The morning after, in the kitchen, she found him already there.
"If you want to be alone," she asked, "why live with someone else?"
He drank a sip of water.
"It's just for the money. Alone or with someone else, it's the same thing."
He left.
She stayed there, coffee in her hands.
By now it had a bitter taste.
---
The train slid through the winter landscapes.
Bare fields, leafless trees, a low, compact sky.
She sat by the window, her forehead against the cold glass. Outside everything scrolled by the same, but inside her head the thought kept returning to the same point.
That smile.
Small. Almost involuntary. Yet impossible to ignore.
She tried to focus on the landscape. One minute. Two. Then the thought was already back - the way he'd leaned against the wall, the forgotten glass in his hand, that half-second in which he'd looked away before smiling.
As if he didn't want her to see it.
But she had seen it.
She pressed her forehead harder against the cold glass and closed her eyes.
The farther she went, the more she realized that something of him had stayed with her - despite what he'd said that very morning.
At home, exhaustion won out.
She lay on the bed without changing and slept a few hours, a light sleep full of broken images.
That evening, at dinner, her mother watched her with that precise calm mothers use when they've already understood but wait for you to say it.
"So... how's it going with your roommate?"
She shrugged, distractedly poking her fork at her plate.
"All good. He's a nice guy."
She closed the topic as if there was nothing more to add.
Part of her actually believed it.
With her friends, though, it was different.
"Talk," said one, sitting on the bed and crossing her arms.
She sighed and let herself fall down next to them.
She told them about the living situation, about his silence, about the way he always seemed elsewhere.
"He's unbearable. He always does whatever he wants, doesn't consider me, seems like he doesn't care about anyone."
Her friends exchanged an amused look.
"And meanwhile he's so gorgeous," said one.
"And mysterious," added another. "The worst combination."
She scoffed, but the half-smile was already there before she could stop it.
She knew they were right.
That wasn't the point, though.
The point was that small thing she couldn't stop thinking about - and she still didn't quite know what it was.
The day before the Christmas dinner, his sister dragged her brother to the Christmas markets.
The air was cold and smelled of mulled wine, the shop windows lit up, people walking with bags full.
His sister was picking things out, pointing, chatting.
He followed her in silence, hands in his pockets, his gaze drifting over the windows without ever lingering too long.
At one point he stopped.
A side shelf. A small object, almost anonymous among the others.
He looked at it for a few seconds.
Then he picked it up, without thinking, and let it drop among the other purchases. A quick gesture, natural, as if it wasn't worth giving it any weight.
His sister said nothing.
But she had seen it.
At home they made dinner together.
His sister talked, he answered in monosyllables. The air smelled of sauce and lit candles, a warmth that had slowly settled over every surface in the room.
At the table, his sister looked at him.
"It would have been nice if she'd been here too."
He didn't look up from his plate.
"I don't know her."
"Wouldn't you be interested?"
"No."
He went back to eating.
"We're different."
His sister sighed, amused and frustrated at once. Then she leaned slightly toward him.
"It wouldn't hurt you to open up, sometimes."
He stayed silent. But the candlelight softened his face for an instant - something barely perceptible, which his sister noticed and kept to herself.
She came back after the holidays.
His sister was waiting for her. She hugged her tightly, told her that her absence had been felt, then asked if she wanted to go out together the next day - the last one before leaving.
She said yes.
They were walking past the lit windows when the question came out, almost on its own.
"Why is he like that?"
His sister didn't answer right away. Then she said, with a simplicity that carried weight:
"From what I know, he chose the solitude. He didn't have it forced on him. Over time he built himself that way - even with us."
She paused.
"If you really want to understand, you should ask him yourself."
She didn't answer.
They walked a bit more, among light laughter and lit windows, without returning to the subject. But that sentence stayed there, thin, like something you can't quite put away.
Before saying goodbye, his sister pulled out an envelope.
"Your Christmas present."
Then, almost casually:
"He picked it out."
She stood still, the envelope in her hands.
His sister hugged her and walked off.
She stayed on the sidewalk a few seconds, that small object weighing more than she expected.