020.01 VERONIKA – Condemn the Silence Sep 9 at 13:00 – 16:00

9.9.

A milky filter hangs over the city, turning the contours of the houses into a watercolor. Distant thunder rumbles like a slow heart, ashamed to strike with full force. The hairs on my forearms stand on end, static cracking in every pore. Everyone breathes a shallow, cautious breath, so that not a single drop falls before it is allowed. And yet the dryness remains, heavy and uncompromising.

Tom – inner monologue "If they disqualified me for silence, I've become the first one to pull it off without screaming. Maybe that's how it's supposed to be: a victory that makes no sound is remembered longer."

VERONIKA

Just another Wednesday, another press conference, another stolen hour not spent in the water. I'm holding the camera, trying to find a shot where Tony and Viktor don't look like a couple of convicts. A futile attempt. All of this is in vain.

The PR manager behind the counter flips through slides as if his life depended on it. Charts and tables and numbers. Who the hell among us remembers how many hundreds we did this season? Jakub Bromlil with his eternal whistle around his neck stands nearby, looking important and pointing at the projection.

"Here we see a clear progression in times. The results speak for themselves."

Sure, they speak. And what do they say? That we're not the best. That we're fourth. That third place is our ceiling.

I look through the camera viewfinder and search for something other than numbers. I look for people. A team. I try to find the moment when it would seem like we belong together. That we aren't just a collection of people swimming in the same direction.

Suddenly I feel the vibration of my phone in my pocket. Zuzajda again. Why today? Why now? Did she have to start limping right when I have this stupid shift? I slide my hand down toward my phone, but at that moment Síma, who is sitting in the front row, turns her screen toward everyone.

“Do you see that? They're hating on us again.”

The room goes still. Suddenly, it's as if someone turned off the air conditioning.

„Potato swimmers, third place is for the weak,“ he reads aloud.

I see Tom grip the armrest. I see Viktor’s eyes drop to the floor. I see Bromlil raise an eyebrow and swallow what looks like a very sharp retort.

Martina steps into the camera frame. Her eyes are two lakes in which I’ve been drowning since the very first day I met her. I can’t look away from them.

„The data speaks,“ she whispers sharply toward the PR manager, „but do we hear the emotions?“

Something in her voice makes me press the shutter. The camera beeps, a blue REC flashes on the screen. At the exact same moment, I catch Tony nodding at Viktor. Silent communication. Something nobody except the two of them understands.

The clock on the wall reads 15:30 sharp when that beep cuts through the air. Everyone turns to look at me. I stop the recording, but it's already too late. I feel my cheeks burning. I messed up again.

Fifteen thirty. Always fifteen thirty. The time when everything breaks. The time when I start feeling something tapping me on the shoulder and saying: "This isn't your world."

Silence flows through the room like chlorine in the pipes beneath a pool. I feel it in my nose, my throat, in every pore. Until finally Bromlil moves on to the next slide and the whistle sound from the presentation cuts through everything.

And I know that when this is over, I'll go check on Zuzajda.

I'm sitting on that damn dumbbell rack, my body still wet, muscles in spasms, and my phone vibrates. Another message.

Are you managing your studies

Dad. No question mark, no comma, no emoji. As if he were asking me if I dusted today. As if I weren't even worth him pressing that fucking question mark.

I swipe left. That digital sound of the trash can plays – as if my silence got its own soundtrack.

Digital silence.

Digital scream.

Martina sits down next to me, her hair still wet. She hands me a bottle of water.

„Silence doesn't have to be emptiness, you know? It can be space.“

I feel the blood rushing to my cheeks. Can she see right through me? Does she know what I just did?

„But silence doesn't work on Instagram,“ I reply quietly. „You have to scream there. Numbers only grow on chaos.“

Martina points to the wall behind me. Someone has painted an inscription there – Swim deep. Breathe slow. Plav hluboko. Dýchej pomalu.

„When you push off from the bottom,“ Martina says, „there's no audience. Just you and the water.“

Her words settle inside me like a stone hitting the bottom. Something slips out of my bag – a piece of paper I'd been carrying around all day. The vet's report. Zuzajda.

Martina notices, picks it up, and her fingers gently trace the photo of Zuzajda pinned to the report.

„Fathers, dogs, audiences… they all know how to bite when you don't pay attention to them,“ Martina says quietly.

My phone vibrates again, but this time it's a notification. Síma just posted… what the fuck? On the screen, I see a photo from some kind of video booths. Viktor is sitting half-naked in the background with his fly unzipped, and Tom is blurred, but recognizable. Above it, the caption: Hidden truths?

My hand starts shaking so badly I almost drop my phone.

„This… this is going to ruin Viktor,“ I gasp. „And Tom too.“

Martina looks at my phone and then at me. In her eyes, I can see she knows what I'm talking about. Of course she does. She's got her own experience.

„Then put out the flame before the relay catches," she says quietly. And then she adds something that sounds to me like a warning: "And above all—be careful not to catch fire yourself."

Her words hang in the air like steam over a pool.

I'm underwater again, only this time I can't breathe.

I'm standing in the empty stands, feeling the wind ruffle my hair. Twenty-seven degrees, no shade. Opposite me, a golden patch of sun spills across the benches where the three of them are sitting now.

Viktor, Tony, Tom.

I have them in my viewfinder—three bodies, three guys, three ways to fill the space. They're silent. Silent, as if it were normal. None of them feels the need to break the silence. They just sit and exist. As if they'd known each other forever.

I tap REC and let it roll. The wind blows through the club's banners, rustling for a moment. Laughter echoes from somewhere by the kids' pool, but otherwise it's quiet.

I watch them through the display. Tom crosses his arms like he's building a wall. Viktor is twisting some band between his fingers—a hair tie, probably—spinning it as if the movement helps keep his thoughts together. Tony shields his eyes with his palm, even though he doesn't need to. The sun traces a golden line around his face.

Every single one of them breathes to a different rhythm. If this were music, it would be polyrhythmic.

Two minutes of footage. They aren't saying anything. They don't have to. Maybe for the first time I'm seeing them together like this, and there's something right about it. As if whatever is between them doesn't need words.

I feel the clouds tearing apart in my head. That pressure I've had for the past few weeks is easing up a bit. As if someone cracked open a valve.

I turn off the camera and sit down with them. Nobody asks me why I was filming them. Tom silently hands me a plastic water bottle. I take a sip and pass it on.

Viktor turns to me and smiles. Not that Instagram smile of his, not the one he uses when he wants something. This one is real. For the first time all summer, I don't feel the need to open an app right away and pick a filter. I don't have to make stories out of this. I don't have to make characters out of them.

My phone buzzes. Iris is live, doing something in Karlín at sunset. Normally I'd watch it right away, track the viewer counts, compare engagement. Now I just swipe it away.

In the distance I hear a tram—the seventeen is passing along the embankment. The sun paints everything in a rich gold that slowly fades into sepia. Everything looks a bit like it's from another time.

The four of us are sitting, staying silent, and breathing. And maybe that's why no one is talking. Because we're healing.

I feel what's hanging between them. Between Tom and Viktor. Between Tony and Tom. Between Viktor and Tony. Unspoken things sticking to the air. But it doesn't matter now. We're sitting together. Breathing. The sun is warming us. And nobody's pushing the silence away. Because sometimes even silence heals.