“Kira, can you imagine what joy! Marinka, her husband, and the kids are coming to stay with us for two weeks! They’ll be here in three days already!”
Kira froze with a damp cloth in her hand, the one she’d just used to wipe an already spotless countertop. She slowly turned to her husband. Stanislav stood in the doorway connecting the tiny entryway to their single room, beaming like a polished samovar. His face radiated genuine, puppy-like delight, as if he had just announced a lottery win, not a locust invasion.
“Coming where?” she clarified in a quiet, even voice in which the storm had not yet broken, but a cold draft could already be felt.
“Where do you think? To us, of course!” Stas threw up his hands, amazed at her lack of understanding. “To visit, to see the city. We’ll take the kids somewhere. She says they’ve missed us so much!”
Kira silently laid the cloth on the edge of the sink. Her gaze swept over their thirty-five square meters of living space. There was the room—also the living room, also the bedroom she shared with her husband. In the corner stood their pride and joy—a large fold-out sofa bought on credit. Opposite it—a TV and a chest of drawers. That was it. And there was the kitchen—six square meters where two people could barely pass each other.
“Stas, are you in your right mind?” she continued in the same calm voice that was beginning to make him tense. “To us—where exactly? You going to put them on the ceiling? Or stack them on top of each other? Marina, her husband, and three children. That’s five people. Plus you and me—seven. Seven people in a one-room apartment.”
“So what if it’s one?” He brushed off her logic like an annoying fly. “Tight, but not offended! They’re family! Not strangers! What, we won’t all fit?”
He said it with such sincere conviction that for a moment Kira felt as if she were the one who had lost her mind, not him. As if she were the one failing to grasp some simple, obvious truth, and he, bearer of sacred knowledge about hospitality, was trying to open her eyes.
“Listen to me,” she took a step toward him. “Let’s just count. There are five of them. Where are they going to sleep? On the floor?”
“I’ve thought it all through!” Stanislav declared proudly, as if he had just solved a complex math problem. “We’ll make up our sofa for them—it’s big and comfortable. Marinka, her husband, and the little one will fit there. And we’ll put the older one on an air mattress next to it.”
He paused, expecting applause. Kira remained silent, staring at him with a heavy, unblinking look.
“And us?” she finally forced out.
“We’ll sleep on a cot in the kitchen!” he blurted out his brilliant plan. “We’ll borrow it from Mom. It’s narrow, it’ll fit right between the table and the fridge. Come on, it’s just two weeks! For family we can put up with it. What’s the big deal?”
That was the last straw. Not the fact of the visit itself, not the crowding, but that easy, carefree “put up with it.” She should put up with it. Sleep for two weeks in the kitchen, by the trash bin and the droning refrigerator, stubbing her toes in the dark on chair legs just to reach the bathroom. Give up her one and only bed, her tiny island of personal space, and move into the kitchen vestibule. In that moment Kira’s composure burst like an overheated boiler.
“Maybe we should invite your entire family, then?! Why limit ourselves to just your sister, her kids, and her husband in a one-room apartment?!”
“Kira…”
“Let’s bring your mother too, Uncle Vitya from Saratov with his dachshund, and your second cousin from Voronezh! Why not, we’ll ‘put up with it’! We’ll stick them out on the balcony!”
She grabbed a pillow off the sofa and hurled it with all her might toward her husband. The pillow hit the doorframe soundlessly and fell to the floor. Stanislav recoiled, stunned by such a reaction.
“Easy, easy, why are you getting worked up?” He held his hands up as if shielding himself. “She’s my sister! My nephews and niece! Are they strangers to you or what? I just wanted what’s best—everyone together, like a family…”
“‘Like a family’ is when people respect each other, not turn someone else’s home into a gypsy camp!” Kira wouldn’t let up. “Your ‘what’s best’ means I’m supposed to live for two weeks as a scullery maid in my own kitchen! Did you even ask me?”
His bewildered face, full of genuine incomprehension, only poured fuel on the fire. He truly didn’t understand. He didn’t see the difference between hospitality and self-annihilation. To him it was merely “temporary inconvenience,” a trifle a loving wife should gladly accept for the sake of his precious relatives. He kept talking about family values, about how in his childhood they used to sleep packed on the floor when relatives visited, and how fun it was.
Kira listened, and her fury slowly began to cool, replaced by something far colder and heavier. She realized that yelling at him was like trying to put out a fire with gasoline. He wasn’t hearing her words; he wasn’t taking in her arguments. He lived in a cozy little world where everyone was supposed to be instantly inspired by his rosy ideas, and any disagreement was taken as a personal insult and a lack of love. She looked at him—this grown man who, with childlike spontaneity, proposed turning their home into a free hostel—and understood that arguing with him was pointless.
“You don’t hear me,” Kira suddenly said quietly. There was not a trace of shouting left in her voice, only a level, steely note. “Fine. I’ll explain another way.”
Stanislav blinked, confused. He expected the fight to continue—tears, reproaches—but this sudden quiet and calm threw him off. He even felt relieved, deciding she’d finally cooled down and accepted it. He was wrong. It wasn’t acceptance. It was one side’s capitulation and the beginning of a full-scale guerrilla war by the other.
Without another word, Kira walked past him, went to the dresser, and picked up her laptop. Her movements were precise and deliberate, devoid of fuss. She sat on the edge of the sofa—the sofa that in three days would be someone else’s—and opened the lid. Stanislav watched her in puzzlement.
“What are you doing? Complaining to your girlfriends?”
Kira didn’t bother answering. Her fingers began to race over the keys. A click to open the browser, and the name of a popular free classifieds site appeared in the search bar. Stanislav stepped closer, peeking over her shoulder. He saw her confidently choose the “Real Estate” section, then “For rent,” then “Rooms.” His confusion gave way to unease.
Before his eyes she methodically, letter by letter, began to type up a listing. He read along, and his face slowly lengthened.
“Title: Bed space for rent in a walk-through living room.”
“Text: For two weeks, a cot/air-mattress bed space is available in the walk-through living room of a one-room apartment. Co-residents: a young couple who are practically never home. You’ll have access to a shared sofa, TV, and bathroom. Ideal for unpretentious tourists or business travelers. The atmosphere of a communal apartment and unforgettable impressions guaranteed. Price—symbolic, 500 rubles per day.”
She attached a photo of their room, taken a couple months earlier when they were showing off their new sofa to friends. Then, without looking at her petrified husband, she took a screenshot of the completed listing. She opened her messenger, found “Marina—sister” in her contacts, and sent her the image. And right away, not giving him a chance to recover, she typed a short message:
“Marina, hi! Stas decided to make a little money while you’re staying with us. He’s found you a roommate. He said you won’t mind, and a little extra cash never hurts.”
She hit “send” and set the laptop aside. Then she looked up at her husband. A cold, barely noticeable smile played on her lips. Stanislav’s phone, lying on the dresser, rang exactly ten seconds later. His sister’s name lit up the screen. With unruffled calm, Kira watched as her husband, pale as a sheet, tried to explain something to his enraged relatives.
“Marina, wait… No, you misunderstood!” Stanislav pressed the phone to his ear as if trying to shove it straight into his brain. He turned away from Kira, instinctively hiding his face, blazing with shame. “What listing? That’s… that’s Kira, she… she’s joking! A stupid joke, I agree—she’ll delete it right now!”
He shot his wife a pleading, furious look, silently mouthing: “Delete it!” Kira merely lifted an eyebrow slightly, sitting on the sofa with the composure of a statue. She had no intention of deleting anything. She would see her performance through to the end.
“What do I have to do with it?! I told you, she was joking!” His voice broke into falsetto. He paced the tiny entryway like a caged animal, taking a step toward the kitchen and then back again. “Of course I’m expecting you! What are you saying? Marina! She hung up…”
He slowly lowered the phone. For a few seconds he stood motionless, staring at the wall. Kira saw the tension in his back, the clench of his fists. The air in the apartment grew dense, electrified. Then he turned to her slowly, very slowly. His face was contorted with anger and humiliation.
“What have you done?” he hissed. There was no confusion left in his voice, only cold, concentrated malice. “Are you happy now? You’ve disgraced me in front of my sister! She thinks I was trying to cash in on her, that I wanted to stick some random guy next to her kids!”
“I merely visualized your proposal,” Kira replied evenly, meeting his eyes. She didn’t raise her voice, which made her words sound even weightier. “You proposed turning our home into a thoroughfare. I just put your proposal on the open market. So you could see what it looks like from the outside.”
“That was vile! A low, sneaky stab in the back!” He took a step toward her, looming over the sofa. “We could have just talked!”
“Talked?” She gave a mirthless, bitter smile. “I tried talking to you. Ten minutes ago. I screamed that this was insane. I gave you arguments. But you didn’t hear me. You droned on about ‘putting up with it’ and ‘family ties.’ So no, this isn’t a joke. It’s a visual aid for those who don’t understand words.”
Stanislav looked at her, and in his gaze there was something more than anger. It was the realization that the woman he had assumed to be his quiet, compliant wife turned out to be someone entirely different. Someone with sharp teeth and a steel spine.
“You humiliated my sister!”
“No,” Kira cut him off. “I humiliated you. By showing her how little you value the comfort of your own family. And notice what outraged her. Not that she’d have to live side by side with a stranger. But that she’d have to pay for it. Even a symbolic five hundred rubles.”
It was a clean hit. Stanislav recoiled as if slapped. He opened his mouth to object, but at that moment his phone, still clenched in his hand, buzzed. Then again. And again. Message previews flashed across the screen. Stanislav glanced down, and his face grew even darker.
Kira saw the glowing screen fill with pop-ups: “Mom,” “Aunt Galya,” “Marina—sister”—the group chat of their tight-knit clan was clearly boiling. The news about “hospitable” Stas renting out a bed space as a bonus to the relatives was spreading like wildfire. He was cornered. In front of him stood a wife who refused to back down, and in his phone his own family was tearing him apart, demanding explanations. He was alone against everyone, and he blamed only her for it.
He lowered the phone, and for a few moments an absolute, ringing emptiness settled over the apartment. The phone stopped vibrating. The noise outside subsided. It seemed even the refrigerator in the kitchen had stopped humming. Stanislav stood in the middle of the room, trapped between two fires: the virtual one coming from his phone screen and the real one coming from his wife’s icy stare. He looked at her, and his eyes no longer held anger. They brimmed with despair and wounded pride. He was losing. Losing on all fronts, and the only way to save face was to force her to retreat.
“You will take the phone right now,” he said hoarsely, almost tonelessly, “call Marina and say it was a stupid joke. You will apologize. You’ll say you were in a bad mood, that you got carried away. And you’ll say we’re expecting them.”
He delivered it like an ultimatum. A last attempt to set everything back the way it was, to rewind the tape to the moment when he still controlled the situation and she was his compliant wife. He expected her to break, to realize she’d gone too far, and to obey.
“No,” Kira said.
That one word, spoken calmly and firmly, shattered his last hope. It sounded like a sentence.
“What do you mean, ‘no’?” he asked, not believing his ears. “Don’t you understand you’re destroying everything? My relationship with my family! Our relationship! Do you want my mother and my sister to think I’m henpecked and can’t welcome my own relatives into my home?”
“It wasn’t a joke, Stas,” Kira continued in the same level tone, rising from the sofa. “It was a scream. The only way to make you see the reality you stubbornly refused to notice. If I apologize now, I’ll be admitting you were right. And you were not right. This isn’t hospitality. It’s humiliation. And I won’t let our home and our life be sacrificed to your desire to be good for everyone except me.”
The realization of final defeat hit him like a freight train. She wouldn’t back down. He looked at her face—calm, resolute, unfamiliar—and understood he had lost this war. But a man cornered doesn’t surrender. He strikes back—in the most painful way he can.
Without another word, he turned and walked to the wardrobe. He yanked the door open and pulled a gym bag off the shelf. He began throwing things into it at random: T-shirts, jeans, socks, a sweater. Every movement was theatrical, saturated with anger and hurt. This was his response. His performance. Kira watched in silence, making no move to stop him. She knew it was the end and saw no point in words.
He zipped the bag, picked up his phone again. He didn’t look at Kira, but he did everything to make sure she wouldn’t miss a single word. He dialed his sister and put the call on speaker.
“Marina, hi… Yeah, it’s me. Listen, I’ve made up my mind,” he said loudly, with a forced cheerfulness. “Since we’re not welcome here, and since my wife thinks hosting family is humiliating, I’ll come to you.”
Kira froze. The air was knocked out of her lungs.
“Yes, alone. I’ll pack up and come right now,” he went on, staring at the wall but speaking solely to his wife. “And I’ll stay with you the whole two weeks. On a cot, in the kitchen, wherever. So I can feel like real family. So at least someone in this life reminds me what that means.”
He hung up without waiting for his stunned sister’s reply. Then he pulled a set of keys from his pocket. He held them for a moment and then tossed them onto the dresser with a sharp, dry clink. Metal rang against the lacquered surface. He grabbed the bag and, without looking back, headed for the door. It didn’t slam. The lock simply clicked softly, cutting him off from this apartment, from this life.
Kira remained standing in the middle of the room. The very room she had just defended. Now it was quiet and spacious. No guests. No cot in the kitchen. No husband. She was alone in her hard-won fortress. Having won the battle for territory, she had lost everything else…
