"Where are we going tonight?" Zuzi asks, stashing her books into her messenger bag. I watch her papers catch and crinkle, but she makes no move to smooth them out. Once they're all crammed in, she draws the zipper closed and gives the bag a self-satisfied pat.

I look away and catch sight of Frederik's slightly horrified look. He's still staring at Zuzi's bag. I stifle a grin.

"What about coming over to my place for kiwi film night?" Priscilla suggests. There's a hopeful light in her eyes that I cringe at the thought of dousing.

I open my mouth to say something, but Ludo beats me to it. "Are you going to cook?" he asks.

Priscilla grimaces. "We could order something on Wolt," she says hopefully.

"I haven't downloaded the app," Zuzi says. "Is it any good?"

"I've tried it a couple times," Priscilla says. "It's good. I always get my food on time."

I've never ordered any food with Wolt, either, but delivery staff with the big purple food bag are not an unfamiliar sight in the streets. Having seen them around so much, I've always been curious about ordering food through their delivery service.

Priscilla turns to me. "What do you think, Emi?"

"I can't tonight," I say. I try to pull my face into a grimace, but it comes out feeling more like a grin, even to myself. "I have dinner plans tonight. Could we do this another time? I don't want to miss it."

Zuzi makes it a point to look around. "Dinner plans?" she asks. "With who? All your friends are here."

"Hey!" I exclaim, mock affronted.

Even Priscilla is laughing.

"So who are you having dinner with?" Zuzi is like a dog in search of a bone it is sure it has buried – right in this spot. "Did you finally get on Tinder?"

I make a face. "Tinder? No, thanks."

"Who is it, then?"

I don't want to tell her. She's been talking about me and Aksel so much, finding out that we are meeting for dinner would be extra fodder for her.

"Just a friend," I say. "I do have friends outside of this group, you know."

Zuzi frowns.

"Well," says Priscilla, nudging the conversation back on track, "we should do movie night another time, then, when all of us can make it. You're not allowed to miss it, Emi."

"I promise," I say. "I definitely want to be there. I want to see what a kiwi film looks like."

"So," Zuzi says, "where are we going tonight?"

I tune them out as the others start throwing out suggestions, swiping on my phone instead. There's a message from Aksel – I'm here. Just two words, but they're enough to make my heart skip.

I stand up, scraping the chair legs against the floor as it shifts behind me. "I should go," I announce, abruptly cutting into Frederik's flat-out refusal for Thai food.

"Too spicy," he is saying. "And too many soups."

Zuzi breaks off her glare at Frederik to eye me suspiciously, but Priscilla gets up to hugs me goodbye. "Have fun!" she chirps.

"Wait," Zuzi says.

I know she's going to start interrogating me again, so I grab my bag and make a hasty escape. "Have fun at dinner! I'll see you guys tomorrow."

"Isn't that suspicious?" I hear Zuzi asking as I let the door close behind me. "Isn't she acting suspicious?"

Breathing out a long sigh, I head for the exit. I'm feeling a sense of urgency – I don't want them to come out and see Aksel standing outside, waiting. That would be too reminiscent of the last time he was here.

When I step outside, I am hit by a sense of déjà vu so strong, I stop dead on my tracks. Aksel is standing in almost the exact spot I remembered him in the last time. He is still dressed in his office wear – he must have come straight from work. Even though he's been at work all day, there is still a crispness to his shirt that makes it stand out nicely. I've always liked seeing him in collared shirts.

I inhale deeply and head to where he's standing. He looks down at me as I come to a stop.

"Hey," he says.

"Hei," I reply. "Have you been waiting long?"

"No," he says. "I just got here."

"Okay." I let the silence drape over us for a brief second, before remembering that I'm supposed to be avoiding my friends. This means getting as far away as possible before they decide to head out. "Let's go?" It's supposed to be an imperative, but comes out ending on a lilt.

"Where to?" Unlike me, Aksel doesn't seem to be in a hurry. I take a few steps forward, but he doesn't follow.

"What are you doing?" I ask, even as I'm distractedly eyeing the doorway for any familiar figures. "Aren't you coming?"

Aksel is silent for a moment. Then he asks, "What are you doing?"

My eyes snap back to his. "Nothing," I say. But I'm still itching to leave. "Let's go."

"Where should we go?"

"I don't know," I say. I can feel my foot tapping and make an effort to still it. "Is there anywhere you want to go? Any food cravings?"

Aksel shrugs. His slowness is infuriating.

"Why don't we start walking," I suggest, "and see if anything catches our interest?"

He's looking at me, as if thinking something over.

"Come on," I say. "Let's just walk."

But he's still not moving. I hear an overly-familiar peal of laughter ring out from somewhere in the distance, and my heart rate shoots into overdrive. I don't need to look back at the doorway to know what – or who – I will see in the next instant.

Sheer instinct propels me in that moment. Grabbing Aksel's hand, I pull him along as I try to put as much distance between us and the university building as possible in fifteen seconds.

He finally moves, letting me direct him out of the university and onto the main street. I don't stop until we are past the tram stop.

Then I realise I'm still gripping onto his fingers, and let go.

I clear my throat. "Well," I say, "maybe we can walk around here and see if there's anything interesting." He doesn't reply, but he does finally fall into step beside me.

We walk side-by-side in silence down the street, until Aksel speaks. "Are you ashamed to be seen with me?"

My head snaps up at that. "No," I say. "It's not that."

The corner of his mouth curls upwards, but I can't tell if he's joking or putting on a brave face. I know all too well about the latter.

"I just... It would be awkward." The thought of Zuzi's pointed remarks in the aftermath brings an involuntary grimace to my face.

A pause. "So," he says slowly, "you are ashamed to be seen with me."

I frown. "That's not it."

"But your friends don't know you're meeting me tonight?"

Wisely, I stay quiet. After a moment, I glance surreptitiously at him. He catches me looking and shrugs. It's a gesture that tells me he has let the topic go, but my own shoulders remain tense.

"I don't have to tell them everything," I mumble. "Just because I haven't told them I'm meeting you tonight doesn't mean I'm ashamed of it." Shame is too strong a word.

"Okay," he says simply. I can't tell from his expression alone if it's genuinely bothering him or if it was just a casual topic he brought up to break the ice.

If it had been the latter, it has done the complete opposite. There is a heaviness in the air now, and although Aksel is still walking beside me, I'm getting the feeling that he might prefer to be anywhere else right this second.

I last sixty-four more steps before I cave.

"Okay," I say, stopping short so suddenly that Aksel takes a few seconds to realise I'm no longer by his side. He drifts to a stop, turning to look at me.

"Okay," I repeat, "I didn't want my friends to know I'm meeting you tonight, but it's not because I'm ashamed of you. I just don't want them to think..." I swallow, "that this is something that it's not."

His mouth twitches and flattens. "What is it not?"

I press my lips together as my hands lift in a palms-up gesture of helplessness. "It's... They think..." I blow out a noisy breath, the air escaping my lips in noisy spurts. I don't want to talk about this, to make him think that I'm dredging up ancient history. Or the not-so-ancient past of last weekend.

I finally settle on, "They take too much interest in my love life." Then I add quickly, "Or lack thereof. Zuzi especially always thinks there's something going on, even if there isn't."

Aksel doesn't say anything. He's so quiet that I have to glance at him to see if he's listening.

"She – they don't believe that we are just friends now," I say. "Even though we are. They have all sorts of weird theories about our friendship." I force a laugh. "It's ridiculous. I suppose I'm tired of trying to convince them. That's why it's easier to just keep it from them."

And then he says, an old tune on repeat, "You care too much about what other people think."

This pisses me off. I roll my eyes and shoot back, "They're my friends! I have to see them every day. Of course I care. You'd care about what Lumi and Aliisa and the others think too."

"If they were really your friends, they wouldn't make fun of you for meeting someone."

"They don't make fun of me," I snap. He is misunderstanding drastically, perhaps on purpose, perhaps not. Either way, I am filled with an indignant fire that burns at his words. "They're just curious, that's all. They are my friends – they're the only people here who understand me and support me."

I'm glaring at him, so I catch the twinge on his face as I spit out the words. If I didn't know better, I would think my speech has hurt him.

He's silent now, so I say, running out of steam, "They're my best friends here, but I don't have to tell them everything. You don't tell your friends everything, either." I'm not sure how true this last statement is, because Lumi seemed to know quite a bit about our break up back when I'd run into her, but I know Aksel. I know he is an intensely private person. Even if he had told his friends about us, he would have glossed over a lot of the details.

That was, after all, the problem we'd had. He had kept all his feelings in, letting them fester until they hit the boiling point and finally came gurgling out in the form of one short, cold word.

Do you want me to leave?

Yes.

The memory of the word still has the ability to clamp a vice grip around my heart.

"How much do your friends know about our break up?" I ask suddenly.

"What?"

I'm not about to repeat myself. He's heard me perfectly well.

Aksel takes his time in replying, as if he's giving me time to retract my question. Finally, he says, "Not much."

"Why not?" I ask, genuinely curious. "Didn't you tell them about it?"

"I don't tell them everything," he says, then stops and lets out a short bark of a laugh. "Touché."

I can't help but smile in self-satisfaction.

"Fine," he says. His voice suggests that he's not happy, but his expression tells me that he's holding back a smile. "I get it."

As we walk on, though, I can't help but wish that he had given a concrete answer to my question. Because there is a part of me that did want to know – exactly how much has he told his friends about us? But asking now would be ripping open a hornet's nest.

"Let's not fight," I say, as a peace offering. Dinner hasn't even started, and we are already sniping at each other. Not for the first time, I'm wondering if we can stay friends. If we should stay friends.

He must have had the same thought, because he sighs. "Yeah," he says. "I don't want to fight."

I look at him, and he gives me a small smile. As if out of habit – as if he's forgotten – he reaches for my hand and begins to intertwine his fingers in mine. I know he does it without thinking, because it is his default when it comes to reassuring me. Then he jerks away, and I know that realisation has hit him. We don't get to hold hands anymore. "I..."

I clear my throat and stick the exposed hand into the pocket of my hoodie. "I know," I say quietly, whirling on my heel, leaving him no choice but to follow. "Are you hungry? Let's find a restaurant or something."

***

We find a small eating place tucked away in the corner of the district, bordering the fringes of the city centre. They sell coffee, soup, and pies. I look at Aksel, and he shrugs, so we step into the store's warm aromatic embrace. Its interior reflects its menu – simple but classic, with light-coloured walls and dark wooden furniture.

Aksel finds a table far in the back, in a corner, as if he's trying to hide us away from prying eyes. He waits until we start eating before he gets back on topic. I thought he had forgotten all about his silly mistake before – the way he had habitually reached for my hand – but the words out of his mouth prove it hasn't gone far from his mind.

"I didn't like it," he says.

"Huh?" I look up from my soup, my voice coming out in a bewildered gurgle because I've just taken a huge mouthful. Hrngh?

"I..." Then he expels a long breath and lowers his face so that I can't see his expression. "Never mind."

I pause, chew, and swallow. Then I say, more clearly this time, "No. What were you saying? I want to know." I wait a beat, but when he doesn't lift his head, I repeat, more forcefully, "Tell me."

He looks up then. "Do you remember when we were together?"

"Of course I remember," I say, a little snippily. I'm hardly likely to have forgotten our history. "What are you talking about?"

He sighs. I watch him place his knife on the plate and sit back, fork still in hand. The other hand is laid on the tabletop, two fingers drumming noiselessly against the surface.

"What?" I ask, prompting him when he still doesn't say anything.

"Do you remember whenever we went out somewhere?" He waits for my nod. "You were always..." He hesitates, then changes tack. "You never wanted to hold my hand."

"That's not true." The instinctive denial is out of my mouth before I've even fully registered his statement. Then I suck my lips into my mouth to keep myself silent.

It's rare that he opens up about what he really thinks. I should know – over the past months, I've been subjected to his long stretches of silences enough times. And so, I shut up and let him speak.

"I stopped holding your hand after a while," he says. "Did you even notice that?"

I go still. I can't answer, because it is only now that the realisation comes crashing down on me. He's right. He had stopped holding my hand in public – long before things had gone icy between us. And I hadn't noticed until he pointed it out.

My face must have revealed my unspoken thoughts. Aksel smiles grimly, like there is a small part of him that had hoped he was wrong. "Right," he says.

We're having a heart-to-heart now, I find myself thinking. Except, unlike the first time we spoke about the break up, this one isn't the congenial kind.

"Why?" I ask, because I do want to know. When we were together, Aksel almost never talked about his own feelings. It was always me – this thought hits me so suddenly, I rock back in my chair, flattening my back against the hard wooden frame. It was always just me and my feelings. I don't know anything about how he felt.

For his part, he seems intent on telling me now.

"It made me feel shitty." He says this flatly, shifting back in his chair, as if his mind is trying to shield his vulnerability by moving his physical body as far away as possible. "Whenever I tried to hold your hand, you would move away from me. I got the hint after a while."

I open my mouth, but he's still talking.

"I don't know. It was only when we were here." He shrugs. "You were fine in Hamburg. I always wondered why. It seemed like..." he hesitates now, stopping to look down at the table. I'm sure he's not seeing a thing, though. "It seemed like there was something wrong with me in Helsinki. You only wanted to be with me when I was in Hamburg."

The muscles in my brow curl tighter at that last sentence. "That's not true," I say, leaning forward, feeling the wood of the table bite into my underarms. I was about to say that's ridiculous, before biting back my instinctive words and choosing more appropriate ones. "It wasn't that at all. I just..."

He's watching me, so I take a deep breath and try to go on.

"I don't know if you noticed it at all," I say, "but people always stared at us when we were together here. Nobody stares at us if we hold hands in Hamburg. But when we're here..." I spread my hands in a gesture of helplessness. "They stare so much. I hated it."

His lids are lowered as he absorbs this.

I swallow. "I thought," I say, my voice small now, "that if we didn't hold hands – didn't look like a couple in any way... then they wouldn't stare at us so much. At me. Because I don't look like I belong with you."

We are no longer together, but saying that last part still feels like forcing nettles into tender flesh. My heart aches at the reminder. Aksel is still silent, so I add, in case he hasn't gotten it, "We look too different. We look weird together. Especially here, where there aren't as many interracial couples. That's why... I didn't want to stand out."

The next thing I know, Aksel's chair is scraping against the floor as he springs to his feet. My entire body is ice as I watch him walk away without a word. Even as my mind is scrambling to react, my body is starting to shut down. The muscles in my legs have gone cold; there is a buzzing in my ears.

Is he leaving? Is what I admitted that bad?

Aksel is almost back at the store entrance when he stops, turns, and starts walking back. The set of his expression sends a frozen weight right to the bottom of my stomach, so I tear my eyes away. I blink hard, letting the blurry sight of the waitress staring at him come into view.

He's back now, hovering over the table. I finally refocus my eyes on his face. He sits back down across from me.

I burst into tears.

Aksel runs a hand over his face. "Shit," he says. "Don't cry. I don't want to make you cry."

"What the fuck!" I snap, the pain in my chest escaping in the puff of anger. "What's wrong with you? Why would you just get up and walk away?"

"I..." He looks like he doesn't know the answer to that either. "I don't know. It made me mad, hearing what you said."

"When you get angry," I sputter around a nose full of mucus, "you say something! You don't get up and walk away!"

"I'm sorry," he says. "It was too much in the moment."

I inhale shudderingly. Aksel hands me his napkin. I press the fabric to my face, not exactly blowing into it, but letting it absorb the moisture leaking from my nose.

Asshole, I think, but I don't say anything. I don't say I hate you either, even though my tongue is itching.

Aksel leans forward; reaches for my hand. This time, he curls his fingers around mine and leaves them there. I barely dare to breathe, expecting him to jump away again, scalded.

He doesn't.

"I wish you'd told me before," he says quietly. "How you felt."

I snort at this, the noise muffled through the napkin I'm still holding. Up against my face like this, it feels like a protective barrier. I have no interest in lowering it, even though my sniffles have run out by now.

"I've been telling you how I felt since the day I met you," I say. The problem with our relationship had been that I'd told him too much. Been too brutally honest about how much I'd hated Finland at the time. "You always said the same thing – Don't worry about what other people think. They don't matter." I shrug to punctuate the sentence. "Telling you didn't help anything. It just made you sick of listening to me whine about the same things over and over."

"I didn't think you were whining," he says.

"But you did get sick of it," I counter.

He falls silent. He can't deny it. He's admitted as much since.

Finally he asks, "Is that why you didn't tell me?"

I pull my hand out of his and sit back. "I didn't tell you a lot of things," I say. "But you were already tired of the things I did tell you." I shrug again, like it doesn't hurt me to remember.

He doesn't withdraw his arm. It lies on the table between us, white against the oak. I tear my eyes away.

"I'm sorry," he says, after a long pause that feels like he has been weighing words in his head. "I should have known. I knew how you always felt out of place, back in Edinburgh – and even in Hamburg. I should have known, but... I wanted to think it would be different for you in Helsinki."

A smile leaks out of me. Aksel has always been supportive – not always understanding, but always supportive. This doesn't mean he hasn't tried his hardest to understand.

"That's because you belong here," I say, but without the rancour that might have tainted the words before. "You forgot that I don't feel the same way."

He opens his mouth, but I hold up my hands in surrender, to ward off the protest I see coming. "I'm not being sarcastic. I'm just saying – we see things in very different ways. And that's normal. You don't fully understand the way I feel, why I care so much about not fitting in or about being stared at, because you didn't grow up experiencing the same things I did. There are things I'm sensitive to that you don't even notice." I shrug. "And there are things you notice that I don't. We are different. That's all there is to it."

I pick up my spoon, taking care that my hand doesn't tremble, and tuck back into my soup. I don't look at Aksel. I can't.

"I've been thinking about that," he says, when I'm two mouthfuls in. I swallow and hover over my food, waiting. "Since we broke up." He stops again, as if saying it out loud requires its own moment of silence. "About how different we are – the way we think, the way we act."

I smile mirthlessly at my soup. Tell me something I haven't already figured out.

"We should have talked more," he says. It sounds like a sigh. A sigh filled with unsaid words. "Really talked."

"Yeah."

We're both quiet then. It's easy to look back and play should haves, could haves, but I wonder if things would've been so simple. No, I decide. That would have made things easier, maybe filtered out the resentment, but it wouldn't have changed the outcome.

"You know," I say, in a casual, almost throwaway tone. "All these years since we've met... you've always been telling me that I'm enough."

"Of course you are," he says, after a pause he takes to recalibrate his mind to the change in topic. "You've never believed me, but you are enough."

"You've been saying it since Edinburgh," I say, with a little laugh. "You were the first person to pick up on how I felt without me telling you. It meant a lot."

A frown creases his brow. I know what he's thinking. This sounds like a break-up speech – even if we've already been broken up for a while now.

But maybe this is the speech I should have made back then.

"Still, over time, hearing it from you stopped being enough." I give my soup a slow stir – an excuse to break eye contact. "It needed to come from within me. I needed to believe in it myself."

"What about now?" Aksel asks. "Do you feel like you're enough now?"

That stops me short. I take a sip of soup to slow the moment. "I don't know," I say finally, after I've swallowed and laid my spoon back down. "I haven't been thinking about it lately." I stop, startled by my own words.

He smiles. "That's something, then," he says.

I look at him. His eyes are crinkled, the irises a dancing blue that I haven't seen in a while. He looks younger, lighter, when he smiles like this. Seeing it now makes me remember my original vow – the one I secretly swore when I'd first arrived in Helsinki and seen how much he loves his city. The vow of learning to love Helsinki as much as he does, to keep this smile on his face.

How far we have come since then.

Before I can think – truly think – about the consequences of what I'm about to say, the words are scuttling out of my mouth. "I wrote something."

He blinks, not expecting that. His eyebrows go up.

"It's an essay," I say, speaking faster now. "There's a competition at the uni for international students – an essay we can write about our experiences in Finland so far. I wrote about... how I've been feeling since I got here. I don't think I will submit it for the competition, though. It's too personal." I let my voice drift off. I don't know why I've told him this.

Then he says, "Can I read it?"

I open my mouth – to nothing. I'm not sure I want him to read it. I've written so much about him. How mortifying would it be, for him to pore over the thoughts I've had about him, about our relationship?

As I mentally run through all the possible replies, Aksel sits staring at me. He doesn't push, but he's not taking back his request either. He's waiting for me to make up my mind.

I take a deep breath. "Okay," I say, throwing in a little shrug for a good measure. "Why not?"