Daniel Sempere and Beatriz Aguilar

Daniel Sempere and Beatriz Aguilar move from guarded intimacy to a decisive, still uncertain closeness when Beatriz admits she does not know whether she loves the man she plans to marry. Daniel challenges the possibility that her departure for El Ferrol is an escape from home rather than a choice made for love. His account of loss and longing, followed by a visit to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, draws them into a shared world; a kiss changes the relationship, but their parting leaves its future open.

A marriage planned as departure

Beatriz arrives to prove that Daniel was wrong about what he had said to her earlier. She tells him she is going to marry Pablo, and that once his military service is finished she will go to El Ferrol. Daniel’s private hope of seeing her again collapses against the certainty of her announcement: he had spent two days buoyed by optimism, and now feels his world fall away. He manages a weak smile and remarks that he thought she had come because she wanted to see him.

The exchange soon turns from the announced marriage to what lies behind it. When Beatriz says she was afraid Daniel might have been right, he asks whether she truly loves Pablo. He argues that she may be marrying not out of love but to get away from home, Barcelona, and a family that can hurt her. The distinction he presses is between leaving and running away. Beatriz answers angrily that he has no right to make that judgment because he does not know her, yet when he asks her to tell him he is mistaken, she cannot do so. After a long silence, she says she does not know whether she loves Pablo.

Uncertainty and guarded trust

Daniel’s question exposes how little certainty either of them can claim. Beatriz has come to defend her decision, but her admission leaves its emotional basis unsettled; Daniel, meanwhile, speaks as someone who wants her to stay even while insisting that she examine her motives. He tells her that, by a measure once expressed to him, stopping to wonder whether one loves someone means that love has already ended. The remark sharpens the stakes without settling them: Beatriz asks who said it, and Daniel acknowledges that the saying is his in a qualified sense.

They leave the university beneath a darkening sky and walk together without a clear destination. Their conversation retreats to Tomas, the one subject they share, though Beatriz speaks of her brother as someone she loves but scarcely knows. She avoids Daniel’s eyes and smiles nervously. She also asks him not to repeat to Tomas what she had said earlier, revealing that the conversation carries a risk beyond the two of them. Their closeness remains tentative, accompanied by the strain of words that still hurt and the fear of what speaking them might change.

Daniel’s story and the Cemetery

Later, Daniel begins telling Beatriz the story of his own life. He starts with the dawn when he awoke unable to remember his mother’s face and continues through his first visit to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, his night reading The Shadow of the Wind, and his encounter with the faceless man. He also tells her about the letter signed by Penelope Aldaya that he carries without understanding why, his lack of experience in love, and the touch of Nuria Monfort’s lips earlier that day. The account brings together episodes that had seemed separate and lets Daniel name what he now sees in them: loneliness, absence, and loss, bound up with his refuge in a novel.

Beatriz listens without judging or drawing conclusions. Rather than answering his confession with words, she asks him to take her to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. They arrive in darkness at its entrance on Calle Arco del Teatro, where Daniel knocks three times with the devil-head knocker. Within the Cemetery, Beatriz encounters a book that seems to her to have been waiting there for her, hidden away before she was born. Her recognition echoes Daniel’s own earlier discovery of a book that became entangled with his life, but the moment belongs to Beatriz: she claims a connection of her own.

The kiss and an open promise

Daniel kisses Beatriz almost without thinking, barely brushing her lips. It is a small gesture, but it marks a clear change: the intimacy built through confession and shared attention has become physical, even though neither has resolved what the kiss means for the marriage she has announced. They leave the Cemetery close to midnight and walk toward her home largely in silence. Beatriz carries her book under her arm; Daniel follows a step behind, still conscious of the kiss and of Isaac’s questioning look as they left.

At Beatriz’s door, the enchantment of their time at the Cemetery gives way to the uncertainty of ordinary life. Daniel suggests, without conviction, that perhaps they should not see each other again. Beatriz cannot offer certainty: she says she does not know anything and asks whether that is what he wants. Daniel says it is not, then asks what she wants. The exchange does not settle the relationship, but it prevents the kiss from being dismissed as an ending. As Daniel moves away, they each say they will wait. Their promise is reciprocal, yet deliberately unresolved: it expresses a desire to remain connected without specifying what Beatriz will do about Pablo or what the two of them will become.