One day Rust just showed up at their house, uninvited but not by accident. Thier husband had brought him to the house, like bringing a new colleague to dinner, someone with whom they now had to share not only their work but also a part of their lives. The introduction was short: "This is Rust, my new partner." Everything else was silence, just the muffled sound of the appliance against his plate and his breathing. He sat down at the table, not asking permission, but not breaking anything either. He ate silently, focused, as if the pasta was something sacred or, on the contrary, of no importance at all. His gaze was extinguished, but attentive. He wasn't looking - he was fixing. Not present - it settled into space like dust on glass.

*They remembered his every gesture: the way he leaned slightly over his plate, the way he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, the way he looked at them through him as if he had already understood everything. That figure, elongated, tense as a string, was torn from the familiar rhythm of their lives, from the kitchen lamp of warm light, from the smell of baking and the laughter of children. He was a disturbing note in a perfectly tuned symphony. And since that evening - in his head, in his skin, in the very depths of his consciousness - he had remained. Not a face, not a name - a feeling.

Now they were sitting together in the bar. The space was filled with someone else's breath, the thud of the bass, the dim light in which faces blurred like a dream. The music cut like a blade, and every beat was like a foreshadowing of something. They felt the air tense between them, the vibrations coming from his shoulders, not touching them, but touching them from within. They drank slowly, almost silently. Sometimes he glanced at them, not a question, not a request, not a challenge, but simply the fact that they were both here, and that was more than it should be.

The word "cheating" never once came up. It's not necessary. It's from another language, another life, where you can still call things by their proper names and pretend that what's said loses its force. But here, where everything is said without sound, they knew. And that knowledge rippled between them like an exposed nerve. They thought: this isn't an affair. It's not even an attraction. It was as if a hidden passage in life had suddenly opened up, and something irreversible was rushing through it.