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The first day, Luca thought it was just a break.

He sat at his desk in the late afternoon, cold coffee at his elbow and the Rapidograph in his hand. The tracing paper was white, pristine, ready to receive the longitudinal section of an industrial loft that the professor had assigned as a final exercise. But his hand didn't move. His eyes, instead of focusing on the construction lines, drifted toward the wall. Toward the wall. Toward 3B.

There were no sounds. The shower had been off since that morning, when Luca had left Ethan's apartment with the taste of bitter coffee still on his lips and the weight of a new silence in his stomach. But the silence of the morning was different from that of the afternoon. The morning was still filled with echoes: the memory of Ethan's breathing, the warmth of the sheet, the shadow that had passed across his face when the phone had vibrated. The afternoon, however, was empty. An absolute, geometric void that seemed to expand from the dividing wall and invade the entire 3A.

Luca put down his pen. He stood up. He walked over to the wall and pressed his ear to it, as he had done in the first few weeks, when 3B was still uncharted territory. Nothing. Not the sound of footsteps, not the gurgling of the shower, not the low music filtering through the plaster. Only the silence of an empty apartment or of a man who doesn't want to be heard.

On the second day, he sent a message.

Simple, almost neutral: "Is everything okay?" Written on Instagram, in the chat they'd used for the game, for the blurry photos, for the words laden with double meanings. The message remained open for hours, then for a whole day. No response. Luca stared at the screen until the light hurt his eyes, until the nameless profile picture, that muscular back drenched in sweat, burned itself into his retina like a religious icon that doesn't answer prayers.

On the third day, 3B appeared dead.

Luca passed the doorman in the courtyard as he was returning with his groceries. He was a stocky, elderly man in a blue apron, with the look of someone who'd watched tenants pass by for decades without ever remembering their names. Luca stopped. He didn't know why, but he did.

"The boy from 3B," he said, with a nonchalance that rang false even to his own ears. "He's nowhere to be seen."

The doorman looked up from the flowers he was watering. His small, black eyes rested on Luca with a curiosity that was neither friendly nor hostile. Just alert.

"The personal trainer?" she asked, her tone seeming to emphasize something. "He left. Two, three days ago. He left his keys at the concierge's office, saying he'd be gone for a week."

Luca felt something tighten in his chest. Not pain, not yet. Just a contraction, an internal wall rising.

"Did he say where?"

The doorman shook his head. Then, with a slow gesture, he resumed watering. "No. But..." He paused. The water fell on the flowers with a dull sound. "He had a visitor. Before he left. A guy. Tall, blond, dressed too well for this building. They talked in the hallway. Then the guy from 3B came down, left his keys, and drove off."

Luca remained still. The grocery bag weighed heavily in his right hand, his fingers curling around the plastic until his nails left imprints. A guy. Tall, blond, dressed way too well. And Ethan walking away with him.

"Thank you," he said, his voice coming from a distant place.

The doorman nodded, but before Luca could leave, he added, "The boy from 3B... he's a good guy. But he has the eyes of someone who's seen too much. Be careful, though. This building is full of thin walls."

Luca didn't answer. He crossed the courtyard, entered the building, and went up the stairs. He didn't use the elevator. He wanted time, he wanted movement, he wanted to be out of breath so he wouldn't have to think.

On the fourth day, Luca discovered the past.

Not through deliberate investigation. By chance, or by that sort of chance that is merely the consequence of desire. She was scrolling through social media with a mechanical finger, without looking, searching for something she couldn't name. And then, in a photo tagged in a local bar, she saw Ethan.

Not the nameless profile. Another, public profile, of a man he didn't know. The name didn't matter. What mattered was the photo: Ethan, perhaps a couple of years younger, with a smile Luca didn't recognize. Not the asymmetrical, provocative smile he'd learned to crave. A forced, strained smile, seemingly painted on a tired face. And next to him, a man. Tall, blond, impeccably dressed. The same person the doorman had described.

Luca scrolled through the posts. Not many, but enough. Couple photos in exclusive venues, on trips, at events. Captions filled with an affection that, in retrospect, sounded threatening: "Mine forever," "I won't let you go," "No one knows you like I do." And underneath, in the comments, the blond man responded with phrases that sounded like love but smacked of restraint: "Come home," "You know you can't live without me," "I'll wait for you, always."

Then, a more recent photo. From months earlier. Ethan alone, in a room Luca recognized as 3B. The deep blue wall was unmistakable, with deep dark circles under his eyes, his gaze lost somewhere off-screen, an empty glass in his hand. The caption: "New beginning. I hope."

Luca closed the phone. He placed it on the desk slowly, as if afraid it might explode. And he looked at the wall.

The wall still existed. Physically. Reinforced concrete, plaster, paint. But now Luca understood there was another wall. An invisible wall that Ethan had brought with him to 3B, that he had carried into his bed, into the shower, into his morning smile. A wall built by another man, brick by brick, with possessive words, with looks that refused to accept the end, with a relationship that hadn't ended just because Ethan had left.

On the fifth day, Luca returned to drawing.

He sat down at the desk, turned on the lamp, and spread out the tracing paper. But the lines didn't converge. The vanishing points, which should have met on the horizon in an orderly perspective, were lost in the void. He looked at the paper and saw 3B. He looked at the ruler and saw the corridor. He looked at the chalk and saw Ethan's face, the shadow that had passed over his features when the phone vibrated.

He threw down the pen. The tracing paper creased. And for the first time in years, Luca felt drawing as a sense of impotence, not power.

On the sixth day, the shower in 3B remained turned off.

Luca no longer approached the wall. He no longer pressed his ear to it. The silence had become a wall of its own, a wall he himself was building around his own desire. But that night, in the darkness of the living room, he felt the emptiness of 3B like a physical presence. An absence that weighed more than any sound.

On the seventh day, Ethan reappeared.

Luca heard it before he saw it. A step in the corridor, slow, tired, different from his usual deliberate, measured one. The thud of a key in the lock. The sound of the door to 3B opening and closing.

Luca was standing in the center of the living room, a glass of water in his hand that he didn't remember pouring. He stopped. His heart beat once, sharply, then seemed to stop.

He waited. He didn't come out. He didn't knock. He waited for the sound of 3B to fill the silence: the shower, the footsteps, the music. But nothing. Just a different silence, that of a man who has returned but is not present.

It was only the next morning that he saw them.

Luca was going down the stairs, the stairs again, not the elevator, when he met Ethan on the second floor landing.

He stood there, one hand on the railing, as if he needed to stop and catch his breath. He wore an open black jacket, a gray T-shirt that hung shapelessly on his hips, and dark jeans. His hair was a few days longer, disheveled, unkempt. But it was his eyes that struck Luca. Those green eyes that the dim light from the landing made gray, lifeless, surrounded by purplish circles that seemed to have been made by sleepless nights, not days of travel.

Ethan saw him. And for an instant, a suspended moment, his face opened. Not in a smile. In a crack, a crevice, a flash of something resembling desperation. Then, with a visible show of strength, his jaw clenching, his eyelids drooping, he closed everything again. The lopsided smile returned, but it was a fabrication, a shell, a reinforced door behind which no one could enter.

"Luca," he said. Just the name. Nothing else.

"You're back," Luca replied. His voice came out neutral, more neutral than he heard.

Ethan nodded. He took a step toward him, and for a moment Luca smelled the familiar scent—sandalwood, leather, something deeper—but now it was altered. There was another scent, chemical, harsh, that Luca couldn't identify. Or maybe he didn't want to.

"I have to..." Ethan began, then stopped. His lips closed, sealed. There was something that wanted to say, something big, weighty, necessary. But the words didn't come out. He remained there, a foot away from Luca, his breathing becoming labored, his hands curling and uncurling into fists at his sides.

Luca looked at him. He looked at those sealed lips, those tired eyes, that jaw that trembled imperceptibly. And he understood.

He understood that the wall between 3A and 3B was irrelevant. That the ajar door, the suspended elevator, the glass shower, the wood of the hallway, all the physical boundaries they had crossed, challenged, dissolved, had been just exercises. Preparations. Rehearsals for the true boundary, the one Ethan carried within himself, built by another man in another life, an invisible wall but solid as steel.

Luca took a step forward. Not toward Ethan, but beside him. He leaned his back against the railing, sharing the narrow space of the landing, sharing the silence, sharing the air that wasn't being breathed but held.

"You don't have to say anything," Luca said. His voice was low but firm. "Not now."

Ethan looked at him. And for an instant, just an instant, the shell opened. The green eyes filled with something liquid, dangerous, human. Then Ethan nodded, just once, and his jaw tightened again.

But she didn't leave. She remained there, next to Luca, on the second-floor landing, with the dim light flickering and the silence of the building enveloping them. Two bodies breathing the same air, separated by a centimeter of empty space. And Luca, his hand trembling imperceptibly on the railing, understood that the game had changed forever.

No longer a game of seduction. No longer a physical conquest. But something more difficult, more dangerous, more real. The demolition of a wall that could not be seen, nor touched, nor pierced with a kiss. A wall that required patience and time and the decision to stay, even when the other disappears, even when the door closes, even when silence weighs differently.

Ethan stepped away from the railing. He took a step toward the stairs, then stopped. He turned. And for the first time since they'd met, his gaze wasn't provocative, it wasn't hungry, it wasn't unsure.

It was a question.

Luca nodded. A small, almost imperceptible nod. But sufficient.

Ethan descended the stairs. Luca remained on the landing, listening to the receding footsteps until they were no longer audible. Then he looked at the wall in front of him. White, dirty, with a vertical crack running from ceiling to floor. A crack he had never noticed before.

He returned to 3A. He sat down at the desk. He picked up the crumpled tracing paper and smoothed it out with his hand. And for the first time in seven days, the hand holding the pen wasn't shaking.

The vanishing point was still far away. But the line was finally beginning to emerge.