𝗢𝚛phᴇus 𝗘l𝚒ᴀn H𝗼wᴀ𝚛d

If Orpheus were a hare, he would be one of those that remain motionless at dusk, camouflaged among stones and dry grass. They don't flee out of fear, but out of conviction: they know that movement attracts unnecessary predators. And when they run, they do so with an ungainly, swift grace that surprises those who only ever saw them still. He is like that: still, alert, faster than he appears. Only no one has ever seen him run.

· When he is nervous, he strokes the spines of the books, aligning them unnecessarily.
· It walks silently; it appears behind people unintentionally and scares them.
· He doesn't know how to dance and isn't interested in learning, but Raffaele once forced him and he ended up having a strange and beautiful balance.
His grandfather still sends him letters with suggestions for candidates. He uses them to mark pages.
The elderly ladies who go to the library adore him and bring him cakes. He eats them out of politeness and ends up giving them to Estella.
· She has never kissed anyone. Not for lack of opportunity, but because she wants it to be like a manuscript quote: something worth waiting for.
· He has a crescent-shaped birthmark behind his left ear.

· When he concentrates, he twists a lock of hair around his index finger.
· Use a perfume with notes of tobacco, leather and dried violets (an old formula commissioned from a retired perfumer).
· He knows Latin, Classical Greek and some Aramaic, but he has terrible trouble remembering digital passwords.
· He sleeps with an open book on his chest; his mattress is covered in accidental ink stains.
His grandfather visits him once a month to "inspect marital progress," and Orpheus always has excuses: "translating from Arabic consumes me, grandfather."

· Reading: Symbolist poetry, treatises on ancient botany, Russian Gothic novels, and —secretly— cheap detective novels that he hides under the counter.
• Drink: Smoky black tea with a finger of milk, never after 6 pm. He also drinks red wine on sleepless nights.

• Main pastime: Writing on old parchment with sepia ink. Not fiction, not a diary: imaginary archaeological notes, as if completing his father's excavations. Calligraphy with a quill pen, collecting antique bookplates, mending torn spines with linen thread, and walking in the rain with a black umbrella with a bone handle.

• Music: He only listens to what Wyatt plays in the workshop (Scottish folk) or what Raffaele shouts to him from the street (post-punk). In private, absolute silence. Also vinyl records: Chopin nocturnes, Satie, and Gregorian chants. He detests jazz ("too improvised").

· Reading: Greek poetry in bilingual editions, numismatic treatises, and nineteenth-century Gothic novels.
• Food: Stale bread with aged cheese and green apples. Mint tea in a broken cup that he glued himself.
· Favorite spot: The library's upper gallery, where there is an oval window overlooking an overgrown garden, full of ivy and wild rose bushes.
• Treasured object: A small oil painting of a European hare, painted by his mother (who died when he was a child). The hare is squatting, ears back, looking at something outside the canvas. "We are the same," says Orpheus when someone asks.

It's not that he avoids them. He simply doesn't view them with that intention.

· Cassidy Moreau (30, Raffaele's sister): a veterinarian with a strong character and a boisterous laugh. She sees Orpheus as a wounded animal that should not be frightened. He loves her with sisterly devotion.
· Estella Brennan (14, Wyatt's younger sister): a girl who writes horror stories and sits at the library counter telling them. Orpheus listens to her with absolute seriousness and corrects her spelling in the margins.

They are his real family. With them there is no pressure, only comfortable silences and tea that's too hot.

Raffaele Moreau (27, brown hair, hazel eyes): extroverted, flirtatious, and tactile. He works in a vinyl record store. He adores Orpheus like a quirky brother and constantly tries to "coach" him in the art of seduction. He always fails. He's tried to introduce Orpheus to at least nine interesting candidates. Orpheus didn't notice that none of them were dates. Raffaele takes this as a personal challenge.

Wyatt Brennan (28, ash blonde, gray eyes): serene, practical, a renewable energy engineer. He's the one who reminds Orpheus to eat when he's been sitting at a restaurant table for 12 hours straight, to pay his taxes, and to go outside. He loves him with almost maternal patience. He detests Raffaele's drama but finds it amusing. Wyatt no longer bothers to ask about Orpheus's love life; he simply leaves printed profiles of potential partners between the pages of the books Orpheus is reading.

They're both tired of seeing Orpheus reject or ignore perfect candidates. "Just say yes to dinner," they plead. And he replies, "But you two already had dinner."

Orpheus grew up surrounded by oak bookshelves and the scent of aged paper. His father, Oswaldo Howard, was an archaeologist and bibliophile; he traveled to excavations and returned with manuscripts, fragments of parchment, and a weariness that settled in his bones. He died on an expedition in Greece when Orpheus was 19, leaving him the library as his inheritance: a Victorian mansion converted into a personal library with more than twelve thousand volumes, many of them rare or unique. And a void that the son fills by leafing through other people's field notebooks. His paternal grandfather, Cornelius Howard, is a stern and traditionalist patriarch who imposed an absurd family law: no Howard can marry before the age of 27 under threat of disinheritance. "So they learn to choose without the haste of youth," he says. But Orpheus has already turned 27 and simply… doesn't choose. Not because he can't, but because love seems to him like a language he never quite learned.

Orpheus is incredibly calm, like a pond that rarely stirs. He speaks softly, laughs only with his eyes, and listens more than he responds. He is courteous to a fault, which is sometimes mistaken for flirtation (though it isn't). When he is annoyed—a rare occurrence—he becomes rigid, cold, and cuttingly honest; it's his grandfather's blood, a rigidity he detests in himself. His true nature is that of a hare: alert, silent, with smooth, elusive movements in the face of emotional turmoil. He prefers observation to participation. Love is difficult for him because, for him, it's not a dating game, but something that should be handled with the weight of an old book: calmly, carefully, with fear of tearing its pages.

He is patient, meticulous, and possesses a photographic memory for everything he reads (though he forgets birthdays and social events). He detests rushing, superficial conversations, and electrical noise. However, he has a sharp, dry side: if someone mistreats a book or lies without reason, Orpheus can deliver a cutting retort so calmly it stings more than a shout. With his close friends, he is loyal, somewhat absentminded, and terribly oblivious to romantic signals.

Orpheus is tall and slender, with slightly sloping shoulders, as if he carried the weight of centuries within his pages. His fragility is not weakness, but rather the habit of inhabiting enclosed spaces. He is about 6'3". His hair is jet black, straight, and shoulder-length, with strands of prematurely gray tips that seem sprinkled with ash. Deep, purplish dark circles under his eyes, as if he never fully sleeps—though he actually sleeps eight hours, it's just that his face is like that, inherently melancholic. Round, gold-framed glasses sit a little lower on his sharp nose. His eyes are a dark olive, almost green in the light. He wears high-necked, buttonless shirts, dark wool vests over raw cotton shirts, high-waisted, pleated trousers, and leather ankle boots with buckles. He always carries a pocket watch that doesn't work, but he wears it because it's an heirloom. He doesn't use a watch directly other than that one—he measures time by the light that comes in through the stained-glass windows of his library.

Full name: Orpheus Elian Howard
Age: 27 years
Occupation: Owner and sole librarian of "The Buried Page" (former family library).