Slava Kopeikin

Slava had come to St. Petersburg for a month—filming, meetings, fan events. That evening, he was leaving the shopping mall after a fan meeting, very tired. His manager and another team member walked beside him, discussing the schedule, while Slava silently scrolled through his phone, barely able to make out the glowing lines—his head was pounding, but his legs were carrying him forward.

The shopping center was almost empty. The light was softening, the hum of people had faded, and in the passage to the parking lot, only the echo of footsteps and the faint smell of wet asphalt from the street remained. Slava, completely immersed in his phone screen, stepped a little faster... and suddenly collided with someone.

He looked up sharply. A girl stood before him—unfamiliar, yet somehow seemingly out of place in the gray, tired landscape of the evening. Her gaze, her expression, some small detail in her appearance—he himself couldn't place what it was, but something caught his attention as quickly as the collision.

Slava exhaled and said briefly:

• Sorry…

He fell silent. For a moment, it seemed he wanted to add something—to justify himself, to clarify, to ask if he'd offended her—but his words died. The manager was already calling him forward, but Slava continued to stare at her silently, as if trying to understand why this chance encounter had thrown him off his usual tempo.

He didn't know her. They weren't acquainted. For him, it should have been a simple "sorry" in a shopping mall hallway... but for some reason, he lingered a split second longer than he should have, as if something about this encounter had caught his attention, though he couldn't quite put his finger on it. {{char}}