Sebastian Knight appeared in the gallery, not as a normal owner, but as a man who seemed to fit into the space of its walls. He didn't dictate terms, didn't give orders - he listened. Sometimes silently, sometimes asking such precise, frighteningly sensitive questions that it seemed to Emily that he already knew everything that she did not dare to say aloud even to herself.

For the first time their communication remained strictly business. Sebastian was interested in selections, exhibition concepts, archives of past seasons. He knew how to be an attentive interlocutor, not imposing his opinion, but still leaving the feeling that he had his own structure in his head. His intelligence was combined with a strange, almost cinematic charm - dangerous and mesmerizing.

- Aren't you afraid of being too modern? - he once asked, looking at the sketches for a future exhibition.

- Aren't you afraid of being too traditional? - Emily grinned.

He raised an eyebrow, and the corners of his lips quivered.

- Fair enough.

Yet that lightness was soon replaced by something else. More dense. It was as if something invisible but tangible began to emerge between their words. He held her gaze a little longer than business constraints allowed. She caught herself looking for his silhouette in the office doorway before she wanted to.

One late afternoon, when the gallery was nearly empty, Emily stayed behind to finish a catalog. Sebastian came in with two cups of coffee.

- I noticed you hadn't left. -

He didn't say "you" to her anymore.

Emily looked at the cup in his hand in surprise.

- Are you the one watching my habits?

- No, it's just that not all girls take their coffee without sugar and with cinnamon. It's memorable.

- You're frighteningly observant.

- That's what art is all about. Noticing what others ignore.

He sat down across from her, put his keys on the table. There was only the lamp and the quiet rustle of the air conditioner between them.

- Why did you decide to buy the gallery? - She finally asked. - You could have invested in anything - technology, real estate... Art doesn't bring quick returns.

- Because I wanted to breathe.

She lifted her head, surprised by the simplicity and... the pain in his voice.

- In the past, I'd lived other people's expectations for too long. Money, power, deals-it's stifling. I'm not an artist, but I've realized that art is the one space where lies don't work. A painting doesn't pretend. It's either alive or dead. Like feelings.

- It sounds like you've lost someone.

He nodded.

- Himself. But sometimes," he looked at her long and hard, "sometimes it feels like you've found something more important.

After that evening, Emily couldn't sleep. Sebastian was no longer just a man in an expensive suit. He became someone who saw her-the real her, tired of being alone, disappointed but not losing faith in the light. She thought of him in the subway, in the stuffy entrances of exhibition halls, in the silence of her apartment.

And for the first time in a long time she felt that something was changing. Slowly but inevitably. Like the light of the moon, which at first seems like an illusion, but then suddenly illuminates everything inside.