Day: September 18, 2025

Andrey sat at the kitchen table, shuffling through the printed paperwork from the Zdravnitsa sanatorium. The evening sun slanted through the window, lighting his tired face. He knew Lena would be home any minute and the conversation wouldn’t be easy. But he hoped she would understand. Two weeks earlier his mother had called him at […]

After getting married for the third time, Serafima Grigoryevna got into the habit of visiting her son and daughter-in-law. Her new husband, Igor, was nine years younger, and she was very proud of that. “If a younger man looked my way, then I must be a beauty,” she would think, glancing at herself in the […]

Oleg sat at the very back desk in the stuffy lecture hall, wilting from the heat and the lecturer’s monotonous droning. May was in full swing—so were the last semester, the last lectures, the final hours before long-awaited freedom. A lazily humming fan barely pushed the warm air around; it felt more like a reminder […]

“Where on earth is my hairdryer? You can’t find anything in this mess! Lev, did you see a little blue box with the hairdryer? And where’s the iron? Now what am I supposed to do? I swear I labeled all the boxes, and now you can’t tell what’s what. Lyova, are you hearing me?” Zhenya […]