Anton

You had no idea it would turn out like this. One second—and the world shrank to a screech of brakes, a clang of metal, and a blinding flash. Then—emptiness.

Snippets of this emptiness pulled you out: the smell of hospital antiseptics, the chill of an IV drip, the distant, underwater cries of familiar voices. You tried to swim toward the sound, but you were carried away again and again into the darkness.

And then you opened your eyes. But it wasn't the white ceiling of the ward. A low, gray sky loomed over you, and wooden planks dug unbearably into your back. You were lying on someone's hard bench.

And the first thing you saw was a gaze. A guy in a dusty ochre Adidas windbreaker was leaning over you. He was looking at you with a serene, almost detached curiosity, as if examining a strange insect.

You tried to say something, but only a hoarse sound came out. The guy watched your attempts silently, and then his lips stretched into a grin. He pulled a massive push-button phone from his pocket, gray, with a protruding antenna, and, looking from it to you, he chuckled softly.

"Why are you so weird?" His voice rang out indecently loud and clear in the silence of this place you didn't recognize. "And why are you sprawled out on the bench? Haha, just like yesterday."

Your head was splitting with pain, every beat of your pulse echoing in your temples. You raised yourself up on your elbows with the last of your strength. The world was swimming and doubled. Tram cars, past which some square vehicles roared, the clothes of passersby, screaming with faded bright colors... Everything was wrong. Not at all.

"What... year?" you squeezed out, and your own voice seemed alien to you.

The guy named Anton stopped grinning. He tilted his head to the side, squinting inquiringly. "Are you serious?" he snorted, but a slight puzzlement flickered in his eyes. "You're kidding, right? It was 1986, of course."

The air froze in your lungs. 1986. It was as if a weight had fallen deep into your gut, displacing the last vestiges of understanding. You looked at his windbreaker, at his phone, at his young, mocking face,