An Odd Couple

;He was the most handsome boy at the music college.
;Slender and lithe, with a billowing mane of soft, curly hair and large brown eyes framed by long eyelashes. The moment he stepped into the building, girls would flock to him from all sides—pianists, choral students, beauties one more striking than the next—and each had a pretext ready for striking up a conversation. The best approach was to ask for a small favor: lend me your notes, or your scores, or a textbook, and from there, one word would lead to another…
;He lacked the arrogance typical of exceptionally handsome people, and he would unfailingly fulfill every girlish request, though nothing more. The gaze of his beautiful, slightly nearsighted eyes remained hazy, as if he were constantly preoccupied with some inner thought. And what he was thinking about was music. It was because of music that he had dropped out of the university, where he had been studying in the Department of Physics and Mathematics.
;She, on the other hand, considered herself a plain "gray mouse"—especially against the backdrop of the loud, glamorous beauties for whom the city’s music college was famous. Yet not everyone is meant to be striking; someone has to possess brains—a music theorist, for instance. Despite her academic background, she could never think of a proper excuse to talk to him; this wasn't like solving a complex harmony problem.
;Only once, at the New Year's Eve party, did she muster the courage to speak to him. During the break between dancing sets, he had slipped into an empty classroom and, leaving the lights off, sat down at the piano to play.
;She quietly slipped inside and, leaning her elbows against the glossy black lid of the instrument, began to listen. Growing unexpectedly bold, she paused him to offer a piece of advice: frankly, instead of basic triads, he really ought to be using seventh chords.
— What? How? — he asked, instantly intrigued. — Show me.
;Pulling up a chair beside him, hardly believing her own audacity, she played through a few examples. But right then, a noisy gang of girls from the piano department burst into the room and dragged him off to dance. After the holidays, he didn't even say hello. Whether he didn't recognize her in the daylight, didn't remember her, or simply couldn't see her without his glasses… And soon enough, he disappeared altogether—word was he’d been drafted into the army.
;When he returned from the army, he was a completely different person. The soft curls were gone for good, replaced by stiff, severe mustaches; his gaze had grown focused, and his good looks had taken on a more rugged, masculine edge.
;And as fate would have it, they both ended up in the same student group traveling to the Baltics for the holidays.
;The majority of the company consisted of those same pianists, and she was the sole representative of the theory department. In the tour bus, the very last seat fell to her. He sat somewhere near the front, enclosed in a tight ring of bold, daring admirers. The whole crowd was busy planning evening parties with wine, and that entire festival of life routinely passed her by.
;Then something strange happened. During one of the rest stops, as everyone was getting back onto the bus, he suddenly walked all the way to the very back and flopped down on the empty seat right beside her. They rode in silence. She hardly dared to breathe from shock, while he didn't cast a single glance in her direction.
;“A misunderstanding,” she decided, and for the next boarding, she deliberately planted her heavy suitcase on the adjacent seat.
— Who put their junk on my seat? — he grumbled, shoving the obstacle aside before settling in right next to her.
;Word by word, they started talking, and… they never parted again.
;The Baltic pianists were the first to be baffled:
— What on earth does he see in her?
;That question crossed the minds of everyone who looked at their pair over the years: a striking, handsome man and a quiet, unassuming "gray mouse." Some well-meaning ladies even tried to correct this glaring historical injustice.
;Yet years and decades passed, and they were still together.
— How did you pull it off? — friends would badger her.
;She would have loved to know herself. Once, years later, she decided to clear the matter up once and for all:
— Tell me, back then in the Baltics, do you remember how you sat next to me on the bus?
— Well, yeah. It was my seat.
— But before that, you were sitting up front with all the girls. Why on earth did you move? Did I charm you or something?
— I didn't even know who you were back then.
— What do you mean you didn't know?! Who showed you those chords at the New Year's party?
— I remember the chords. So that was you? It was dark, I couldn't see a thing.
— Then why on earth did you sit down next to me?
— Why are you nagging me? I told you: it was my seat.
;Well, if he couldn't explain it himself, then nobody ever could.