Daniel Sempere and Fermín Romero de Torres

Daniel Sempere and Fermín Romero de Torres move from trusted workmates to intimate friends: Daniel brings Fermín both practical mysteries and private fears, while Fermín responds with discretion, attention, and a willingness to act. Their bond gives Daniel a companion with whom he can test what he knows, admit what he does not, and speak about the kind of family life he hopes to build.

Trust in the Bookshop

When Daniel returns to the bookshop after two-thirty, Fermín is polishing a collection of Benito Pérez Galdós’s Episodios Nacionales, perched on a ladder. His teasing greeting makes the familiar ease between them visible: he jokes that Daniel seemed to have set off for the New World. In this ordinary workplace scene, their friendship is already more than a formal arrangement; banter is a shared language that lets concern and closeness appear without ceremony.

Daniel soon asks Fermín for a favor and stresses that it must remain between them, especially from Daniel’s father, Sempere. Fermín readily accepts the confidential assignment. When Daniel explains that the matter concerns intrigue, Fermín plays along with his reputation as a man who knows his way around such affairs, promising privacy rather than pressing him for an explanation.

The favor is precise: Daniel wants to identify the owner of post-office box 2321 at the main post office on Via Layetana and learn who collects its mail. Fermín writes the number on his instep beneath his sock, turning a small, practical gesture into a sign of his resourcefulness. He promises to make inquiries through official institutions and return with a report in a few days. Daniel’s trust is thus expressed not only in confidences but in giving Fermín work that may help untangle the story of Julián Carax.

A Confidence About Fatherhood

Later, in the bookshop’s back room, the two men sit around a table amid books while the sleeping city leaves the shop feeling like a boat adrift in silence and shadow. Fermín hands Daniel steaming lime-blossom tea, but the quiet, attentive scene carries an unease: something is troubling Fermín. He asks permission to raise a personal question, then wonders whether he could ever be a father—not biologically, he clarifies, but in the sense of being a good one.

The question marks a different kind of confidence from the investigation. Fermín is not asking Daniel to solve a mystery or exploit his ingenuity; he is asking for an honest judgment about his capacity to care for a family. Daniel answers that Fermín would make an excellent father and husband. He adds that because Fermín does not believe such things are guaranteed, he would never take them for granted. The reassurance makes Fermín’s face soften with happiness, and he asks whether Daniel really means it. Daniel confirms that he does.

Their exchange rests on a distinctive reversal: the man who is habitually quick-witted and self-assured exposes uncertainty about his future, while the younger friend becomes the person whose judgment can steady him. Daniel’s response does not promise that family life will be easy; it identifies Fermín’s doubt itself as evidence that he would take the responsibility seriously.

Friendship as Shared Inquiry

In another late conversation, Daniel looks at Fermín—small, gaunt, and bony, with a large nose and yellow skin—and recognizes that Fermín is becoming his best friend. The recognition follows their accumulated trust and precedes a substantial act of disclosure. For the second time that night, Daniel begins recounting the story of Carax and the enigma of his death. Fermín listens closely, takes notes in a notebook, and interrupts to ask about details whose importance Daniel does not yet understand.

As Daniel tells the story, its missing pieces become harder to ignore. He wonders aloud why Nuria Monfort lied to him and what it meant that she had spent years collecting mail addressed to a nonexistent lawyers’ office supposedly responsible for the Fortuny-Carax apartment in Ronda de San Antonio. The account is not merely information passed from one friend to another: in Fermín’s attentive presence, Daniel hears his own uncertainties and sees how much remains unresolved.

Fermín does not pretend to know why Nuria lied. He distinguishes what they cannot yet establish from what they can reasonably suspect: if she deceived Daniel about this matter, she may have done so in others as well. When Daniel says he is lost and asks what Fermín proposes, Fermín turns uncertainty into a plan. He suggests that they visit San Gabriel’s School the following Sunday and make casual inquiries into the origins of the friendship between Carax and the wealthy boy, Jorge Aldaya. Fermín’s claim that he can charm priests, even while looking like a roguish monk, restores their characteristic humor to the investigation. Their friendship becomes a working partnership: Daniel brings the perplexing narrative, and Fermín listens, records, tests its gaps, and finds a next step.

Mutual Confidence and Its Significance

The friendship is reciprocal rather than simply protective. Daniel trusts Fermín with a secret that he does not want his father to know, but Fermín also trusts Daniel with a vulnerable question about the husband and father he might become. In one direction, Daniel delegates action; in the other, Fermín asks for an evaluation that only a close friend’s candid reassurance can provide.

Their different strengths complement one another. Daniel is absorbed in the uncertainties surrounding Carax and Nuria, while Fermín’s patient listening and practical ingenuity help turn those uncertainties into inquiry. Yet Fermín is not merely Daniel’s investigator: the late-night question about fatherhood establishes that Daniel also serves as confidant and source of emotional reassurance. The bookshop, surrounded by books and quiet after the city has gone to sleep, becomes the place where these roles meet. Across the episodes, friendship is shown as both the freedom to admit uncertainty and the willingness to do something useful with a friend’s trust.