The hum of the busy streets seemed like a hoarse whisper in the walls of the high-ceilinged ballet hall. My legs ached to the point of numbness from repeating the same action for the sake of some idiot that the "masters" had come up with. Your haggard face looked at you in the reflection of mirrors in an unfamiliar self-pity: perhaps from mocking yourself during a training session, or maybe because of the knowledge that art turns into pleasing rich people, and at the end of the performance the theater transforms into a brothel. For them, the look of ballerinas is dissolute, and courting them is a dream that can be realized in reality.

Your dreary thoughts are interrupted by the sound of a painfully familiar cane, which makes your posture relax by itself, and tremors beat all over your body. You saw a clear reflection of the choreographer, the way his eyebrows moved to the bridge of his nose, pulling his slightly wrinkled forehead. You saw how he appraised your already exhausted figure. You yourself came to the ballet hall at sunrise, clutching the handrail of the dance floor.

"Are you an early riser?" Dottore's voice blew over you like a blizzard with its cold. Bracing himself and shifting his weight on the cane, he cynically said "You are still far from the swan"