People are staring again.

I look down at my boots as we walk on, refraining from pulling my hand out of Aksel's in a knee-jerk reaction.

I can feel the weight of the stares falling on me, hitting me all over like tiny pebbles – one or two don't hurt, but when there are so many, all at once...

I'm so busy inside my head that Aksel has to squeeze my hand a couple times before I look up at him. Only then do I realise that we've stopped in front of a drugstore.

"I have to get some..." He looks at me, then presses his lips together in a sheepish grimace. "I'm getting some cigarettes," he says.

"I thought you quit long ago." I don't know how to react to this. Didn't he say that he only smoked when he was stressed? Is he still stressed because of me? He doesn't smoke that often, I know – I would smell it on him otherwise.

"I–" Aksel cuts himself off and exhales noisily. "I think it's going to take some time for me to quit again."

"I don't like you smoking," I say quietly, looking down at the ground.

"I know. Sorry."

I wrap my arms around myself, not looking at him.

"You'd rather wait outside, then?"

I nod. Then I look at him beseechingly. "Can't you do without? You don't smoke that often... right?"

"No, I don't." But he looks torn. He keeps glancing back at the doors to the store. "But... sometimes..."

I shrug and turn away. I suppose everyone has their vices. I just hope Aksel gets his under control soon.

I wonder what mine is. Overthinking things, perhaps.

"I won't take long," he says, then hesitates. "Will you be okay here?"

Alone, is what he means.

"It's fine," I say, trying to smile at him. "I'll wait for you outside."

I keep my expression light until he vanishes into the store. Then I glare at the closing doors as if they have personally offended me.

I know he doesn't mean anything when he asks questions like this. But these questions are so annoying. Why wouldn't I be fine alone? I have been surviving just fine since I moved out of my parents' house at eighteen. I am not completely useless on my own.

But it's not Aksel's fault. It's mine. I just wish he wouldn't act like this around me. Ever since we came back from Hamburg, he has been acting strangely.

I catch him staring at me sometimes – a pensive, unblinking stare not unlike the way he used to stare at me back in Edinburgh. And when I smile brightly at him, he doesn't always smile back immediately. Sometimes he looks almost irritated.

"Hey. Excuse me?"

I look up and see a guy about my age, smiling uncertainly at me. "Do you speak English?" he asks.

I try to hide the irritation that flares up at this innocent question. "Yes," I say. "Why wouldn't I?"

The stranger looks taken aback. Realising I sound almost hostile, I plaster a smile across my face and revise my statement. "I mean, yeah, I speak English."

"Great!" he says. "I've heard there's a good Japanese restaurant around here that serves authentic sushi. Do you by any chance know where I can find it?"

Must be a tourist, with that accent. He doesn't sound Finnish at all. Or even European, for that matter.

I shrug. "I'm sorry, I have no idea. I'm not from here," I add apologetically, to justify my absolute ignorance despite the fact that I've been living in Helsinki for a while.

"Any Asian restaurants that you know of nearby, then?"

"Sorry, I can't help you there." I spread my hands in a helpless gesture. "I think there should be some Asian food places near the city centre."

"With authentic sushi?" He seems strangely insistent on this point.

I shrug again. What do I know about authenticity, anyway? And besides, why is he so adamant about finding authentic Japanese food in Finland? Shouldn't he be more interested in finding some traditional Finnish restaurants, instead?

"I don't know," I say, with a half-grimace. "Sorry. I don't really know what constitutes authentic Asian food."

"Well... But you're Asian, aren't you?" He's smiling at me, and it's an innocent question, but his words spark a fierce flash of anger in me.

"I'm not Asian," I say angrily, my voice over-harsh even to my own ears. "I'm from Germany."

He blinks. "Oh. But..." Then he decides against saying what he originally planned to, his expression smoothing out into cool politeness. "I see. Sorry about that."

I feel embarrassed now, at my outburst. I'm not just embarrassing myself here – I'm embarrassing both Germans and Asians with my actions. Over here, I represent them all. I fully belong to neither, but I still represent both groups.

From behind me, I hear Aksel speak up. He must have come out sometime during my conversation with the stranger. "There's a restaurant called Zen Sushi right down the road. It's run by a Japanese couple, so it should be the authentic place you're looking for."

The tourist casts me a look that seems to be asking, why does a full-blooded Finn know more about authentic Asian cuisine than you? But he doesn't say anything to me; he speaks only to Aksel now, transferring his previous friendliness onto him.

I stand to the side, listening to them talk, biting my lip from the inside to stop myself from sulking too obviously. Why did I have to say that? He's not the first person to assume I don't belong here. I should be used to it. I don't belong here, anyway.

Before the tourist leaves, he shoots me a hesitant look, then lifts his arm to include me in his goodbye wave. But he doesn't speak to me again.

"You are Asian too, you know," Aksel says quietly to me when we are alone.

I don't say anything, but I bite on my lips for a moment. Then I blow out a breath and roll my eyes at him. "Yeah. I know. But what sort of a question was that? Why should I know what authentic sushi tastes like? I've never been to Japan."

Aksel smiles a little. "And why was he looking for it in Finland?"

I blink at him, then jab my finger in his direction, forgetting that it's impolite. "That's exactly what I was thinking!"

Aksel shrugs, one shoulder jerking up and then falling back down. "Tourists are weird sometimes." He reaches out for me, palm up.

"Exactly," I say, slipping my hand into his, stoutly ignoring the glances that action gets us, from the people happening to walk past. I know we're not being politically correct, making fun of tourists together, but it makes me feel – for a brief moment – that we're a team. Instead of me being a foreigner, an immigrant, it's us against the rest of them.

And it feels good.

***

"Maybe that's why people become xenophobic," I say to Aksel sometime later that week. I've been turning the idea over in my head over the past few days, feeling slightly bad about my sense of superiority over the tourist while simultaneously wondering why it had felt so good. "Or racist."

We're out at a restaurant for dinner, and Aksel blinks at me, bemused by my non-sequitur. "What?"

I shrug, even as I'm concentrating on cutting my elk steak into tinier pieces. "I was just thinking. It feels good to belong to a group..." I pop a piece of meat into my mouth, chew, then swallow. Aksel is still staring at me quizzically, his ministrations to his own steak put on hold as he waits for me to continue.

"I mean," I start again, waving my fork in the air before I catch myself and lower it back to my plate. "People like to feel like they belong, right? And when they belong to a certain group, they discriminate against others not like them. It helps them prove to themselves that they belong more than these other people."

Aksel doesn't look impressed by my theory. "That's a fucked up way to act."

You do it too, I want to point out, but I swallow my words with my steak. He doesn't consciously mean to, and he doesn't identify it as xenophobia, but even he has joked about foreigners several times.

"Maybe it's a natural human instinct," I say. "To want to further differentiate yourself from people that are different from you."

"At the end of the day," says Aksel, "Everyone is human. Everyone is alive and is trying to live their life. Why should we say only a certain group of people deserves to be in a certain place?"

"Of course we shouldn't," I say. "But when has that ever stopped people? I'm just saying that maybe it's human nature, that's all."

"I don't think people in Finland are like this."

I'm starting to get annoyed. "Just because you don't see it happening, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. You won't experience it here, because you are a Finn. It's the immigrants who will be experiencing it from people like you."

"So, now it's people like me."

Now he's sitting back in his chair, staring hard at me as I chew. His arms are folded across his chest, and I'm almost sure that if I take a peek under the table, I'd see his long legs stretched out on either side of my own feet – boxing me in without intruding on my personal space. His cutlery lies flat on his empty plate, the handles resting at a four o'clock position – he's always been a fast eater.

I smile at him sarcastically, even though in the recesses of my mind, I am aware that this conversation is heading in a completely unwanted direction. "You're Finnish. You're privileged here. So, yeah – you're more likely to be discriminating against people than to be discriminated against."

I see my hand starting to tremble, so I clench it into a fist and place it beside my plate. I've lost my appetite. I don't want to start a fight with Aksel. But every word I've said so far is the truth. I turn my face downwards to stare at my food, as if this will make him stop staring at me with those cold blue eyes.

"I don't do that," I hear him say quietly from the other side of the table. "I've never once told you – or anyone else – that they don't have the right to be here. Or that I deserve to be here more than them. Never."

He has a point there. He has always been the one to tell me that I belong anywhere I choose to be.

Suddenly, I don't want to be having this discussion anymore. It's not really him that I'm railing against per se. It's the state of society.

"Do you want some dessert? Or coffee?" I ask him.

He ignores my question. "Is this what you think of me? As some kind of privileged group who looks down on others?"

I violently pierce a bite of potato with my fork. "Are you sure this is a conversation we should be having now?"

"No, but you were the one who brought it up."

"Well, what do you want me to say?" I snap then, forgetting to moderate the level of my voice in my agitation. People all around the restaurant are turning to look at us. "That I think you're privileged, that's why you have a blinkered view of Finland? That you'll never understand me? Is that what you want to hear?"

His hands are gripping the edge of the table. The Finn in him must be mortified at my outburst. But his voice is flat and low when he grits out, "No. It's not what I want. But if you really think that way, I'd rather know."

I subside and go back to my food, blinking hard. This is all my fault. If I'd left well enough alone, we could be having a nice, peaceful dinner together. Instead, I had to ruin it by bringing up things that I cannot control. Things that activists all around the world are trying hard to change.

"After two years together," he presses on, "You really think we're in two different groups? You think that I secretly think you don't belong here, just because I was born here and you were not?"

I let my cutlery clatter onto my plate. "That's not what I'm saying!" I exclaim, no longer caring if everyone else is watching us. They want to stare? I'll give them a show. Maybe I can even start collecting money for it – 2€ for every gawker. At least I'll have a source of income then.

Aksel's jaw is clenched. Whether it's from the scene I'm making or the fight we're having, I don't know. But I feel a flush rising in my cheeks. The back of my neck is prickling from all the stares aimed in our direction.

Aksel must have had the same thought, because he lifts his hand to wave the waiter over, and we pay for the bill without another word. Then he gets up and strides to the exit without waiting for me.

By the time I push through the restaurant's doors, he is already halfway down the street. I wrap my arms around myself and trail in his wake.

This is just like that time back in Edinburgh. Back when Tatiana and the others, in a misguided attempt at match-making, had left the two of us behind alone at Camera Obscura, and we'd ended up going for our first meal together.

Back then, he had walked far ahead, with no regard as to whether I could catch up with him as well.

But ever since we've gotten together, Aksel has always slowed his pace to walk by my side. His legs are so long – he could easily cover more than twice the distance I can in the same amount of time. But he always waits for me. He rarely ever walks on ahead and leaves me behind, unless he's furious. Like now.

He has covered so much distance, I can barely see him. It's cold and dark, and he is too far away.

But I'm angry too, so fuck him. I don't care. I can find my own way home if I lose him – I have my phone, my data plan, my Google Maps app. I don't care. I don't need him to wait for me.

Yet, even as I think this, I can feel something clench in the pit of my stomach, and I bite my lip to stop it from trembling.

It's my fault, I know. I could have phrased it better, not made it sound like a personal attack. It's just that it's been a hugely relevant topic all my life, further exacerbated by my move to Helsinki. But it's a new topic to Aksel. He has never thought of his beloved Finland in that way before. He doesn't see the dark parts of it. It must have come as a shock that I would see things that way.

I round the corner, and see that he has stopped. He is standing by the wall, watching me silently, waiting for me to speak first.

I look up into his face. He looks so expressionless, so remote. Like he doesn't even care.

Someone hurries around the corner, and we both move closer to the building to let him pass. After the footsteps fade away, I purse up my lips and return my gaze to Aksel. He stares back.

"I don't know what you want me to say," I say. "I'm not trying to attack you personally. But you have to admit that there's a lot of racist and xenophobic bullshit happening in the world, and some of that bullshit happens in Finland as well."

This isn't a conversation we should be having on the corner of the street, either, where anyone could walk past at any second. But it is something we have to sort out.

Aksel shoves his hands into his pockets. "Yeah," he says then – quietly, honestly. "You're right. I didn't like hearing it about my own country. But that's not what pisses me off."

I want to ask, but the matter-of-fact tone he says the last sentence in has frozen my tongue.

"It's not me against you. It never has been." He closes his eyes, one hand coming up to pinch the bridge of his nose. "I've always been on your side. If you can't see that..."

He exhales, and opens his eyes to look at me.

"Have I ever said anything to make you think you don't belong here? I've done everything. I tried to help you with learning Finnish. I introduced you to my friends. I keep telling you, over and over, that you should be proud of both your cultures. And to hear you accuse me of being in that other group, like I'm the enemy... Frankly, it sucks."

This is the most eloquent I've ever heard him. My heart is clenching in my chest. It hurts to see him like that. I want to reach up, smooth out the frown on his brow. I want to stand on my tiptoes and kiss him, gently, on the eyelids. I want to hug him, so hard, so long, that we become so entwined that it will be impossible to discern any visible differences between us.

The tears spring into my eyes as I look at him. Because he's right. Yes – there is a war out there that we all have to fight. There are people out there who need to be stopped. But Aksel is one of the good guys. It's not fair that I'm heaping all the sins of other racists and xenophobes on him. I'm stereotyping too.

"I don't think you're the enemy," I whisper, and take a step towards him.

Something shifts in his eyes, and then he's leaning forward. I look down, pressing my lips together, just as his hand comes up. He brushes my tears away with two swipes of his thumb.

Then I feel his arm snake around my waist, before he bends down and drops two quick, light kisses on my eyelids.

My head jerks up. Our gazes meet and hold. He lets go of me and takes a step back, but even as he moves away, he never once takes his eyes off mine. And I suddenly feel warm all over, even though the wind whipping at my cheeks is still cold.

"I'm on your side, Emilie," he says quietly, "I want you to be happy. And I'm trying in every way I know how to make you happy."

"There are things you just can't change, though. Sometimes, it's just..." I gesture vaguely with my hands.

He sighs.

I don't like it when he sighs like this. Like I am exasperating him. Like I'm a puzzle he can't figure out, and is thinking of giving up on trying. I reach out and tug at the sleeve of his coat, as if this one action will help to pull him back towards me.

He has been staring out into the distance, but he looks back at me now. He holds his hand out to me, and I put my hand in his. We stand there for a moment, connected at that one point, but each deep in our separate thoughts.

Finally, I hear him murmur, "I don't know what to do for you." He is staring at the ground as he says this, standing slightly hunched over, the way tall people do, after a lifetime of ducking to enter through low doorways and bending to look short people like me in the face. He refuses to look at me now, and I know it's hard for him to admit this.

"You don't need to do anything." He's done enough already. I'm the one who needs to be doing something now, to change the state of things. "It's me. I need to do more." We are no longer talking in general terms. Or maybe we never were, even from the start. Maybe this entire conversation has been about us all along.

He turns away, to look out towards the street again. "But it's not enough," he says softly. You're still not happy."

"That's not true."

He doesn't say anything in response to my weak denial. At his silence, I can't stop the tendrils of anxiety from creeping into the capillaries in my lungs.

Aksel is, by nature, not a chatty person. And neither am I. Silence makes up a large portion of our relationship. But there's a difference. Usually, even when we don't speak, there's still a sense of connection between us. The silence ties us together. It's a comfortable sort of silence.

This silence is different.

This silence hurts me a little.