09.03 VIKTOR – Shadows in the Rental Shop 17.7. at 10:30 – 23:00

I turn the sign on the door to "Closed – Lunch Break" and switch off the three-row fluorescent lights. The light instantly softens, the space shrinks. I love this moment – when for a while I stop being the guy who rents out DVDs and can just be myself. Whoever the hell that is.

I lock up and check that I have everything. Wallet, keys, phone. The form. The form Radka gave me an hour ago. Three weeks of unpaid leave. Leave from what? From myself?

Outside it's hot as an oven. The sun is scorching the asphalt, the air shimmering over the heated concrete. I cross the street at Karlák, my thoughts still on Tom. Why did he show up today? Why now? Right when I've decided to disappear.

A cat leaps across the tram track, an orange streak against the grey concrete. It reminds me of something, though I don't know what. Maybe that freedom of movement. No one is catching it, no one is watching where it goes.

I pull the vacation form from my pocket, turn it over. On the back is written 15:30, the time of return. Radka likes order. Everything must have its time, its beginning, its end. As if life were a school timetable.

15:30. It reminds me of the school bell that used to end the last lesson at that hour. The last lesson with Denis before we lost each other.

A notification starts blinking on the phone. Iris: picture with the hashtag KarlakVideo – 120 likes. Of course. My workplace as a tourist attraction. My existence as a background for her self-presentation.

I open the photo, but untag myself immediately. I don't want the world to know where I'm disappearing to. Everyone's watching me way too much as it is. Tom in the pool, Iris around the corner, Oli at home. Like I'm an animal at the zoo.

The sound of tram No. 22 seems to pierce the air, metal pins scraping against the rail like the ticking of a clock. I have time. Three weeks of time. And then what?

I stop in front of a florist's window. I see my reflection – messy hair, glasses, a face I barely recognize anymore. Who the hell am I? A kid running away from himself? A kid who sucks cocks in dark clubs just to forget that nobody loves him?

For the first time, I admit to myself that a vacation is just another word for escape. Escape from Tom, from his confused looks, from the way he beat me up in the pool and then came to the rental shop with eyes full of questions. Escape from my mother, from her eternal reproaches, from her disappointed look. Escape from Oli, from his seizures, from his vulnerability, which is so similar to my own.

I close my eyes, inhale the scent of flowers, and exhale: "In three weeks I won't be the same anymore."

And maybe it's true. Maybe Tony and his family, his Vietnam, his world, will show me something else. Something I'm missing. Something I can't find in the dark booths on Husitská or in the steam of the Podolí swimming pool.

I open my eyes and walk on. The sun beats down on my back, the shadow shortens. It's noon, lunchtime. Normally I'd grab a kebab or Chinese noodles in a box, eat standing on the street and rush back. Today, though, I'm not hungry. I have an emptiness inside that no food can fill.

My phone vibrates in my pocket again. I take it out. A message from Tony:

“I bought you a plane ticket. Departure tomorrow at 21:45. Did you pack your swim trunks? :)”

Swim trunks. Right. Tony always thinks about swimming. About what connects us. What used to connect us, before Tom showed up and complicated everything.

I text back: “Thanks. Sure, I've got my swim trunks.”

What else am I supposed to tell him? That I'm scared? That I don't know if Vietnam is the answer? That since yesterday I haven't been able to stop thinking about the way Tom looked at me at the pool, the way his gaze went right down to my bones?

I walked to the tram stop, but I don't have the strength to get on. Instead, I sit down on a bench and watch the people around me. Everyone is rushing somewhere, everyone has something on their mind. I'm among them, but I'm not one of them. I never was.

I think of the photo Veronika found today. Me and Denis in the high school showers. I forgot I had it there. I forgot I even had it at all. A moment captured by someone – me and him, so close and yet so far. His hand on my shoulder, my gaze fixed on his face. How old were we? Still little boys. And I was head over heels in love. He never knew. Or maybe he knew and that's why he ran.

Just like I'm running now.

„Fuck,“ I mutter to myself. This isn't getting anywhere. Three weeks in Vietnam aren't going to help me if I can't run away from myself.

The phone vibrates again. This time it's a message from my mother:

„Where are you? Oli locked himself in his room again.“

Typical. Every time I try to disconnect for a moment, something goes to shit. I ignore the message and open Grindr instead. I scroll through profiles as if looking for something I'll never find there. All those anonymous bodies, all soulless. This had been my life for the past five years. Random sex with strangers so I wouldn't feel so alone.

I close the app and stare at the black screen. I see my reflection in it—eyes that look older than they should be. Eyes that have seen too much and yet nothing at all.

The tram arrives, stopping in front of me. The doors open, people get off and on. I have just a second to decide. Go home? Or somewhere else?

I get on. I don't care where the tram is going. I just ride. Away from the rental shop, away from the memories, away from myself.

I sit by the window and rest my forehead against the glass. It's hot from the sun, almost burning, but the feeling is real. At least something is real.

The tram starts moving and I close my eyes. Dancing against my eyelids is the image of Tom standing in the rental shop with a DVD in his hand. "Call Me By Your Name," I had told him. Why that particular film? Why did I give him that one of all things?

Because I wanted him to understand. To see that sometimes it's better to risk the pain than to never know love. That sometimes you have to jump, even when you don't know what's waiting for you at the bottom.

The tram stops, someone sits down next to me. I feel no need to open my eyes. Whoever it is, they'll be getting off again in a moment. Everyone always gets off.

"I knew I'd find you."

That voice. I open my eyes and turn my head. Sitting next to me is Tom, holding the DVD I gave him in his hand. He looks nervous, but determined.

"What are you doing here?" I ask, even though it's a foolish question.

"I came after you," he admits without beating around the bush. "I wanted to catch you and tell you..."

I feel my heart pounding all the way in my throat. What does he want to tell me? That he hates me? That I should stay away?

„Say what,“ I say quietly.

Tom takes a breath, as if gathering courage. „Don't leave.“

Two words. Two words that knock the wind out of me. Two words I never expected to hear.

„Why?“ I ask, because I need to know. I have to hear it.

Tom turns his gaze away, looking out the window at the passing city.

"Because…" he begins, but stops. Then he looks at me again, straight in the eyes. "Because I'm afraid that if you leave, you won't come back. And I… I'd like to get to know you. Really get to know you."

I feel my throat tighten. Is it really that simple? Can it be that simple?

"I can't cancel my ticket," I finally say. "Tony has already arranged everything."

Tom nods, sadness in his eyes, but also understanding. "Well, at least come back," he says. "And I'll explain it to you. Everything."

"What everything?"

"Why I'm such an idiot," he smiles a little. "Why I beat you up. Why I pretended I didn't know you. Why I kept running away."

The tram is stopping at the next stop. Outside, I see the "Kublov" sign. Ironic. Full circle.

"This is my stop," I say and stand up.

Tom stands up too. "Can I come with you?"

I look at him—the guy who breaks my heart without even knowing it. The guy I'm running away from to the other side of the world. The guy who maybe finally found the courage to be honest.

"No," I say finally.

Tom is silent. „I understand.“

I step out into the heat of the summer day. The sun blinds me, but for the first time in a long time I feel like I see clearly. That I see a future that perhaps isn't as dark as I thought.

In three weeks I won't be the same anymore. But maybe that's not such a bad thing.

Sunlight filters through the trees, creating golden patches on the ground as if someone had scattered small coins. I'm sitting on a wooden bench shaped like a leaf, Oli's wet gym bag on my lap and first-aid scissors in my hand. In front of me rises the rope pyramid, around which my brother is strolling with a cup of vending machine coffee in one hand and my wet towel in the other.

„Hold still for a second,“ I mutter when Oli squirms again. „Otherwise you'll look like you've been through an explosion.“

„No one's going to see it anyway,“ he replies, but obediently stops. „Underwater, hair straightens out.“

I trim his overgrown bangs that keep falling into his eyes. Who would have thought – a few days ago we were fighting on the kitchen floor and now I'm cutting his hair in the park. It was always like this between us. Violence and then silence. Screaming and then peace. We never knew how to find the middle ground.

„Hair needs to breathe, otherwise the pool won't taste right to you,“ I say and blow the clipped strands off his nose.

Oli chuckled: „I don't even like the coffee I make myself.“ He took a sip from his paper cup and grimaced. „This tastes like water from the Vltava.“

Droplets from his freshly washed hair were falling onto the asphalt path, forming dark track-shaped dots. I thought of the pool, of Tom, of everything that happened there. Of his hateful look, of his words. And then of how he found me on the tram. Of how he begged me not to leave.

I set an alarm on my phone for 15:30. I turned down the ringer and put the phone in my pocket. I have no idea why this number comforts me so much. Maybe because it's the time people are heading home. The time when shifts end. The time when one thing closes and another begins.

A yellow hair tie fell out of my other pocket. Oli picked it up. „Seven out, three in, right?“ and mimed with a gesture the breathing exercise my father taught me once when I had a panic attack.

I nodded. I don't even remember when we switched these roles – when he started taking care of me. Maybe back when I found him with a knife in the bathroom. Or when mom took away all his pills because she thought he was going to overdose on them.

In the distance, tram 17 rumbled, the scraping of its wheels recalling the silence of the booths waiting for me today. Husitská Street. My favorite stop at U Památníku on the road to oblivion. In my mind, I was scrolling through the Grindr profiles that had lured me there. Not one of them had a name, not one of them had a face. Just bodies that warm you up for a moment and then disappear again.

A toddler started crying on the swing and I instinctively checked my surroundings to make sure Iris the voyeur wasn't around. I can't shake the feeling that someone is watching me. Maybe Tom. Maybe no one. Maybe myself.

Oli leaned in: „You don't look like you're sleeping. Will you put your head down for at least ten minutes?“

I nod, but I just press the towel to my face. It's damp and smells like chlorine, like everything in my life. I close my eyes and try not to think about tomorrow. About the plane ticket Tony bought me. About Vietnam, where he took me to get away from everything. From Mom, from Oli, from Tom. Especially from Tom.

The wind from the river brings a faint whiff of chlorine from the pool. I arch my back, as if fear had hung me by a branch overhead. That pool is everywhere. It haunts me like a ghost.

"Didn't you say that guy in the pool beat you up?" Oli asks suddenly, as if reading my mind. "So why do you keep going back?"

Because I love him, I want to say. Because even though he hates me, even though he hurts me, I can't help it. Because I'm fascinated by how conflicted he is—one minute he beats me up and the next he chases me all over Prague to find me on the tram.

"It's complicated," I answer instead.

Oli taps his cup against the railing: "Come on, I'll buy you a roll so you're not running on just water."

I laugh as if it's news, and together we head toward the bakery stall among the trees. The scent of fresh pastries takes me back for a moment to childhood, when everything was simpler. When I was still Radek and not Viktor. When I didn't know what desire and pain were.

"So you're flying tomorrow?" Oli asks as he hands me a cheese roll.

„Yeah,“ I nod. „With Tony.“

„Is that the sexy swimmer who keeps sending you texts?“

“Yeah.”

„And the other one who beat you up?“

I sigh. „Tom.“

„And you're in love with him.“

It's not a question. Oli knows me better than I'd like. He sees right through me like glass.

„Maybe,“ I admit finally. „But it doesn't matter. He's… complicated.“

Oli looks at me with that piercing gaze of his. „Complicated is when you can't remember whether you swallowed ten pills or twenty. This is simple – either you like him, or you don't.“

"It's not that easy," I object. "He's... I think he's confused. One minute he wants to kill me and the next he's begging me not to go anywhere."

"And you?"

"What about me?"

"What do *you* want?"

The question hits me like a punch to the gut. What do I want? I'd never asked myself that question. I'd always just reacted to what other people wanted. Mom wanted me to be normal. Oli wanted me to help him. Tony wants me to go to Vietnam with him. Tom wants... what does Tom want, anyway?

"I don't know," I finally admit. "I guess I just want it to stop hurting."

Oli nods, as if he knows exactly what I'm talking about. And maybe he does. Maybe we're more alike than I thought.

"You know what helps me when it hurts?" he asks, pointing to his wrist where he has scars from his last attempt. "Reminding myself that it's not forever. That everything ends eventually. Even the pain."

"That sounds terrifying," I remark.

"Yeah, but it's true. Nothing lasts forever. Not even those feelings of yours for that guy. Not his confusion either. Either it grows into something else, or it dies out. Either way, it won't hurt forever."

I look at my brother and suddenly see a wisdom in him that I'd never seen before. Maybe because I'd never bothered to look. I was so focused on myself, on my own pain, that I hadn't seen his.

"Are you glad I found you back then?" I ask quietly, alluding to the evening I found him in the bathroom with his wrists cut.

Oli thinks for a moment. „Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It depends on the day.“ Then he smiles, a bit sadly. „But today, yes. Today I'm glad I'm here.“

We sit there together, eating bread rolls and watching the kids climb on the rope pyramid. They're so carefree, so free. They don't know anything about pain, love, or confusion. At least not yet.

„You know what I think?“ Oli says after a while. „I think you should go to that Vietnam. See something else. Breathe. And then come back and sort things out with that Tom.“

„And what if I don't come back?“

“So you won't come back,” he shrugs. “But at least you'll know you tried. That you didn't stay stuck in a place that's suffocating you.”

I think about his words. He's right. I need a change. I need to see something other than the swimming pool, the video rental store, and the fitting rooms on Husitská Street. I need to take a breath.

“Are you going swimming today?” Oli asks when we finish eating.

“Yeah, I guess so. I have to say goodbye to the pool.”

“And to him?”

I know who he means. “Maybe. I don't know.”

Oli looks at me and then holds out his hand. “Come on, bro. A big day awaits you.”

I take his hand and let him pull me to my feet. It's strange how our roles change—one time I'm the one rescuing him, the next time it's him rescuing me. As if we were two sides of the same coin.

The phone in my pocket vibrates. Alarm. 3:30 PM. Time to return. Time to decide.

I'm glad Oli is feeling better. He has experienced this many times before—and then it changes again. Sort of like the shadows of trees. But today, right now, in this exact moment, everything is fine. And maybe that's enough.