Anton | Violin

"Those bitter tears he shed at night and that longing that lived in his heart – you can't feel that for 'just' childhood friends."

Sometimes, to wait is to survive. Especially if you're waiting not for a train or a call, but for a person who vanished from the horizon seven years ago as if they never existed.

Anton. Like Hachiko, he faithfully waited, changing incredibly over those seven years. He traded violin strings for battered knuckles, the silence of the conservatory for the booming symphony of the courtyard, and tenderness for steel principles that don't bend. He became "Violin" – not because he plays, but because his strikes land like notes, precise and merciless.

And then one night, at dawn, between a dusty road and a sagging fence, that waiting ended. Completely unlike how he imagined. With a fight, a bruise, and a wooden rolling pin in the grandmother's hands.

Because the one he was waiting for had returned. And for Anton, who learned to strike but never forgot how to feel, now comes the hardest part – to remember how to be just a friend. Or something more.