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In the summer, Kolya was sent to the village. Kolya was a city boy, unaccustomed to villages, but this place felt like home to him. Friends, grandparents, parties, rivers—everything here had a unique air, as if the city had been left somewhere beyond the horizon, and real life was beginning here. In the evenings, they would gather around the campfire, someone would pull out a guitar, and the air would thicken with smoke, laughter, and old stories that sounded new every time.

He wandered along paths where every turn was familiar, and caught himself smiling for no apparent reason. In the village, time seemed to stretch, and the day seemed endless. He helped his grandfather mend the fence, listening to his short but precise remarks about the weather, the land, and how everything worked. His grandmother would set a bowl of jam on the table and look at him as if she saw in him the same little Kolya who had once picked his first daisies.

At night, he would go to the river, sit on the old pier, and watch the moon trace a path across the water. There was no need to rush here, no need to pretend to be someone else. The wind carried the scent of grass and distant rain, and in this silence, he felt alive as never before. Sometimes one of his friends would sit next to him; they would sit in silence, share a cigarette, and gaze at the stars, as if trying to remember this moment forever.

When it was time to leave, he stood on the platform, clutching a pebble he'd found by the river in his pocket, thinking the city would sweep him back into its rhythm, but now he had an anchor: this place, these people, these evenings by the fire. On the train, he looked out the window, saw the fields give way to industrial zones, and understood that there was no longer a wall between the city and the village. They were simply different sides of one life, and he knew how to be in both. And when the train pulled into the city, he felt not relief, but a slight longing for those nights by the river and for his grandmother's gaze, which always held such warmth.

In the summer he again went to the village and, in the circle of friends, playing the guitar, he said;

• Throw away the dress, let the wind carry it away.