? I don't understand," Visara said after Flutura left, and Anila immediately headed to her room. "It's not that you had fallen in love with him... maybe it was good for you that he didn't accept."

    Anila took her phone from her bed and rapidly went to WhatsApp to remove her profile picture. She had thought that she looked beautiful, but now she was looking at the picture with Eltoni's rejection in her mind, and it seemed to her that the photo had all those flaws.

    She had gotten the payback she deserved because she had wanted to use him, knowing very well that he could've fallen in love with her, and it wasn't right for him to live with someone who didn't love him. How could she have planned such a trap for someone when she herself had fallen for a similar trick and had been destroyed? She, of all people, wasn't supposed to think about such goals.

    Eltoni would have had the same suspicions as Anila about Amarildo's unknown killer: that maybe he could get into trouble for marrying her and therefore hadn't taken the risk, or that he hadn't liked the picture; he had seen her as she saw herself, an illusion imprisoned in an expired body and gripped by depression. No one would want to include someone like that in their life, someone who hadn't been able to defend themselves when they had been attacked and raped, someone too naive who hadn't suspected that they could have been filmed while sleeping with their partner, and embarrass their family members for the rest of their lives if that video were to be published.

    Had that been the reason why Eltoni had rejected her? Someone had shown him her video; he had recognised her right away, and yet he hadn't told his family why he didn't want to meet her?

    The knives in the kitchen and the medicines came to her mind as alternatives to end the overloading stress she was having.

    "Maybe he had a tattoo, Ania." Visara continued her efforts to cheer her up. "Imagine if you had touched that painted body part. Blegh!" She pretended to vomit.

    "Get out." Anila said dryly, and Visara silently obeyed.

    Anila sat heavily on her bed and covered her face with her hands. She shook her head in denial from exhaustion, to continue any longer, she brought her right hand to the left side of her chest and dug her nails into the skin as if she wanted to pull out her heart from there, but she could no longer fall into that trap, even if she wanted to.

    Now she knew that the moment that seemed to be the end of everything was in fact just the classic continuation of the story; she would convince herself that she was worrying in vain, that the video had been deleted long ago without anyone seeing it again, that there was no need to rush, to be in a relationship with someone, to heal the family, and that a solution would be found by itself at the right time; that if she thought positively, positive things would happen.

    She picked up her phone and went on Instagram. She hadn't been able to access the personal account that she had since six years ago, when she wanted to delete it, but Instagram hadn't accepted her password and hadn't yet approved her verification sent with a photo that the account belonged to her. It had just remained active with all the photos, and who knows how many incoming messages there were on it.

    She searched for that account and looked at her photos posted years ago. She had been so happy and full of life, and she had destroyed herself with the decision not to see things as they had really been. She wiped her teary eyes, her face contorted with the grief of the death of that version of herself that would never come back to life because of her fault, and she turned off the phone.

    She took a deep breath and stood up with a calm look, as if she had everything under control and no storm of life could shake her. She had a sister, for whom she was responsible, for having a good time with her and providing her beautiful memories, her parents to stay close to her, and a job, for which, with her help, a lot of people were earning income.

    Maybe if she ignored the pain, it would go away on its own.

    She left her room and addressed Visara's. She would invite her out that afternoon. It had been a long time without organising something with her.

    "... about today, I don't know. I'm not sure."

    Anila heard Visara's worried voice from the other side of the closed hazel door as soon as she was about to knock.

    "I want you to meet her, but my sister is not feeling well. ... No, I haven't told her yet."

    The doubt that she was talking to a man topped the list of the other suspicions.

    "I'm not avoiding your meeting, I swear." Visara said. "But something has happened, and Ania doesn't have the nerve to go out these days."

    Anila opened the door without knocking, as she usually did, and Visara staggered back.

    "I'll call you later." She hung up the phone and looked at her sister, asking to keep calm. "Ania."

    "You spoke wrong." Anila corrected her categorically to not be objected to by Visara. "In such cases, I have all my nerves at disposal."