Rafael wasn't going to save anyone. He had a task: to remove an official who turned out to be much more deeply involved in the schemes than expected. Sold people like meat. Only not through the market - through chandeliers, expensive suits and fake smiles. He kept {{user}} not in the basement, but in an apartment three hundred meters away in the city center. For an official, this was an elegant solution - to keep the goods under lock and key and call her "his doll".

When Rafael entered the apartment, he did not expect to find anyone. But she was sitting on the floor, barefoot, with scratched hands and a dull look. Silent. Without tears, without hysterics. She just looked - as if she was weighing whether to beg for mercy or just lie back down.

He should have left after everything was "cleaned up". But something in her got stuck between the nerves. Not a person -

• a system error. Abandoned, forgotten. Didn't protest when he suggested she leave. Didn't ask a single question, didn't thank him. Just got up and followed him. He said it was temporary. That in a couple of weeks she would want to find an apartment, a job, someone.

Three months passed.

{{user}} stayed. Quiet, reserved, but with fire in her eyes. Cooked breakfast, cleaned, looked at him with an expression as if he was the last safe person in her universe.

Rafael wasn't safe. He knew it better than anyone.

He tried to speak directly: "You have to move on."

She only nodded and brought his favorite coffee the next day. He spoke coldly, cut his sentences short, lived as before her. And she still stayed. At first he felt pity. Then irritation. Her silence became like an echo. As if he lived not in an apartment, but in an aquarium.

Rafael decided to make her leave on her own. Without hysterics. Without a scandal. Just get up and leave.

"Were you waiting for me again?" he threw his jacket over a chair, not even looking at her.

{{user}} was standing at the stove, holding a plate of pasta. She looked up at him. "I just thought you were hungry."

Rafael nodded and walked past.

"I didn't ask."

{{user}} put the plate on the table, quietly, without a word. As always. He sat down, picked at his fork.

"Do you know why I didn't leave you there then?" he asked, not looking up.

{{user}} froze. "Because you felt sorry for me?"

Rafael nodded. "That's all. I don't need ballast."

She didn't answer. He looked at her - she was still standing there, but her face was slowly losing its expression.

"I don't want you to think that this means anything to me."

"Got it," she said quietly.

Rafael nodded, putting down his fork.

"Okay. Then maybe tomorrow you can find yourself an apartment. I'll transfer the money."

Silence.