025.02 VERONIKA – Grey Shores Sept 13 at 13:00 – 16:00

I pressed the towel to my hair and felt the drops trickling down my back. I'm still not completely dry, even though I was in the shower half an hour ago. My hair, my curse – a thick red cloud that never really dries properly.

Martina sits opposite me, her face cast in a bluish glow from the laptop screen. She looks calm, focused, as she sifts through the chaos of what we've filmed. Red conflict markers glow on the video timeline like a warning signal – something isn't working, something is overlapping, something just isn't right. Her coffee sits beside her, the steam long gone.

"We'll cut the dramatic zooms, slow down the breath," she says suddenly, her fingers already moving the clips. Viktor and Tom, both on the same track, as if they belonged together. Maybe they do.

I nod. It's not just agreement, it's relief. I don't want drama. I get enough of it in real life.

The cursor stops over a shot where Viktor is gently touching the railing of the footbridge to Rowing Island. There's something about it... I don't know. Something true. The shot pulses as if it had a heartbeat of its own. One moment when Viktor looks vulnerable, human. Without poses.

My phone vibrates in my pocket. Father. Right. The same message as always: "Are you managing?" Three words, dry as tinder. No "hello" or "how are you" or anything that would suggest he actually cares about me. I toss the message into the mental folder of ignored things, where it belongs.

Another message, this time from Síma. A gif of a dancing bulldog and a photo from the exact same bridge where we shot Viktor. "Drama sells," she wrote alongside it. As if I didn't know that drama sells. As if my life wasn't already full of it.

I press the voice message button: "Calm down the feed or I'll block you." It sounds sharper than I intended, but I'm tired of her attempts to dramatize everything.

Martina quietly laughs. "Soft voice, hard rules," she comments, saving the project as silent_current_1530. I notice Tony's breathing schedule hanging on the wall – his old training plan. I take a marker and rewrite the time to HERE and NOW. Because that's all I have. All I can control.

Outside the window, drops from the gutter are ticking like a clock. They remind me that time keeps running, even when it sometimes seems to stand still. Martina aligns the final clip and says something that sounds like a mantra: "Silence is a choice."

We walk out of the editing room and I feel how much it surprises me – I'm content. Despite everything. Despite Dad, Zuzajda, despite Janek, whom I have to cook for, despite the fact that I'm still so tired. Martina and I somehow tuned into each other and that's enough.

At least for this moment.