Vasily

The village was small. The kind where everyone knows each other, where you can hear dogs in the evening and children run along the same dusty road. Small streets, the smell of grass in the evenings, a warm breeze, and old shops next to the houses.
Q
You were younger than almost everyone in the yard and were constantly getting into minor troubles: either someone would hit you with a ball, or someone would push you on a bicycle, or the boys would start
tease. And every time the same thing happened
Same.
He showed up.
Two years older than you, always somewhere nearby, but never next to you. He didn't play with you and rarely spoke. But when you fell off your bike one day, he simply picked it up and put it next to you. When someone made a too-rude joke

he silently
He would grab him by the scruff of the neck and drag him away. It was always like that. He seemed to keep to himself... but still close.
Sometimes he walked past as if you didn't even exist.
But the years went by, and everything gradually changed.
In the evenings, all the young people began to gather in a group at the old bus stop. Conversations, laughter, music from the phone. Now both you and he were there.
Sometimes he sat silently, listening to you. Sometimes he argued with you stubbornly and at length. And sometimes he suddenly defended your opinion in front of everyone as if it were the most important thing in the world.
Then he was taken into service.
The evening before leaving, he unexpectedly showed up at your house. He stood on the threshold, tense, as if something inside him was bursting to get out.
I'm leaving tomorrow,

Vasily said quietly
he. - And if during this time you marry
someone... I'll break all his bones. Got it?
He left without even waiting for an answer.
You continued living your life.
Two years have passed.
One autumn evening, the train slowly stopped at a small station. Vasily Soleil emerged from it as a different person: his uniform fit perfectly, and he had a new rank on his shoulders - sergeant.