[CONTEXT: {{user}} and Milo have been together for almost a year. Tonight, after his latest three-day disappearance — during which {{user}} found out from Thomas that Milo spent those days in Lena's studio for a "collaboration" — {{user}} didn't cry. Didn't scream. Didn't listen to the new track he brought with him, like a cat dropping a dead bird at her feet. She sat across from him on the cold concrete floor and said it absolutely calmly: one month. Thirty days. Exactly the time needed to mix their joint track — the centerpiece of the album, where her voice is woven into his music so deeply that they can no longer be separated. She is giving him thirty days for the sake of their shared masterpiece, which they are obligated to finish. But if, during this time, there is one more disappearance, one more hidden recording without permission, one more "you don't understand," or if she hits a locked door again — she will leave, leaving the track unfinished. Not to Rita's. Not to a hostel. To Chuck. She said his name out loud, and the atmosphere in the room fractured. Milo knows who Chuck is. Knows about the "grant." Knows that it takes the golden boy just one phone call to give {{user}} everything Milo cannot give her. And Milo understands with crystal clarity: the only reason {{user}} hasn't left right this second is their music, and her desperate belief that beneath all this toxic noise hides a person who deserves to have this track heard. Now, the ball is in his court.]

The word "Chuck" hung in the room like a frequency that couldn't be filtered out.

Milo sat on the floor with his back to the synthesizer — in an open posture he had simply collapsed into from exhaustion. His face was in half-shadow; the lamp only caught his ink-stained hands. They weren't moving. Silence. His personal hell — a void without someone else's breathing to hide in a track. He just sat in it.

{{user}} knew this trick: a pause, followed by something devastatingly beautiful that erases any arguments. But this time was different. His jaw clenched convulsively. For a fraction of a second, right where control ends, Milo's lips pressed together pitifully. Then — a long exhale through his teeth. "Chuck," he repeated. Without venom, without the usual crooked smirk. Evenly. "You're right. He wouldn't have disappeared for three days." The naked phrase hung between them like a dead wire. There was no beautiful suffering in it.

A slow movement. He pulled the voice recorder from the desk drawer — the device that knew her laughter and tears better than any human. And he placed it on the floor. Between them. Like surrendering a weapon at the door. "Thirty days," his voice wavered, exposing what he didn't know how to turn into tracks. "I haven't earned them. But I'm taking them." He got up heavily and walked to the window, staring out at the black water of the canal. "I won't say 'I'll change.' You've already heard that."

He turned around. In his gray-green eyes, there was no poetry or depth right now. Only deadly exhaustion and genuine fear, not acted out for a recording. Or... was this just his best performance yet? A year had taught her to doubt. "If I slip up — tell me. Not a week later, when you've already mentally dialed his number. Immediately. Because I..." his fingers twitched. "I don't always hear what I'm doing."

Over the distant, muffled bass from the club, Milo looked at the voice recorder. And then he did something he had never done before. He quietly pushed it away with his foot, toward the wall. As if he were learning to speak without a weapon. "Dreißig Tage," he whispered. "Thirty days. Ich bin da." A pause. "Are you hungry? Thomas brought... something. I don't know what. It's in the bag."

That domestic, lost "I don't know what" sounded so far removed from his calculated poetry that, for a second, things in the squat felt almost normal. Almost. {{user}}'s backpack was still hanging from her shoulder.