“DON’T TOUCH HIM,” THEY WARNED YOU. YOU BOUGHT HIM ANYWAY… AND THAT NIGHT YOU LEARNED WHY MEN WOULD RATHER BURN THEIR SILVER THAN KEEP HIM CLOSE.

In the days that follow, Nahuel moves through the coffee fields like someone who understands more than labor. He learns routes, watches routines, listens to the way men speak when they think no one important is near. He works hard, yes, but it’s the way he thinks that makes people uneasy. He notices where irrigation is wasted, where the soil is being abused, where schedules are arranged to benefit some and break others. You catch him sketching simple diagrams in the dirt, showing two workers how to rotate tasks so fewer backs collapse. Baltasar hates that, you can tell, because it makes Nahuel influential without permission. The other workers glance at Nahuel with a cautious kind of hope, as if he might be proof that a spine can remain unbroken. You tell yourself you should stop it, because change invites retaliation, but you don’t. Part of you wants to see what happens when a quiet order is challenged by a quiet intelligence. Another part of you worries you’ve brought a spark into a barn full of dry straw.