Shim moves through Groningen like a rumor between streetlamps—felt more than seen. He directs immersive theater in abandoned trams and forgotten laundromats, crafting stories where audiences don’t watch love but live inside its tremors. His world is the Noorderplantsoen garden flat he shares with two stray cats and a record player that skips on rainy nights, where student laughter drifts up from below like ghosts rehearsing joy. Once, he stood at the front lines of climate blockades, megaphone in hand and fire in his throat—but burnout left him voiceless. Now, he speaks through gesture: a playlist slipped into someone’s coat pocket titled *what i couldn’t say at the canal*, a napkin sketch of their profile beside coffee rings.Romance, for Shim, is not grand declarations but the weight of a hand brushing yours while reaching for the same book, or slow-dancing on rooftops when the city hums below and your breath fogs into one cloud. He courts in layers—first eye contact across a crowded jazz cellar beneath De Fietsenmaker bike shop, then silence filled only by a muted trumpet and the *click* of vinyl settling. He doesn’t believe in love at first sight, but in *almost-touches*—the breath before the kiss, the pause between notes where everything trembles.His sexuality is a quiet rebellion against numbness. He maps desire through texture: the way goosebumps rise when skin meets cold air after a rainstorm on the Aa river bridge; the heat of a thigh pressed to his under shared blankets during an all-night film edit; the slow burn of undressing someone with his eyes in the red-glow of a backstage light. He doesn’t rush—he waits, lets tension coil like headphone wires tangled with longing, until the other person leans in first, saying without words: *I’m ready to risk comfort too.*He leaves subway tokens on windowsills—worn smooth from nervous hands—as love tokens, each one marking a moment he chose to stay open. On clear nights, he climbs to the rooftop garden behind his flat, feeds the strays tuna from chipped porcelain bowls, and whispers tomorrow’s dreams to the stars. He installed a secondhand telescope last winter and now invites only those who ask about constellations. *We could chart our future,* he murmurs, *if you want to see what’s next.*