“Three thousand,” Pavel suddenly said, still not looking up. “Got it with a discount at ‘Sunlight.’” “Thank you,” she said quietly. “It’s beautiful.” Something pricked her chest. Not that she was expecting diamonds—what diamonds at their age! But this mundanity, this accountant’s precision. As if he were reporting the purchase of bread. Marina stood for […]
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— Marinka, did you put on that dress on purpose? — Galina Petrovna looked me up and down while my husband was fussing with the bags in the hallway. — You were told we have important guests today. I adjusted the new blue dress I had spent an hour choosing. — It’s beautiful, Sergey helped […]
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“Take him, I beg you!” The woman practically shoved a worn leather suitcase into my hands and pushed the little boy toward me. I almost dropped the bag with food—I was bringing treats from the city to our village neighbors. “Sorry, what? I don’t know you…” “His name is Misha. He’s three and a half.” […]
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“Finally,” I breathed out as the key turned in the lock. Viktor entered the apartment, dropped his travel bag on the floor, and wearily ran a hand over his face. Six months on a work rotation, six months I hadn’t seen him. He smelled of the train, dust, and a foreign city. I wanted to […]
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— Marina, I can’t. Understand, I’m not able to be with a person who… is disabled. Artyom said this almost in a whisper, not looking at her, but at the wheelchair standing nearby — someone else’s, hateful. He looked at it like a beast that had torn apart their future. Marina sat silently, the white […]
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“Be careful with your words,” Angela said, addressing her husband without taking her eyes off the glass of champagne she slowly turned in her hands. Denis smiled — finally, his wife was paying attention to him. All evening she seemed not to notice his presence, even though he was the reason for the celebration. “I’m […]
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The mirror in the bedroom reflected a familiar scene: I was adjusting the folds of a modest gray dress that I had bought three years ago at an ordinary store. Dmitry stood nearby, fastening the cufflinks on his snow-white shirt — Italian, as he never tired of emphasizing at every opportunity. “Are you ready?” he […]
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Yulia threw a jacket right over her home T-shirt and slung her bag over her shoulder. In the taxi, she looked out the window, clutching a pack of marshmallows from Voronezh — Sergey liked exactly those, in the pink packaging. She just wanted to come in, hug him, surprise him. She missed him. The hearing […]
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The air in the garden seemed frozen in time. It was dense, heavy, as if saturated not only with the scents of summer but also with something bitter and acrid—the smell of burnt plastic and a sickly sweet rot, nauseatingly familiar, like an echo of the past suddenly bursting forth from the locked doors of […]
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Marina was going through the students’ notebooks when the phone rang in the kitchen. It was six o’clock on a Saturday evening—not the best time for calls. On the line was Anya’s worried voice, her neighbor from the stairwell. “Marin, are you sitting down right now?” “What’s wrong, Anya?” “I saw Igor today near the […]
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