I Went to the World That Loved Me novel · Chapter 1 of 16
Chapter 1: The Cruise
Rafaela Undurraga walked to the altar on her own two legs, and I didn't cry.
The two hundred guests stood up on the cruise ship's deck, glasses in hand.
The afternoon sun fell over the port of Valparaíso, and the sea smelled of salt and white flowers.
I was in the last row, standing by a column, wearing a blue dress someone had lent me.
No one had invited me.
I'd gotten in with the ID of a friend of a friend.
Rafaela wore a bone-colored silk dress and carried a cane of pale wood.
She walked slowly, back straight, chin lifted.
Eight months earlier, she couldn't move her toes.
I'd spent those eight months pushing her legs, one at a time, in a rehab room at six in the morning.
At the end of the aisle, Florencia Maturana was waiting for her.
She was a twenty-four-year-old girl, blonde, in a lace dress with a poster-perfect smile.
She took Rafaela's hand and kissed it.
The guests sighed.
Inside my head, the System's voice sounded as always—neutral and kind.
"Objective four, Rafaela Undurraga. Current affection toward you: zero percent."
I clenched my fists.
"Objectives one, two, and three. Current affection: zero, zero, and zero."
I looked toward the front rows.
Antonia Urrutia, the singer-songwriter, sat with teary eyes and a leather jacket over her dress.
Francisca Riquelme, the surgeon, was wiping her tears with the back of her hand.
Maite Galdames, the logistics company owner, had stood up to applaud.
All three were looking at Florencia with enormous tenderness.
I had tried to win over each one of them for two years.
I'd written the lyrics to a song for Antonia.
I'd paid off a debt for Francisca.
I'd saved Maite's company with a piece of information only I knew.
None of them had ever looked at me the way they were looking at Florencia right now.
"Notice," the System said. "Mission failed. Points available: zero. Return to origin world: blocked."
My throat closed up.
"Blocked, why?"
"Condition not met: no objective reached one hundred percent affection."
Rafaela and Florencia said "I do" at the same time.
Everyone applauded.
The music swelled.
I stepped back, and then back again, until I felt the metal railing against my spine.
Behind me was the sea.
I thought of my mom, alone in her apartment in Concepción, watering the plants on the balcony.
I thought of my proofreader's desk, the open dictionary, the cup of cold tea.
I felt an immense longing to go home.
It hit me so hard my chest ached.
"System," I whispered, "is there another way back?"
The voice took two seconds to answer.
"There is an emergency exit: world exit by immersion."
"What does that mean?"
"If the user's body is submerged in the sea for ninety seconds, the contract ends and the return activates."
I looked at the dark water.
It was six meters deep, or ten, or twenty.
It smelled clean.
"Is it safe?"
"The return is guaranteed."
I didn't ask anything else.
I took off the borrowed shoes, left them by the column, and climbed onto the railing.
No one looked at me.
They were all turned away, eyes fixed on the brides.
The blue skirt pressed against my legs in the wind.
I closed my eyes and let myself fall.
The water hit me like an iron door.
It was freezing and salty, and it filled my nose and ears in a second.
I kicked without meaning to.
My body tried to rise even though I'd already decided it shouldn't.
I sank.
The harbor light turned green, then gray.
I counted.
One, two, three.
At twenty, I started to get scared.
At thirty, I felt someone else enter the water.
A large shadow was descending toward me, arm outstretched.
She grabbed me around the waist with a strength I didn't expect.
She kicked upward, steady, cutting through the water with her back.
We broke the surface amid coughs and foam.
Someone above shouted.
A rope dropped from the deck, and the woman holding me put it in my hands.
"Hold on."
Her voice was low and deep, her black hair plastered to her face.
"Hold on, now!"
We came up with the help of several sailors.
They laid me on the deck, coughing up water, a blanket over my shoulders.
The woman knelt beside me, soaked from head to toe, her dark suit ruined.
She was breathing hard.
She looked at me with black eyes that held no softness at all.
The guests had gathered around, forming a circle.
Someone said her name in a low voice.
"It's Amaranta Salcedo."
My pulse stopped.
I knew that name.
She was the villainess of the novel.
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