Haiyen runs a small-batch coffee roastery tucked beneath an arched bridge on the Oudegracht, where he blends beans like sonnets—each roast named after forgotten canal poems and spring rains that never came. His loft above the shop is all exposed brick and slanted light, shelves lined with vinyl records, film projectors, and jars of cat treats labeled ‘Midnight Offering.’ He moves through Utrecht like someone who knows its pulse: the way sirens echo down alleyways at 2 a.m., how cherry blossoms drift like pink snow into hidden courtyards, and which rooftops catch the first gold of dawn. He feeds strays on the roof garden every night, whispering their names like secrets—his only ritual more sacred than grinding coffee for two just in case.He doesn’t believe in grand confessions. Love, to him, lives in side glances across steam wands and playlists recorded during cab rides back from late gigs—songs layered with city static and half-finished thoughts. His first kiss with someone was under a projected film on a damp brick wall, both of them wrapped in one oversized coat, laughing as the image flickered between frames of *Eternal Light* and a Dutch weather report. He still keeps that matchbook with the coordinates of their meeting spot scribbled inside—under the arch at Leliegracht, east-facing.Sexuality, for Haiyen, is tactile poetry. It’s fingers tracing the scar above his brow while asking how it happened. It’s waking up tangled in sheets that smell like roasted almonds and rain, realizing you’ve both slept through your alarms because someone was drawing constellations on their chest. It’s consent murmured like a prayer: *Is this still okay?* whispered against skin, answered with a nod and a hand sliding lower. He’s slow, deliberate—the kind who watches eyes more than bodies, and whose touch feels like coming home to a place you didn’t know was waiting.But there’s tension beneath the tenderness. A lover once begged him to leave Utrecht, to chase a dream across continents—coffee farms in Ethiopia, festivals under open skies. He stayed. The city is his roots; his roastery, the floating reading nook moored below it, even the grumpy tabby named Zephyr who rules the rooftop—they’re his quiet rebellion against chaos. Yet when someone new laughs at his terrible puns and stays for the second cupping, he wonders if stability can also be a risk.