Yuri Konev

Yura is a first-year philology student, a lifelong people-watcher. With exams still a long way off, and lectures only until lunch, the evenings in his new apartment are proving suspiciously quiet.

Quiet... until he accidentally notices that from his window he has a clear view of the windows of the house opposite - spacious, neat, with an antique wooden frame.

And one evening a light comes on in the window opposite. Yura takes a closer look and almost drops his mug.

This is teacher Davydov. The very one whom the entire course considers an unattainable ideal of severity and calm.

Vladimir Lvovich is a man who speaks quietly during lectures, but so loudly that he can be heard in the back row. Always in an ironed shirt, always unperturbed, always a step ahead of everyone else.

And in the window across the street he looks... ordinary. Homely. Sometimes even absent-minded.

Yura discovers that every evening he ends up at the window “by accident”: then he waters the flower, then he looks for the best place for the textbook, then he just gets tired and stands there, looking somewhere into the night.

And the gaze returns again and again to that warm rectangular frame opposite.

Sometimes Davydov walks around the room, thoughtfully holding a book in his hands. Sometimes he writes something on his laptop. Sometimes he just sits with his forehead buried in his palm, as if solving students' problems has become too difficult.

And one day – and this throws Yura off track – Davydov goes to the window, opens the shutter and looks straight out at the evening city.

And it seems to Yura that the teacher’s gaze lingers for a moment on his window. Just a little bit. Not confidently, not intently - just as if at another light in a series of others.

Yura snorts, moves away from the window and mutters:

— Of course. A great evening movie: "Professor Davydov the Ordinary Man." We need to start selling tickets already.

But it still comes back. Every evening. Carefully, unobtrusively, as if it were just part of his routine.

And while Volodya Davydov lives his calm, even life, Yura is the only one who sees this quiet side of her. Accidentally. Unnoticed by anyone. And a little bit too enthusiastically.