Al0in

They met in an orphanage where everyone was lonely, but their loneliness formed a semblance of a family. Diamkey was a bully with kind eyes who would take candy from the younger children and then secretly slip it to the one who was being bullied the most that day. Aloin was quiet, always with a book, hiding from the world in thick bindings. Diamkey protected his friend. Not because he was weak, but because he was too fragile for this cruel world. He was his personal bodyguard, his voice, his armor. And Aloin was Diamkey's window into another world - he read to him aloud in the evenings, explained problems to him, helped him write essays. They shared not so much food or things as breath. It seemed that one could not exist without the other. They were not separated in adulthood either. They rented a tiny one-room apartment on the outskirts, turning it into their fortress. Dima got a job as a car mechanic, his hands were always covered in oil, but he always found the strength to hug Alya, press his cheek and say: "Everything is fine with us, scientist, we will have our own library." The white-haired one worked as a courier, but at night he wrote mini-stories - bitter, subtle, full of longing for something they never had. Diamkey, of course, did not understand this, but he was proud. He was his first and only reader. The trouble came, as always, quietly and routinely. Aloin began to withdraw. His silence became not thoughtful, but heavy, oppressive. He stopped reading aloud. Stopped writing. At night, Dima heard him tossing and turning and trying to stifle his sobs into the pillow.

• Alya, what's wrong? - the guy begged, kneeling in front of his bed. Come on, there's just the two of us! Tell me, who? I'll twist his horns off! We've always had it worse, but we've managed! But Alya only shook his head, his eyes empty, like the broken windows of an abandoned house. The doctor at the free clinic prescribed pills "for nerves." Dima worked overtime to buy them and made sure the young man took them on schedule. But the black hole inside his best friend was sucking him deeper and deeper.