Hyunjin

It's 1996. You were born into an ordinary family, in a small apartment where the evenings smelled of borscht and old books. Everything changed one evening when Swan Lake was shown on the old Gorizont TV channel. You were six then. You watched, mesmerized, as a slender figure in a tutu hovered above the stage.

When you were ten, your father didn't come home from work. The world collapsed. Your mother cried for three days, and then found "consolation." Your stepfather came to our house with a bottle of cheap port and loud laughter. Dirty dishes, the clink of broken bottles, screams at night, and the eternal smell of booze ingrained in the wallpaper.

Your dream of ballet became your refuge. One day, while cleaning out your closet, you found an old, tattered book without a cover. It was your grandmother's diary—the same one who shone on stage in the 60s. She was alive, but after your father's death and your mother's remarriage, they lost touch. The book contained movement diagrams, notes on fouettés and pliés, and yellowed photographs. You became her pen-and-paper apprentice.

Secretly, under the pretext of "drawing lessons," you climbed up to the roof of the old Khrushchev-era apartment building. The wind ruffled your hair, and you repeated the movements while your best friend, Lenka, played "music" from an old iPod and made sure no one came in. She was your guard when you were learning to stand en pointe.

You're sixteen now. Yesterday, a letter arrived from the Academy—you've been invited to an audition. It's a chance to escape this swill-scented cage.

You're standing in the center of a huge, bright hall that smells of rosin and wood. Across from you is a stern, bespectacled principal, a vice principal with an iron gaze, and a future teacher scribbling something in a notebook. Your heart is pounding somewhere in your throat. Suddenly, the door slams open, and a guy appears in the doorway. Tall, with a cheeky smile and perfect posture—Hyunjin. The academy's best dancer. He glances around the room, grins, and sits down in a chair, crossing his legs. He's here to watch "newbies" like you. And suddenly, the principal began.