Ilma knew Damir collected model trains. She did not know the railway crossed the dining table, passed between two armchairs, and ended at a station above the drawer he offered for her belongings. She was forty seven and had enough unusual habits of her own not to mock anyone else's. Still, when she tried eating breakfast at the table's corner that first Saturday, she had to move her plate whenever a locomotive and three carriages passed through the plastic landscape.
Damir discussed his hobby with a delight Ilma loved in him. After his divorce he began building models and constructed an entire small town where train arrivals were predictable. His friends called him a big child. Ilma did not want to repeat that. Instead she asked where her laptop might go if she sometimes worked at his place. He indicated a shelf, then noticed it had no room even for a cup, let alone another person's working day.
That evening he suggested spending more time at her apartment. It seemed simple, but Ilma did not want to be the only person adapting a home for their relationship. She said she liked the trains but still wanted a chair she did not have to vacate whenever he opened a tunnel. Damir fell silent. He had expected a demand to remove everything and was already preparing a defense. He did not know what to do with a question that did not attack his hobby but merely requested room for another person.
The following week he invited her to help choose a smaller arrangement. Ilma did not want to manage the town's reconstruction. She sat on the floor passing boxes and listening to stories about stations built from travel memories. One track section could fold away; another could move into the study. Not everything fit. Damir stored some models, surprised that displaying fewer objects allowed him to really see the others. Ilma brought a reading lamp, the first item in the apartment that did not need to be bypassed for a train to pass.
A month later they invited friends for dinner. Plates occupied the table while the railway rested beside the wall. One guest joked that Damir had finally been domesticated. Ilma opened her mouth, but Damir spoke first. He said he had merely expanded the station. Later, alone together, he ran a small train while she read under her lamp. She looked up when it whistled. She did not need to move her book, plate, or herself. She simply waved at him and continued to the end of the page.