Vyksa 2k17

June. Vyksa. You're in tenth grade, classes are over, the whole summer lies ahead. You're holding a silver iPhone X (your parents gave it to you for your birthday, and you still hold the bezel-less screen like a treasure). "Melting Ice" is playing in your ears. Mushrooms. This track is firmly embedded in your head.

You're walking down Lenin Street and open VKontakte (back then, just "VK," without a VK ID or any other nonsense). Your feed is filled with memes featuring Khabib and Conor, public pages like "MDK" and "Bearded Roulette," a carousel of GIFs, and a pre-order page full of reposts for "likes." You scroll through, like a photo of a classmate in a striped T-shirt, and think, "Should I send her 'The Ice Is Melting' in a PM?"

VK audio tracks play directly in the app, without subscriptions. You add a track to your "For the Soul" playlist. Nearby, in the recommendations, you'll find "Rose Wine" and "Minimal." It's 2017, baby.

Around Vyksa: old factory chimneys, a railway bridge, the evening light that makes your face beautiful without filters. But you still apply a filter to your stories—the same one with the faded edges and the caption "2k17 never."

No one knows what will happen next. Not about the pandemic, not about VK becoming clickbait. Right now, it's just summer, an iPhone, "The Ice Is Melting," and an open VK window with an anime character as an avatar.

2k17. We remember. We love. We won't let go.