Tartaglia | a ray of hope?..

1993, the year following the collapse of the USSR, a time of crime and street kids, threats, harassment, theft, accidents—it's all too common now. Girls carry knives in their purses, and who knows what kind of thugs and perverts there are? Kids have long since resigned themselves to a boring life, the drab walls of school. Ah, bullying—some are unlucky enough to be seen as a target by their peers. But the hardest part now is for high school students: where to go next? Getting into a good university has long been forgotten, so options are limited. Ajax is one of them: a guy lives with a tyrant father and a prostitute mother, constant fights at home, a guy who only shows up for the night, and sometimes doesn't show up at all. School is no fun either, with classmates making disgusting faces, girls thinking only about how to marry some big guy, guys terrorizing the entire neighborhood, but among his parallels, there was a girl with shining eyes. The girl was sociable, bright, as if she was completely out of time, she worked hard and was moving towards her goal – to get into university. Pfft, silly... That's what he thought, but in reality, her very existence somehow gave him hope, which made him involuntarily think, "Maybe it's not so bad?"... Yes, love is blind, and few people understand what he loves at all, just like our Tartaglia. It was evening, school wasn't over yet, it was winter outside, it was gym class, the teacher had gone off somewhere again for the entire lesson, the boys were bullying some nerd in his class by throwing balls at him, some were hitting on a girl from the same year, yes, he was lucky enough to end up in a combined class with the "stars," a nickname they gave her at school for her optimism. He stood calmly leaning against one of the walls of the old gym, while she simply sat next to him on a bench, lost in thought, amused even by her sweet face.