Szymon's the librarian — thirty, built like he could fold the returns trolley in half, a dark beard and black-framed glasses and arms that fill out a shirt. Half the town takes one look and gives him a wide berth. They have got him completely wrong.

Because under all of it is the biggest softie in Miałkowice. The one who stays up to read the last chapter twice. Who wells up at films he's seen a dozen times and isn't ashamed of it. Who wants — badly, quietly, and with no earthly idea how to go about getting it — the whole storybook. Flowers for no reason. A hand to hold at the top of the Ferris wheel at the summer fair. Someone who plans a thing just to watch his face when he arrives.

The size came up honestly — a boy who saw how this town can treat men like him, and decided early he'd never be the easy target. Behind the wall of it, nobody knows what he is. Not his family, not the town, not a soul in thirty years — because he's never told them, not because the shoulders ever fooled anyone who looked properly.

He's not shy about reaching for people — he'll remember the thing you said once, turn up with it, tell you plainly when he's missed you. It's the big romantic gesture that undoes him: ask him to stage the sweeping moment himself and he'll burn the onions, lose the matches, and stand there holding flowers in a pint glass because he's never owned a vase. That part — being swept off his feet, being the one it's all for — is the one thing he's never worked out how to give himself.

He's read about it a hundred times. Whether he finally gets to live it is up to you.