CHAPTER 1

Luna chose a seat by the window. From there, she had a perfect view of the courtyard, where a group of students danced awkwardly on top of a black tarp. Performance art, probably. Or a collective existential crisis.

"You look like someone who reads camera manuals for breakfast."

The voice came from her left. It belonged to a skinny guy in a black hoodie with a pixelated skull on the front and eyes so sharp it looked like he was constantly studying shadows.

"I'm Niko. And no, I'm not gonna ask you to follow my Insta."

"Good to know. Luna."

Before she could ask him anything else, Professor Vicente jumped down from the table with surprising agility for someone who seemed to live on coffee and nostalgia.

"Class! Welcome to Photography 1: Light, Technique, and Existential Trauma."

Silence. A few chuckles. The sleepy guy jolted awake with a faint snore and tried to play it off.

"First lesson: You think you know how to take photos. You don’t. Period."

He whipped out his Leica like it was a revolver.

"A camera is an extension of the eye. And if all you do is point your phone at pizza, I’m sorry to say—your eyes have aesthetic conjunctivitis."

More laughter. Even Luna couldn’t help a smile.

Vicente paced the room as he spoke.

"Today, we’re going to understand how this little beauty works: sensor, aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. And no, don’t pretend you already know. I’ll see it in your eyes if you’re lost."

He turned to the whiteboard and drew a camera. A very bad one. It looked more like a loaf of bread with a lens.

"Think of it as a box that captures light. Light enters through the lens, passes through an opening—called the aperture—hits the sensor, and boom: image."

"What if I use flash?" asked Davi, the formerly sleeping guy, now awake and curious.

"You’re altering the light artificially. But flash is like telling a bad joke—only use it if you really know what you’re doing."

Laughter again. Luna, too. She was starting to like this place.

"Now, three things control your photo’s exposure. These are sacred. These are what separate the artists from the button-pressers."

He wrote in big letters:

ISO – APERTURE – SHUTTER SPEED

"The Exposure Triangle," said a girl from the back in a bored tone. Purple hair, razor-sharp stare.

"Tecnical 101," she added.

Vicente grinned. "Ah, a veteran among us. But careful—knowing the name isn’t the same as understanding the power."

And then he did the unthinkable: turned off the classroom lights and drew the curtains.

"Now listen up!" Vicente clapped his hands, jolting everyone upright. "First field exercise: Go outside and bring me a photo of something no one else would notice. A ray of light on a dirty floor, the texture of a well-used eraser, the wonky eye of the cafeteria cat!"

He pointed at Luna, who nearly fell off her chair.

"You, newbie! You already know what you’re going to photograph?"

She opened her mouth—no words came out.

"No? PERFECT!" He rubbed his hands together like an alchemist about to turn lead into gold. "Because the secret isn’t knowing. It’s getting lost. And somewhere in that mess... you find this."

He held up his camera’s screen: a photo of himself, next to a blurry image of a bug on a light fixture.

"I call it The Professor and the Muse. Ten out of ten, if I may say so."

"You have fifteen minutes. One photo. The theme is LIGHT. Use the camera in your backpack. Bring back something that makes sense."

"That’s it?" asked Júlia, tying her hair into a perfect bun.

"That’s it," he said. "But if the photo’s bad, I’m taping it to the wall under a sign that says Failure #1."

One of the other new students looked at her empty hands—no camera, no ideas, no clue.

And then, as if he had read her mind, Professor Vicente tossed something to her—an old, beat-up camera. She caught it mid-air by reflex.

"Found this beauty at a thrift shop for five bucks. Might be rusty, a little senile, but... just like you, my dear, it doesn’t know yet what it’s capable of." He winked. "Now go and impress me. Or at least entertain me."

And just like that, without ceremony, the mission began.

And Luna, without realizing it, was already starting to see the world in a whole new way.

She opened her backpack. There it was: a slightly used camera borrowed from a cousin, an 18–55mm lens, and the printed manual she’d read twice on the bus.

She took a deep breath.

Light.

It was all about light.

And she was about to learn how to truly see.

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