To Adam's surprise, when he finished thanking his headmaster, a giant wooden head began to form on the wall. The wooden face seemed to be that of an old man and his forehead was somewhat wrinkled; he had no mouth and only had one eye with a monocle; the other seemed hollow: he was the baron himself!
Adam was about to run out the door. Seeing the baron was extremely rare and in more than 7 years of studying he only saw him once, and it was a tragedy when it happened. But the director ran to hug him, preventing him from escaping. Adam fully understood that the director had done it deliberately, but he didn't know if this was a bad thing for him or a good thing.
A mouth emerged from the baron's face, and he watched the embrace warily, and after a while he said:
—You have won the heart of this student, Cesar. Clearly, you've done a great job!
—The boy is only 17 years old, and he is going to perform the 100-page ceremony!— Cesar said brazenly exaggerating his achievements—It was really hard: The poor boy lost his parents at a very young age, but I guided him with the values of the school as if it were one of my children.
The director advanced even more strongly to Adam while he shouted with euphoria:
—Today, he will become a true librarian!
The baron looked Adam up and down with his monocle, suspiciously, asking:
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—Is it true that César guided you in your values, boy?
Adam noticed that the director was throwing like 10 signals at the same time for him to answer yes, so he ended up saying:
—Of course, I wouldn't be who I am now, if it weren't for Director Cesar. A great teacher of how to be a great person, no question.
—Of course there are no doubts! —Shouted the enchanted baron, losing the monocle from his eyes with emotion—Cesar you have raised the best hero I have seen grow in my domain in decades, you certainly deserve a reward!
The Baron seemed to be extremely happy for some reason, Adam didn't know if it was a whim or a shelf condition to get something; similar to the old man in the cave raising heroes to get magic books.
From the baron's hollow eye, a mouth emerged. The mouth opened, and a card began to appear; it seemed that the mouth was printing it to the card because it came out slowly.
The Director with tears in his eyes of happiness approached the hollow eye and took the card from the mouth. When the director took it, the baron began to disappear into the wood.
Adam looked at the card in the director's hand. It seemed to be a scratch card: it wasn't very big and the same size as Adam's ID card, it seemed to be made of gold and the reward was hidden by a black band, so you had to scratch to see the result.
The headmaster took out a button from one of his robe pockets and began scratching the card on the floor impatiently, he seemed to be quite nervous as he did so. Adam didn't know what reward the headmaster could win, but he really looked like he was putting his life on the line on this card.
The scratch card had a total of 5 black squares covering the rewards, with great care and excitement the headmaster scratched off the first square, as a result a 0 appeared in its place. The headmaster didn't seem to care much about this 0 and continued scratching the next one, another 0 appeared, not bothering the headmaster either.