It all begins here

Part 1—Blind

She was a year below me at university. We shared some classes. It was one of those round-number years—faculty photos were taken. I saw her in the cafeteria afterwards—she came up to me and asked to swap pictures. She signed hers: Patricia—with a small heart.

I didn’t think much of it. I didn’t ask anything. I was focused on myself. Not understanding what was happening.

Years later, I understood what that moment might have been.

 

I met Malin at a small house party. Later, in a bar, we talked again. I took her hand. Too early. As if we were already something. She didn’t pull away. But nothing in her matched what I was doing. I asked her out later. The answer never really came. It faded.

We met again at a restaurant. She was there with a friend. I sat with them for a while, then left. I didn’t go home. I sat in my car and waited. Watching if she left. Watching who she left with. Then drove around the city. Slowly. As if something might tell me what happened.

 

I ran into my old university friend Johanna in a bar. It was her first evening out after having her first child. She told me about it. How her life had changed. How she already missed her.

I told her I always thought she was sexy. She said thank you.

Polite.

 

I was out with my girlfriend Emma and her friends. Six or seven of us.
One of the girls was flirty with me. Or at least I thought she was.

At some point the others stepped away. We were alone in the middle of the bar.

I told her I wanted to kiss her.

She said she couldn’t. She was afraid the others would come back and see.

 

I was talking to a woman in a bar. Easy conversation. It felt like something was there. At some point we split. I don’t remember why.

When I saw her again, she was with someone else. Closer. Already in something I thought we were building. We had mutual friends, so I saw her again later.

I never forgave her.

 

I wasn’t reading what was happening.

I was blind.  

I thought I understood women.

I didn’t.

Most of what I was doing felt normal to me.

It wasn’t.

It wasn’t one mistake.

It was a pattern I couldn’t see while I was inside it.

Part 2—Emma

Emma was a woman when I met her. She had dated a lot. And not just dated. She had been independent since her early teens, taking the bus alone to faraway hobbies only she had chosen for herself. She was strong. Not from a secure environment like mine, where a car ride took me to the hobbies everyone else did.  

She was one of those women you might not call the prettiest, but men were drawn to her all the same. So when I started dating her the balance between us was—well—there was no balance.

I had charm. I could seem manly, confident and strong. Empathetic. Promising. But inside, there was this little boy.

The beginning was a battlefield, my wants and ways fighting to become accepted. Shouting, sulking, silence, withdrawing. Withdrawing was usually the hardest for me. The painful waiting for her to approach me. But I thought that was how relationships worked. No calm without tempest.

In hindsight, she was surprisingly flexible with everything I demanded. I had learned that before a peaceful setting, battles needed to be fought. To find a neutral ground. Neutral meant that I knew how things were supposed to go. I didn’t bend.

We were on the return flight home from Italy, I think. Sitting next to a couple we had met during the vacation. She said something that made me angry. Or I thought she ignored me. Ignored what I said. Or she dismissed me in some way.

One short moment.

It wasn’t something she would do. She had given me no reason. I got angry with her. It didn’t pass. I didn’t speak to her for the rest of the flight. Quiet. The other couple beside us, wondering.

Until she apologized.

Maybe she thought that these fights weren’t so relevant. Not so important. Unlike me, who wanted every small disagreement handled in detail.

While I had been playing computer games, she had experienced life. A good example was her sexual experience. I was often too lazy or too inept to go past the easy online offerings. Once she told me she had an affair with a guy even I knew as a player, who at the time was dating a world-famous pianist. How he had a friend who thought Emma was hot and wanted a threesome with her. And when they were doing it, how she could see he was jealous of her. She still spoke kindly of him, which made me furious.

The boy could not handle that. He wanted it to be about disrespect for women. Who would share someone they cared for? It was an excerpt of an adult world of all kinds of shades, shown to someone who only knew black and white.

It lasted five years. In the beginning I was more excited. But the boy’s confidence grew with time. The balance changed. I ended up leaving her. Not by telling her I wanted to separate. Instead, I forced her to do it. Late nights. Distant. Letting her worry when I didn’t come home until the next day.

Five years later, the setup was the same. A woman. And a boy.

It all begins here

I wanted Kairaku—the intimate language of her eights. Not these shameless eyes that left me nowhere to hide. But there he was, serious, unapologetic.

And when he blinked, I saw it. The light caught it—small, almost invisible, a scar just beyond the mask, near his right temple. A thin, ordinary line. 

Suddenly it was all too much—the mask, the grip, the lemongrass. I had to get away. Please.

Then the world blinked. I was back in my own bed. No ropes. No chair. No tongue. Sweat cooled on my sternum, heat between my legs. My breath shallow, unsure what was real.

“What the fuck.”

My throat was dry.

“Kani-shibari.”

The word sat in my mouth like something I should have remembered sooner. Shibari—the art of ropes, of pattern and control. I’d scrolled past images years ago—lines turning bodies into calm geometry. Beautiful patterns. 

But kani-shibari—that I had to look up. “Wrists and ankles bound together, legs spread apart.” Exposure. Restraint. The dream itself.

I lay on my back, legs open, letting the intensity fade. The dream stayed, too vivid to dissolve. The sensation of being open, watched, known. The certainty there had been a man—close but silent. A scar across his right temple—like something looking at me.

Morning came and made everything plain. Early Sunday, the city still asleep. Late spring, almost summer. A walk from home to the office through quiet streets I loved. When I arrived, the machines were already humming, grinding in every direction, ready to take me in.

Day four. Phone call.

Four days after the party, my phone rang. I was in the kitchen, a glass of tap water in my hand. It was my friend, the one who’d hosted the party.

“You and Lumi talked with two guys on Saturday, remember?”

No greeting. We never waste them on each other.

“The pretty boys? Yes?”

“Well—the other one.”

“Which one?”

“The prettier one.”

I let myself smile without letting her hear it.

“He’s thirty-seven, you cradle stealer.”

“He wants your number.”

“Which one?”

I thought I knew. Maybe.

“The calmer one. Viktor.”

I looked at the glass of water in my hand and saw nothing in it.

“Okay. Fine.”

“Good girl.”

A joke from ten years ago. Then she hung up.

I set the glass down and looked at the kitchen table. I didn’t feel much. It had to be the guy from the hallway. I was asked out all the time. Attention was easy, connection wasn’t. Physical chemistry wasn’t easy to find. Everything else even harder. And what I needed—maybe didn’t exist.

I washed my hands and let my thoughts wander. The dream was still there, in pictures, in feeling, in the delicate depths of my stomach. But I also thought of the hallway, the brief hug, the not-hurry of him.

Until the water ran hot, then hotter, almost burning. I turned it off.

Day six. Message.

A simple line—like someone saving letters.

lunch tomorrow? or next week? viktor

No emoji. No greeting. No full stop either. All in small letters. Plain and undecorative. Straight to the point. Nothing romantic.

I read it twice, just to understand what kind of message this really was. If the meaning could shift between readings. It didn’t.

My reply came later.

Tomorrow works.

Then nothing more.

When I set the phone down, the kitchen returned to its stillness. I didn’t know what I expected from him. Yes, he was nice, kinda charming. I realized that beneath the smart dialogue and the laughter lay his quiet interest. Something I hadn’t decided if I wanted. 

Day seven. Lunch.

A restaurant by the harbour in Katajanokka—old floorboards, older wooden beams pushing through the surfaces, warm light, almost too charming. When I arrived, he was already there. Nothing in his hands, gaze fixed somewhere else—intentional, maybe.

He stood up. Eye contact first, then a hug—a touch more than at the party, but friendly. 

We sat by the window, the water outside glittering with lazy sunlight. He was present, respectful, didn’t reach for his phone once. We talked like people who had met before but didn’t owe each other anything. Free to be truthful.

We talked about the party—the cool apartment, the crowd, how I knew Lumi from law school. How captivating she was.

Then about work—how unexciting and meaningless can trap you with nothing more than a monthly reward.

He had his own stories.

“I’m a consultant. The kind companies call when they want to pay for something they already know, but with better slides.”

“Wow, a man with great slides.”

He smiled.

“Yes. One.”

My turn to smile.

He took a sip of water.

“It’s theatre. Everyone trying to look busy and important, hiding the truth that they’re really just bolts in a machine. Emperor’s new clothes.”

“You sound like my office. The same play, different costumes.”

We talked—pieces of nothing and everything. But it was interesting. Not superficial, not pretence—just genuine things with weight. He was straight and honest—something hard not to like.

“I say everything aloud. Sorry about that. I really have very few taboos.”             

“So your filter’s broken.”

He smiled.

“I don’t think I have one.”

Usually only the wrong people said everything aloud—had no filter.

“I prefer your kind. The ones who just don’t bother performing.”

When we left, the air outside was soft, the city still holding onto late midday. We walked together toward the centre. Time to go our separate ways.

It was sunny. A warm breeze on my skin. He was facing the sun, squinting, eyes almost closed. That’s when the light hit—cutting through the air, sharp, golden. It found a line on his skin, a faint mark just beyond his right temple. Small, almost nothing. But I kept staring.

The scar. A familiar line.

“You okay?”

Something inside me jolted—the image from the dream, the mask, the same thin wound.
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe.

He said something—ordinary, about the seaside, the weather, anything—I couldn’t tell. The sound reached me, but my thoughts were lost in fog.

 “I really enjoyed this.”

A hug—brief, real.

“Yes, thank you.”

We went our separate ways.

I kept walking, but inside something shifted. He had crossed a line in my mind without even knowing there was one.

Fucking guy.

Day eight. Slide.

His message arrived without ceremony.

who has the best slides?

I smiled. Small letters again. Minimalist. My reply was even better.

Slide.

That was all. A contact. One line, one smile.

I let the screen go dark, then woke it again. Nothing.

I liked his message. It didn’t say anything, yet it had attitude—lightness, wit. 

Nothing followed.

Laundry. Warm cotton. Machine hum. Undone becoming done.

For a moment, I thought about the scar—how I must have noticed it without knowing. It couldn’t have come from the dream. No, that would be impossible.

The mind moves in secret.  

Day nine. Kairaku.

Sunday afternoon I walked through Punavuori, a loop I knew by muscle memory. Through streets that kept changing their cafés without asking permission. The light had that clean edge—a disinfectant shine, a promise of new life.

I passed a small storefront I’d never noticed. The sun pressed against my eyes, so the letters almost disappeared. I had to walk right next to the window, to read the name in neat letters across the glass. 

Ice cream bar.

Kaiku.

My stomach tightened. A memory, low and precise—the weight of a soft tongue’s patient eights, the cool of air meeting wet skin.

I smiled. Why aren’t all dreams like that. Heat gathered—not in my face, lower.

I rushed home.

Day ten. Escape.

A new message. Late.

island escape?

For a second I thought of the hallway hug again—my arms opening first, the smell of him—simple, clean. Nice. Yes—nice.

Why not. I had no plans. I’d quickly accustomed to his minimal messaging.

Next weekend?

A reply came almost instantly.

saturday?

Soon I’d be writing without capitals too.

Suomenlinna.

Old fortress. Twenty minutes by ferry. A time warp three hundred years backward.