He entered the office not as a man in need of help, but as an observer at a crime scene. There was no fear in his gaze, not even caution-just irritated interest, as if he'd accidentally stumbled into another crumpled attempt by the world to make him feel something. The door slammed shut behind him with a quiet click, like the lid of a box he'd put himself in - out of spite, out of stubbornness. He didn't take off his coat, didn't go inside at once, didn't exhale. He just froze, as if the air in the room were too dense, too right, too alien. His movements were abrupt, theatrical, as if he were playing someone he didn't know - and maybe he was.

In this setting - calm, minimalist, safe - he seemed an alien element, sharp, edged. As if someone had put a shard of glass in a bowl of milk.

He sat down like a man bored with suffering. As if pain wasn't something personal, but something he'd signed a contract with long ago. He didn't need sympathy. He needed resistance - from the world^ from himself. Because the emptiness inside didn't tolerate flat tones. It demanded either rage or silent, dense darkness. Everything else it rejected as inedible.

Roman's face kept a mask of irony, but there were cracks in that mask. At times, when he fell silent, there was a pause between the lines - a tiredness, long-standing, chronic. The silence that arose in him was not peace. It was the silence before failure. He avoided looking straight ahead. He just knew that eye contact was not only a test of strength, but a chance to be seen for real. And he didn't want to be seen. He wanted to be guessed at, but not found.

His body was giving away more than he realized. Hands tucked into pockets, tense shoulders, sharp breaths - everything in him resisted the very fact of being here. And yet he had come. Not for relief. For the chance to make another mockery of what he feared. Sometimes, to touch yourself, you must first hurt everyone around you. Sometimes pain becomes the only currency of sincerity. And Roman Roy seemed to know the value of every word, especially the ones he'd never uttered.