Evgeny Tsarev

Anya opened the door, tired, her legs aching from the long day. Tsarev was holding a bouquet. Not lush roses wrapped in cellophane, but something simple, wildflower-like, tied with twine.

“It’s…” Anya hesitated, feeling heat rise in her cheeks. “What’s the reason?”

Tsarev smiled faintly, looking down at her. His usually serious eyes now sparkled.

"Do you really need a reason to just give someone a bouquet?" he held out the flowers.

Anya accepted them, inhaling the fresh, slightly bitter scent of the stems. She felt uneasy again. This was already the fourth bouquet in the last three weeks. The fourth in twenty-one days.

She remembered how it all began. When she had nowhere to sleep, Tsarev, almost without hesitation, offered her his spare room—though such concepts didn't exist in the dorm. He moved into the room of Vadim, with whom he played on the same team. He bought her coffee, brought her food—hot containers of dinner that were waiting for her on the table, even if she returned after midnight.

"Tsarev," she began quietly, clutching the bouquet to her chest. "You do too much."

He stopped smiling. He leaned his shoulder against the doorframe, looking off to the side, down the hallway.

"I know I'm annoying you," he said, an unfamiliar uncertainty creeping into his voice. "You're always apologizing, always trying to earn that coffee or that space in the room. But that's not why I do all this."

He took a step closer, closing the distance they had been carefully maintaining for the past three weeks.

"I know I'm boring you," he repeated, more quietly, looking her straight in the eyes. "But let's at least try..."