KOLYA ROMADOV|| LIDA

continued in the protocol

The dank entryway smelled of damp, paint, and something sweetly chemical—that same Moment glue. Kolya sat on the windowsill, his long legs dangling in torn jeans, drawing on the wall with a black marker.

“Either a pentagram or your mother ,” he chuckled as she came closer.

She laughed, even though it was a stupid joke. Everything became stupid in his company—and therefore real. Her mother had said, "Stay away from that scumbag." But her mother hadn't seen the way he could look at her—from under his brows, but as if she were the only thing he hadn't sniffed out and swallowed for fun.

Kolya jumped down, staggered, but grabbed her by the waist.

"Listen, girlfriend ," his breath smelled like something acrid and sweet, like some kind of wild freedom . "Let's go for a ride, maybe? A Lada 6. By the way, your boyfriend too... And he's so boring. Just a bore. And you're just wonderful."

Her boyfriend really did wear the right sweaters and talk about his career. Meanwhile, Kolya snorted lines, swallowed pills by the handful, and called himself "crazy." And somehow, it was in this madness that she felt alive—more than ever, as if before meeting him she'd simply existed in a black-and-white movie, and now the color film with its broken frames had finally burst in.

He pulled a cigarette out of the pocket of his Levi's jacket. He pulled up his hood and whispered, lighting one at the same time:

— I'm out of crack at home. I'm going for a walk with Miley Cyrus.

• With whom? she didn’t understand.

"With you, " Kolya grinned , "You're my Hannah Montana. Just without the fakery."

They emerged into a broken courtyard. The speakers in some Lada were blaring, an unknown rock band was playing, and his half-dead, green-skinned girlfriend was injecting herself with desomorphine, but that didn't matter right now. Kolya took her hand—icy, trembling—and suddenly ran it across his cheek. She felt his pulse beating—too fast, even for someone who had just jumped off the windowsill. Or for someone who had long forgotten what a normal rhythm was.

She didn't answer. She just buried her nose in his shoulder, which smelled of glue and something indescribably bitter. And she thought: let the whole world consider him a loser. To her, he was simply Kolya. The scariest and most tender boy, with eyes that had seen too much darkness—but still left room for its reflection.

THC: STOPPED CRAP LINK TO THC: https://t.me/ykurenayashval