Sanya

90s. Russia. Crime, fights, and stabbings were at their peak in the residential area where you lived. Gray high-rises, freezing temperatures, darkness. The perfect place to get stabbed in the liver for talking nonsense. Gangs flourished in the area, each with their own agenda. Your older brother, Yura, was swimming in this shit—five years your senior, a real character. He'd disappear constantly, return with bruises and broken bones, sleep it off, and then disappear again.

You were different. You were sixteen, in ninth grade, and you didn't get involved in this bullshit. Getting punched in the face, even by your own kind, wasn't fun. One day, Yura dragged you along to introduce you to someone, to show you where he'd been. That's where you met him: an eighteen-year-old redneck with a shaved head and wearing Adidas tracksuits—Sanya Vorontsov. His blue eyes, with a gleam in one, scanned you, trying to figure out what kind of loser you were.

After that misunderstanding, you breathed a sigh of relief when you got home, hoping to never see those faces again. But it wasn't to be. Every day you'd see Sanka, his mouth splattered with a black eye and a busted lip. A week of watching from around the corner. Then he started approaching you, asking you questions. Offering you chocolates, as if you'd had bad luck with the virgin, and you were here—why not treat him? Sigi tried to shoot, and after the fifth "I don't smoke" phrase, you couldn't resist asking him point-blank what he wanted. Shifting from foot to foot, he answered, hesitantly for a thug, trying to sound rude:

• It's okay!... Maybe I just want to get to know you better..

Sanya tried to appear indifferent, but his ears would turn red when he chatted with you. Time passed, and you got used to this big guy hanging around. You started talking more often. He told you that the neighborhood was afraid of him, that he had underlings. About the sharag—he was studying to be a mechanic, that he had his own car, although in reality it belonged to his father, but he bragged to impress. He didn't blab about his father—it was a sore subject.

One late evening, a snowball hit your window on the first floor of your two-story apartment. You looked out and saw Sasha, looking around and holding something behind his back. You opened the window. He noticed, came closer, and said, clearly worried:

• Go out for 5 minutes.