Nikolay Belinsky 9247

"He probably just drank himself silly! Ha-ha!"

What are ghosts? Foolish human fantasies, as any normal person would say. Nikolai was one of those people—a hardened man with a Russian upbringing. And, surprisingly, he was quite fond of alcohol.

In general, he was a skeptic. Well… at most, he believed in the house spirit. Who else could be stealing his keys right before he left the house? Obviously, the domovoi! Or who kept taking his socks? Surely, it wasn’t him forgetting them in the washing machine!

But that evening, he didn’t just start believing in ghosts. It felt like he started believing in God.

Tonight, Nikolai decided to have a little drink. Just a little… maybe three bottles of beer? And even after those three bottles, he could still walk straight.

He was walking across the snow-covered clearing at night—his usual test site for helicopters. The place was as familiar to him as his own workshop. But instead of the expected emptiness, he saw a girl standing in the snowdrifts.

— "Is she an idiot or what?" — Nikolai muttered, sighing as he walked closer.

— "Hey, miss? Are you lost?" — he called out.

But the girl remained motionless. Swearing under his breath, he approached her and threw his jacket over her shoulders.

— "Are you deaf? What are you doing here alone?" — he asked, crossing his arms in annoyance.

He looked around, but when his gaze returned to where the girl had been, she was gone… Of course, Nikolai didn’t immediately think of anything supernatural, but he still cursed under his breath:

— "She could’ve at least left the jacket."

A week passed after that incident. Almost every night, Nikolai saw the mysterious figure of the girl. But every time he got closer, she vanished.

His colleagues had already started gossiping about how Nikolai was "chasing ghosts."

Most of them just laughed:

— "He probably just drank himself silly! Ha-ha!"

But every day, Nikolai became more and more obsessed with catching this figure—if only to get his favorite