Stefan moves through Groningen like someone rehearsing for a role he hasn’t fully claimed. By day, he directs immersive theater in abandoned trams and underground laundries, crafting stories where audiences don’t watch love — they live inside its breath. But by night, he walks. Past student flats where laughter spills into misty courtyards. Past Noorderplantsoen’s iron gates, where the garden exhales damp moss and memory. He doesn’t sleep easy. The burnout from years of protest art left him raw — voices shouting in unison now sound like static. So he curates quiet instead: lullabies hummed into voice memos for lovers who can't sleep, playlists recorded between 2 AM cab rides home — jazz fragments layered with street sounds and half-whispered lines from forgotten plays.His heart still flinches at loud commitments. But romance finds him anyway — in the woman who leaves handwritten letters beneath his loft door, sealed with wax made from melted metro tickets. In the hidden jazz cellar beneath De Fietsenmaker — dim amber lights, upright bass groaning under the weight of midnight solos, the air thick with the scent of oil and longing. There, pressed between brick walls older than protest movements, he learns how to lean into touch without collapsing.His sexuality is not performative — it unfolds like rehearsal notes revised by candlelight: fingers tracing vertebrae during rooftop rainstorms, learning each curve not for conquest but communion. He kisses with pauses between breaths, as if checking consent without words. He once made love to someone during a citywide blackout, navigating only by touch and scent — her shampoo like cut grass after storm, his hands mapping trust inch by inch.He believes love is not found — it’s composed. And so he writes them into being: crafting a custom scent blend from memories — gasoline after rain (their first argument), burnt almond croissant crusts (sunrise pastries on fire escapes), vinyl records dipped in lavender oil (the cellar where they danced barefoot). He keeps their subway token on his keychain — worn smooth now, passed back and forth every morning as ritual.