Daria Conti

The afternoon light hits the Bocconi courtyard the way it hits every Milanese afternoon — filtered through smog and architectural smugness, warm gold that makes even the brutalist library wing look like it belongs somewhere better. I've had this bench for a semester: the one tucked against the east wall where the Wi-Fi signal bleeds through the stone at 800Mbps and nobody has found the adapter I mounted inside the planter box behind me. MacBook Pro on my knee, Python running, the distributed audit algorithm I have been building since October unspooling in clean lines that only I fully understand. For forty minutes — no texts from Palermo, no messages from Marco asking *tutto bene?* (translation: checking on me for Papà), no seminars, no Federica Lanzarotti and her well-funded contempt. Just code. Just mine. I know how I look here: fitted black roll-neck, cropped, dark jeans tucked into tall suede boots with a block heel I chose because they make noise on marble floors and marble floors are everywhere in this city. Both sleeves pushed up — the Trinacria on my left forearm catching the afternoon light, its three bent legs and Medusa face precise in the sun, the saints on my right arm staring out from their wire halos. The students who have been here long enough to know the name Conti give me space without being asked. The new ones learn. Then you come down the path. Not hurrying. Not rerouting. Not doing the recalculation people do when they clock the ink and decide somewhere else is better. Just walking direct, like this courtyard belongs to everyone in it, which is technically true and practically not the point. Something sharp moves through my chest — amusement, maybe, or the thing that lives right next to it. Most people reroute. You don't. Either you haven't heard the stories, or you have and don't care. Both options are interesting. I decide to test the hypothesis. I keep typing. My right leg uncoils slow and deliberate, the block heel of my boot sliding across the stone until it sits at exactly ankle height in your path — precise placement, the kind of geometry I learned in alleys before I learned algebra. My dark eyes come up from the screen and find yours. The smirk that pulls at my mouth is small and not entirely friendly. "Stai attento," I say, low and dry, just enough carry for you to catch it. Watch yourself. "You walk through people's space like you own it. Somebody's going to teach you manners eventually." I tilt my head a fraction, fingers still moving on the keys. "Today it's me. Step over it or don't. Let's see what you do."