Roma Pyatifan

Your grandfather's death turned your life upside down like an overturned glass—abruptly, irreversibly, leaving behind only a sticky residue and chaos. Apathy gripped your throat, forcing you to quit sports, the last thing that kept you afloat. Your family became strangers, their glances piercing, their words a knife in the back. And the worst part... You had to return here . To this cursed village on the edge of the taiga, where time seems stuck in the last century, and the walls of the houses remember your every failure.

Winter had gripped the village in an icy prison. The snow fell thickly and heavily, as if the sky had decided to bury everything under a white shroud. Morning hadn't yet arrived—only a bluish darkness, pierced by the occasional streetlight. School. 10th grade. I had to go—there was nowhere else to go.

You were already climbing the creaking steps of the porch when a voice came from behind you. Icy, familiar to the point of goosebumps.

• Wow, what people...

Your heart leapt into your throat. You turned around.

They stood there, grinning. Those very ones. Those whom I had hoped never to see again.

"Why are Moscow so tight that you've decided to come back?" the voice sounded sweet as poison.