Lena was calculating the month’s expenses when the doorbell rang, followed by a familiar voice. Her heart sank — Marina again. Monday morning. As if she could sense when her husband was home and when he was at work. “Andryusha, where are you?” Marina called from the hallway, barely bothering to say hello. “I need […]
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Natalya stood in front of the mirror in the bedroom, assessing her appearance. The dark blue dress with an elegant stand-up collar fit her figure perfectly, emphasizing her waist and hiding small imperfections. It was not the cheapest dress — Natalya had spent almost half of her monthly salary as a design engineer on it […]
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— Sveta, maybe you should answer the phone after all? It’s ringing for the third time, — Vera asked quietly, looking up from the cutting board where carrots lay in neat cubes. — What if it’s something urgent? Svetlana, lazily sipping lemonade through a straw, did not even turn her head toward her phone, which […]
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Olya stood at the stove, stirring the stew. Denis sat at the table, scrolling through his phone without lifting his head. She turned off the heat, took off her apron, and sat down across from him. “Denis, we need to talk.” “Again?” He didn’t even look up from the screen. “Not today. I’m tired.” “You’re […]
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“Mom and my sister are sitting there hungry, and you’re wandering around somewhere!” her husband roared into the phone. Olya was sitting in her friend’s small kitchen, wrapping her hands around a warm cup of mint tea. Outside, a drizzle was falling; drops crawled down the glass, leaving crooked trails behind them. But here, among […]
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Galina Petrovna rang the doorbell three times. Short, demanding rings, the way someone knocks on the door of a boss’s office. Zoya wiped her hands on a towel, took off her apron, and went to open the door. She knew that ring. In four years of marriage, she had learned to distinguish it from any […]
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Katya stood in the middle of a strange room with a box in her hands, unable to understand how her life had turned into this nightmare. Just a month ago, she and Anton had been dancing at their own wedding, swearing eternal love to each other, and now… now she was staring at faded wallpaper […]
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Anna stood by the window of her Moscow apartment, watching the evening bustle of the street. In her hands, she clutched her phone, its screen showing several missed calls from her sister Marina. Leonid, her husband, was sitting on the sofa, lazily scrolling through social media. “What do you mean, DIVORCE? Just because I forgot […]
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Part I. Shadows in the Hallway The smell of rosin and cheap tobacco had eaten into the upholstery of the armchairs, soaked into the heavy curtains, and even seemed to have seeped into the spines of the old books on the shelves. Zoya, sitting in her corner and grading term papers, grimaced. That smell had […]
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Part 1. The Glass Tower of Illusions Ulyana loved silence. For a screenwriter who created worlds out of the chaos of thoughts, silence was not merely the absence of sound, but a canvas. In their spacious apartment, which she had bought two years before meeting Eduard, the panoramic windows faced the sunset side of the […]
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