"Emilie."

I jump when I hear him speak – so used have I gotten to the silence that has permeating the apartment since the day I threw all my nasty emotions at him and they stained our kitchen floor bitter.

My heart has started up abruptly. I swallow, half-turning away from the pot of soup I'm heating up. He is standing at the entrance to the kitchen area, palm flat on the counter, looking at me but not entirely making eye contact.

"Yeah?" I whisper. Maybe he's ready to forgive me. Maybe we can finally get past this stalemate we've gotten into.

It takes him a while to get the words out. "It's Midsummer soon, so the gang is going up to Lumi's holiday house for a while. It's in Loikansaari – that's in Savonlinna." At my blank look, he settles for, "It's not that far north – somewhere up and to the east from here." He stops then, like he doesn't really want to ask. "Do you want to go?"

The sauna, I remember. The holiday house that he and his friends go to at least once a year, where they sit around in a sauna and hang out. Sitting around naked with a bunch of people that I barely even know? Especially now, with our circumstances being what they are – it sounds a little bit like hell. My expression must have twisted, or somehow given away my feelings, because Aksel's gaze dips like he can't bear to look at me anymore.

"It's okay," he says quietly. "I'll let them know you're not coming."

You, he says. The lump in my throat has gotten larger and heavier. He didn't even consider staying behind with me.

He turns to go, then hesitates. "Are you sure? The whole of Finland shuts down during Midsummer. There won't be many shops open or..."

Despite my previous reluctance to stay in Helsinki alone while he travels to the countryside with his friends, I can't push down the resentment at how he makes me sound like a child in need of adult supervision. Like I am so utterly inept in Finland that I can't survive without his presence.

"I'll be fine on my own," I say, my voice rising a little as my temper does, as well. "You should go with them."

"Yeah?" His voice has sharpened, too.

"Of course. It's your tradition."

"Yeah," he says darkly, "My tradition."

"You should go," I repeat. "I'll be fine here. You'll probably have more fun without me, anyway."

He doesn't say anything.

"Maybe I'll do something for Midsummer, too," I go on, driven by the hurt bubbling in my throat. "I should fly back to Hamburg while you're gone. What's the point in staying here, anyway?"

There is a buzzing silence. I angrily think to myself that I should have just bitten my tongue out.

"Yeah," he says finally. "Maybe you should do that."

***

"Where have you been? I've barely seen you lately."

I mean for it to be inquisitive – caring, even – but it falls flat. I sound like I'm accusing him of something. It's the first time in two weeks that we're more than passing ships in this apartment, and it's already shaping up to sound like an inquisition.

How have we gotten here?

"I'm sorry," Aksel tells me flatly. Or at least that's what I assume, because he looks as if he's speaking directly to the tabletop.

Over the past two weeks, he has barely been home – I'm not sure if it's gotten busier at work, or if he has been spending more time at the office to avoid me. Today I've gotten home after class to find him sitting at the desk with his head in his hands, staring at the documents scattered across the surface.

I am still standing by the entrance to the room, clutching my book bag. "What are you sorry for?" It's the longest sentence I have spoken to him in a while.

He straightens. But he still doesn't look directly at me. "I've been working more lately, trying to... I put in a transfer to the office in Hamburg. I thought it would help."

I blink, "What?"

"I'm sorry," he repeats. "It didn't work."

"What didn't work?"

"Is it that hard to understand what I'm saying?" Annoyance drips out of every word he is saying. "My request. It got rejected."

I try not to react to his tone. "I didn't know you put in a transfer request."

"You always want to go back to Hamburg. I thought we could move to Hamburg." He shoves the loose sheets of paper away in a gesture of frustration. "It sounded like an easy solution."

I walk further into the room to stare at the papers – the forms – littering the desk. They're in Finnish. I can't read them. "You should have discussed this with me first."

"Why? You don't discuss anything with me."

My mouth is open, but my throat is dry. "I..."

"Shit." Aksel rubs his hand over his face tiredly. He opens his mouth, as if to apologise, then seems to think the better of it.

I swallow.

"I wasn't going to tell you until it was approved." He exhales loudly through his nose. "But it didn't work out."

"Why...?"

"I suppose my boss thinks–"

"No," I interrupt. I don't want to know why his request for a transfer has been rejected. "Why would you want to leave? You like living here."

"You hate it here," he says simply. There is no emotion behind his words – just flat, concrete fact.

I open my mouth to deny it, but I can't quite push the lie off my tongue. After that last breakdown, he wouldn't have believed it, anyway.

"I can quit," he says. He's looking down at the papers, his eyelashes hiding part of his eyes. "I'll quit and look for a job in Hamburg–"

"No," I cut over him, and I hear the harshness of my voice in that one word. "You're not quitting your job to move to Hamburg. I won't let you do that."

Because I can't let him leave for me. He loves Helsinki. He loves his job. And I don't want to admit it, but I'm scared. I'm scared he will be miserable in Hamburg. If even I get this homesick for Hamburg – for a city in which I've never felt like I truly belonged – how would he cope with leaving his home? To him, Helsinki is his dream city: no other place will ever measure up. I couldn't bear it if he feels this way – the way I feel now – for Hamburg. For my city. For my home.

His eyes are downcast as he sits unmoving in his chair. "I don't know what to do. I don't fucking know what to do anymore."

"Aksel," I murmur. When he still doesn't look at me, I approach him slowly. I touch him, tentatively, on the shoulder. He doesn't reciprocate, but he doesn't push me away, either. Gaining courage, I slide myself onto his lap.

I whisper his name again, and he finally looks at me. And I see it – the pain reflected in the blue of his irises as he stares back at me. I lean in to kiss him then, tears gathering at the back of my eyelids.

Because the truth is... I don't know what to do, either.

My lips brush his for the silver of a second, before he turns away and my kiss lands on his cheek. He hasn't shaved since early in the morning, and his stubble pricks my lips.

I lean back, my heartbeat thudding sickly in my throat, my lips parting on choked silence. He has never turned away from me like this before. Even when we hadn't had anything else in common, even before we had gotten to know each other properly, we've always had this.

Without looking at me, Aksel gets to his feet, forcing me to scramble up, too. He stands at the desk, looking down at the surface, running a hand over the papers. The light glanzes off the tip of his nose and the higher curves of his cheekbones, but because he is looking down, most of his face is hidden in shadow. These shadows crawl into every crevice on his face, triumphant in the absence of light. What scares scares me most, though, are the shadows that have settled in his eyes.

Those are the shadows that even light cannot chase away.

I want to reach out to him, to touch him, to let him know I'm still here, that I still care, but the memory of him turning to avoid my lips burns in the forefront of my mind.

So I do nothing, just clench my right hand over my left upper arm, squeezing. As if this physical pain could assuage the one mounting within me right now.

"Do you remember Edinburgh?" He doesn't wait for reply before he goes on. "Do you remember how it was back then?" He picks up one of the loose sheets of papers and looks at it, but I can tell he isn't reading a word. "It was supposed to be just sex, but it wasn't." Here, he stops and presses his lips together for a moment. "We had other things. But now..." He trails off. When he continues, his voice is hard. "The sex can't solve anything now."

"I wasn't trying to..."

"Why are we together, Emilie?" He closes his eyes. I'm glad, because that means he can't see the heartbreak that I'm sure is written all over my face from this one resigned question. He's gone from I can quit so we can move to Hamburg to why are we still together in thirty seconds flat. "Is it just for the sex?"

"No," I counter, feeling the tears spring to my eyes. "We have more than just sex." Even though we haven't been intimate for close to a month now. We barely even speak anymore. Anything else seems, at this point... laughable.

"Yeah?" He seems unimpressed by my statement. "We don't even talk anymore – or haven't you noticed? What else do we have left?"

It suddenly feels like the air has been sucked out of my lungs. Hadn't I just, not long ago, asked myself that exact question? Hadn't I also come to the conclusion that we have almost nothing in common?

"Love?" I whisper finally, even though my voice comes out all wobbly. "We still have that... Don't we?"

He opens his eyes now; stares at me with those light blue eyes that I've always loved. I used to think Aksel had the warmest blue eyes. But now, with his gaze looking right through me, they chill me to the bone.

His silence speaks far louder than anything else he could have said.

***

"You know," Aksel says suddenly on Friday night, so suddenly that it takes me a minute to register that he's speaking to me, and not on the phone or something – like he always is these days. Texting, calling... Talking to everyone other than me.

You're talking to me again? The acerbic words are in danger of leaping off my tongue, but I bite them back. Instead, I clear my throat and make a noncommittal hum from the back of my throat.

"There's a festival this weekend at Kaisaniemenpuisto." When I stare blankly at him, he elaborates, "The park beside the Central Railway Station."

I frown. I know of the park he's talking about – I just hadn't recognised the name. He had said it so quickly that I hadn't even caught the puisto at the back, which I know means 'park'. It is only on every sign at every park I've ever seen around the city. "Oh."

There is a beat of silence, before he starts speaking again.

"It's called the World Village Festival." He pauses, as if he expects me to jump in with some sort of recognition. I have no idea what he's talking about. When I say nothing, he adds, "It's one of my favourites."

He's trying. I swallow. "What's it about, then?"

"It's advocates equality, peace, recycling; being against wars and racism – things like that. There are different cultures, different types of food, and music... There's a bit of everything there." There is a light in his eyes as he describes it to me. He really does like this festival a lot. "The Finnish name for it is something like 'the world visiting'."

"Oh."

That's... interesting.

I never would've thought there would be a festival like that here.

Aksel has stopped talking. The barely-concealed excitement originally stamped across his face has died away. I look up to discover him staring stoically at me, and quickly flick my gaze away. I hope the guilt isn't showing on my face. When he looks at me like this, it makes me feel as if he is staring straight into my brain, reading all my thoughts.

"What were you thinking?" he asks, quietly. I suck in my lips, and then he shakes his head. "Never mind. Forget it. I don't want to know." He turns to go.

"Aksel..." I stay seated on the bed, watching him pathetically.

"The gang and I are going together." He turns back around, but he isn't meeting my eyes. There is a furrow on his brow as he glares a little too hard at the carpeted floor beneath our feet. "I was going to ask if you wanted to come, but I guess you don't."

"I never said that."

"So... Do you?"

Do I want a reluctant invitation like the one he has just thrown out, like someone tossing a pity bone to a starving stray dog?

He reads my silence as a rejection.

"I thought you would like it," he says. "A festival like this."

"Well, yeah." It stands for everything I believe in. "I do like the idea of it."

He knows me well enough to hear it coming. "But?"

"But it's just an idea, isn't it?" I fold my arms across my chest, looking down at the bedspread. "Everything, in theory, can sound nice and good. But reality isn't like that. In the real world, there are still wars; there is still racism; there is still pollution; there is still inequality. Ideas are just ideas. They're not real. They're useless."

Aksel is silent for so long that I lift my head to make sure he's still in the room. He has gotten all too fond of walking out on me lately.

He is still standing there, but he is staring at me with a look that almost makes me wish he had walked away instead. He is looking at me as if he can't for the life of him figure out where I have sprung out from – me and my ridiculous opinions.

He says slowly, "Ideas can change the world."

"Can they? These things will never go away."

As long as humans exist in the world, prejudice and discrimination will, too.

"Even the tiniest change for the better is progress. Even if a festival like this only changes a few people's minds, that's still enough." There is a sudden flare in his eyes. He is not exactly glaring at me, but his forehead is scrunched up and his jaw is tight. "Things don't change overnight. But they do change. And a small step forward is better than none at all."

And I know we aren't talking about global issues anymore.

He's still speaking. "But you need to do something to bring about the change. Nothing changes if you only sit and lament about how nothing is going to change. You have to do something to make things happen."

I turn away, clenching my teeth together so hard, my gums have begun to hurt. It's so easy for him to say things like that. He doesn't have to deal with all of it. He isn't the one who has to deal with being inadequate, all alone, stuck in a foreign country. He has friends. He has a job. He has the language skills, the looks – the ability to blend in here.

I listen to the silence settle all across the room. Aksel stays put by the door. I don't look at him, but I don't need to. I can feel the tension radiating from him, even with the distance in between us.

He wants a fight. I'm not giving him one.

"Forget it," I hear him say finally. "You don't want to go. I get it."

There is a rustle, and then clipped, angry footsteps against the hardwood floor outside.

I turn back to face the doorway, blinking hard. "I want to go, Aksel."

But I'm whispering into thin air.