"This is your captain speaking. Prepare for our descent and fasten your seatbelt. The local weather is cloudy with low temperatures at 18 degrees Celsius. The local time in Lisbon is 10.30 AM.

We hope you enjoyed your time with us and thank you for flying with Lufthansa Airlines" the Captain of the plane announced

Sabastian fastened his seatbelt as the plane prepared its descent to Lisbon, Portugal

He looked out from his window seat as the city of Lisbon grew bigger and bigger

Depressed, he wondered if coming on the trip was a good idea. After all, the trip had been planned for over a year, and he wanted to show that his breakup and his best friend's betrayal didn't phase him at all

But it did, and he had to secretly arrive late to the airport checkout counter and request for a window seat far away from the rest of his friends

For the whole 11 hour journey from the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport to the Lisbon airport, he could hear his friends laugh and enjoy themselves

A few of his friends walked over to check on him, but he lied that the airlines mixed up his seat. Neither Theresa nor Layton came

After disembarking from the plane, going through immigration and collecting their luggage, they took three separate cabs to their hotel as there were 9 of them

Unfortunately, Sabastian's luggage was the last to arrive since he checked in late in Dallas

As such, the group informed him to meet at the hotel as both cabs could take 8 people, and he would have to take a cab by himself to the hotel

Arriving two hours later, he found that his friends had left to explore Lisbon

He wanted to check in to the shared rooms but was told that he had to get and pay for another room by himself

His group consisted of 6 guys and 3 girls

The idea was that the rooms would be split to 3 groups of 3, with two rooms for the males and one room for the females

But since Layton and Theresa wanted a room all to themselves, the other rooms were split with two rooms with 3 people each, one all guys and the other all girls

This meant that Sabastian had to get his own room as he didn't want to share a room with Theresa and Layton, and neither would they want to share a room with him

He was disappointed after checking in because he had to pay more than anyone else, and that he was abandoned by himself

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After dropping off his luggage, he explored by himself, asking the locals for a place to recommend to go to

He had learned Esperanto for a year and learning it for this very trip for a year. He had hoped to impress Theresa with this skill, but was now not able to

Esperanto was supposedly created to be a sort of universal language for European languages, and he was supposed to be able to communicate with 70% efficiency with any speaker of a European language, and he was glad it sort of worked with Portuguese

Things like partying and shopping didn't interest him but he was suddenly interested when a local student talked about the University of Coimbra where he was studying at

This university was established in 1290 and has been in the current location since 1537, making it one of the oldest universities in continuous operation in the world and the oldest in Portugal. It had also been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site!

It was a 2 hour ride by train, but Sabastian didn't know where the rest of the group were anyway and nobody was replying to his messages

It was his nature to like reading and the student said the university library was amazing, so he decided to go, even if had to travel alone

So he made his way to the train station, fumbling through with his Esperanto to find the train station and get a ticket

Two hours later. he was dropped off at the university which felt like a combination of a palace, a church and Hogswarts!

He eventually found his way to the library, excited at the sight of the multicolored library

It was named the Biblioteca Joanina, and walking into this ancient library feels like stepping into a movie set with all golden decorations, a piano, and a resident colony of bats!

He started walking to look through the books, wondering if anything would even be of interest as most of the books wasn't in English.

As he browsed around looking for ancient books, his mind wandered back to his breakup with Theresa, as he found out that she was seeing Layton behind his back, his best friend Layton's betrayal, about how he felt since then as his life seemingly fell apart

--

"What? Who is this? What is he saying?" Sabastian looked at the lady talking to him in a strange language

Suddenly after a few sentences, he recognized that she was probably speaking in Portuguese, as he recognized the words she was using from his learning of Esperanto

"What? Library is closing? What time is it?" Sabastian looked at his watch

Realizing it was 10PM, he panicked and thanked the woman, which he now recognized was the librarian and rushed out of the library, running towards the train station

The distance between the train station to the University of Coimbra took him only 20 minutes initially, but now, late at night, the place looked different and it took him close to 45 minutes to get back

Fortunately he arrived just in time to take the 11PM final train back to Lisbon

During the ride, he found that he couldn't remember what he had read, or why he didn't even stop for dinner. What had happened to him? Did he really read till the library closed?

He had a massive headache, and he felt extremely tired

Arriving at 1 AM, he took a cab, paying after hours fare which was double the normal and arrived at his hotel at 1.45 AM

He struggled up onto his floor and stumbled towards his room which was the end of the corridor

As he passed a room on his way to his own, he heard Theresa's voice moaning and recognized Layton grunting from that room

He stopped to stare at the door, feeling jealous and rejected at the same time

Forcing himself to turn away, he continued his walk to his own room

He didn't notice, but all the lights in the corridor flickered wherever he passed

Finally inside his room, he didn't even change and slumped into his bed face first

He felt his head so heavy and his body so weary that he instantly fell asleep