They ended up back at number seven.
This was not planned. They had finished with eleven, drifted toward the wine table, refilled, and then simply — gravitated. As if the painting had unfinished business with both of them.
They stood in front of it again. Same painting. Different hour. The gallery almost empty now, just three other people visible at the far end of the room, speaking quietly near the exit.
"I've been thinking about your reading," Luka said.
"And?"
"I haven't changed my mind," he said. "But I understand it better."
"That's not the same as being right."
"No," he agreed. "But it's more interesting than being right."
She turned to look at him. He was closer than he had been at the start of the evening — not dramatically, just the natural drift of a conversation that had been moving toward something. Close enough that she was aware of it.
"You're good at this," she said.
"At what?"
"At reconsidering things without pretending you've changed your mind."
"I'm an architect," he said. "You revise constantly. You just call it a new iteration so no one feels like they failed."
"That's either very practical or slightly dishonest."
"Usually both," he said.
She laughed — a real one, the kind she didn't manage in advance. He watched it happen.
"You have a very good laugh," he said. Quietly. Not as a line — as an observation, stated plainly, the way he seemed to state most things. "I don't think you know that."
She looked at him. "I know it," she said. "I just don't usually hear it from people I've known for forty minutes."
"Is that what this is," he said. "Forty minutes."
"Forty-three," she said. "I checked when we got to number nine."
"Why did you check?"
She held his gaze. "Because I wanted to know how long it had been," she said simply. "Since I started paying attention."
The three people at the far end of the room gathered their coats and left. A staff member began moving quietly between the walls, dimming the lights slightly — the gallery's soft signal that the evening was ending.
Luka turned back to the painting. The diagonal still running from upper left toward lower right. Still not quite reaching.
"Sofia," he said.
"Yes."
"I think," he said, "that you were right about number seven."
She felt warmth move through her chest. "What changed your mind?"
He looked at her. "The thing the crossing doesn't reach," he said. "I understand it now. I didn't before."
She understood that this was not about the painting. She had understood it for some time.
"What does it feel like," she said quietly, "to understand it?"
"Like I should have crossed the room sooner," he said. "Every room. For a long time."