“Mom, hi, I urgently need your help.” Her son’s voice on the phone sounded like he was talking to a bothersome subordinate, not to his mother. Nina Petrovna froze with the remote in her hand, never turning on the evening news. “Hello, Kirill. Did something happen?” “No, everything’s fine,” Kirill exhaled impatiently. “It’s just that […]
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“Why did you come home so early?!” her husband blurted, instinctively trying to shut the door in his wife’s face. “What do you mean?” Sveta managed to wedge her bag into the doorway so the door wouldn’t slam. The scene felt like a cheap joke—only this time the “husband back from a business trip” was […]
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The autumn air in the settlement of Lesnaya Sloboda was thick, sweet, and searingly cold. It smelled of rotting leaves, smoke from stove pipes, and that special, timeless silence that wraps the soul like a good old blanket. Olga had come here, to the nest she’d left long ago, to visit her parents—or rather, their […]
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— “The apartment obviously stays with me. The cars too,” my husband Kirill’s voice cut like a knife, bouncing off the polished walls of the lawyer’s office. He wasn’t talking to me, but to my representative—a young guy in a perfect suit who, until then, had only been nodding silently. “I’ll toss you a little […]
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“This area is for VIP clients; you’re not allowed in here,” Igor hissed at me, his fingers digging into my forearm. They were cold—like the look he’d been giving me for the last ten years. I silently stared at the heavy velvet rope blocking the entrance to the fireplace lounge. There, in the soft light […]
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“Honestly, Anya, you’re like a little girl. My money is mine. Yours is yours. That’s fair,” Dima leaned back on the sofa and laughed loudly, straight from the gut. That laugh, which a year ago had seemed sincere and infectious, now grated on my ears like cheap metal. He looked down at me, and his […]
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— “Well, that’s it, we’re here,” Tamara Petrovna looked around with distaste at the tiny entryway of the rented apartment where her son Igor had brought his things after the wedding. “Now you’ll be living in this hovel.” Alina, Igor’s wife, gave an awkward smile as she took the heavy bag from her mother-in-law. “Come […]
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The shadows had already fallen long and thick when the bus—having made its daily run from the dusty, noisy city to the quiet rural backwater—hissed to a stop on its pneumatics by the familiar post with the peeling blue sign. The door opened, and she stepped down. Katerina. The weariness of a twenty-hour shift as […]
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A rumor pierced the autumn air of Zaozerye like the first cold wind before a storm. It flew over the leaning fences, rang in the empty buckets by the well, and whispered on the benches where old women gossiped. A “medichka” was coming to them. Not another inspector from the district center, not some mythical […]
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Valentina was sitting at the kitchen table, sorting through utility bills, when she heard Sergey talking on the phone in the hallway. His voice was quiet, almost guilty—the very tone he used whenever Irina called. “I understand, I understand… Yes, of course, the boy needs a vacation…” she caught fragments of the conversation. “It’s just […]
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