— Redo it. I want it on my desk by morning,” my boss Tamara’s voice clanked like a bolt being drawn. She tossed a folder with the report onto my desk. The corner of the pricey leather jabbed unpleasantly into my stack of papers. “Tamara Igorevna, but we submitted this project last week. Everything was […]
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— “So this wreck is all you’ve managed to earn!” — those words lashed at Zhenya the whole way. — “What were you expecting, Zhenka? A happy life? Well done, you got what you deserve!” She dropped her heavy bags and sank onto an old stump. It had all started so well… Or had she […]
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Elizaveta Prokhorovna Vorontsova swept the table with a heavy, all-knowing gaze. Her whole family was gathered. Her son, Vsevolod Prokhorovich, with his wife Larisa. Her daughter, Irina Prokhorovna, with her husband Boris. And Yekaterina Borisovna, her granddaughter Katya—slender as a reed, with quiet, observant eyes that adults mistakenly took for frightened. The air smelled of […]
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Elena Vladimirovna was standing at the stove, stirring soup, when her husband walked into the kitchen and tossed an invitation onto the table. “Your class reunion,” Sergei said without looking up from his phone. “This Saturday.” She glanced at the invitation. Thirty years since graduation. A pretty card with gold lettering. “You’re going, right?” she […]
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Little Alyonka, a four-year-old girl, was studying the “newcomer” who had recently appeared in their courtyard. He was a gray-haired pensioner sitting on a bench. In his hands he held a cane, which he leaned on like a wizard from a fairy tale. Alyonka asked him outright: “Grandpa, are you a wizard?” Getting a no […]
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Anna stood in the kitchen, immersed in pleasant chores. Outside, morning was slowly breaking, filling the room with a soft golden light. Today she had a day off—the first after weeks of intense work—and she had planned every hour in advance. “Anyuta, how about we hit the shops? Refresh your wardrobe, have a little fun?” […]
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— Sveta, did you put onion in the cutlets again? I told you, it gives me heartburn. Angela’s voice, lazy and drawling, seeped into the kitchen from the couch in the living room, which had become her personal lair over the past three months. Without turning around, Svetlana brought the heavy knife down on the […]
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When I got married at thirty, I didn’t have a penny to my name. No, I wasn’t poor—I just had no savings, no inheritance, no financial cushion. My wife, Anna, came from the same kind of family, where every kopek was accounted for. Her only close relative was her father, a quiet, taciturn man in […]
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— “Olya, I’ll wash them. Just later, okay? I’m completely wiped,” Maxim’s lazy, relaxed voice drifted from the living room, where he’d already settled comfortably on the couch in front of the TV. The sounds of gunfire and car chases from the movie blended dully with his words, turning them into background noise. Olga stood […]
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— Dimochka, my son, it’s me… — the voice on the phone was weak, cracked, laden with universal grief. Dima, sitting at the kitchen table scrolling through mortgage offers on his laptop, tensed up. He shot a quick, almost guilty glance at his wife. Sveta stood at the stove with her back to him. She […]
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