The stair landing greeted Andrei with its usual silence. After a three-day business trip that had completely worn him out, all he wanted was to collapse into bed and sleep for twelve hours straight.
However, as he took out his keys, he suddenly froze: music was coming from the apartment. That was strange—Olya never played it that loud.
The door unlocked without any problem. The light in the hallway was on, but his wife’s usual shoes were nowhere to be seen. Instead, a bright red handbag—a small, stylish one, completely unlike the ones Olya preferred—was displayed on the shelf.
“Olya?” he called out, pulling off his boots. “Are you home?”
The music immediately stopped. A young woman with a short bob haircut walked out of the kitchen, dressed in casual pants and a loose T-shirt. She was holding a steaming cup of tea, her expression calm and slightly surprised.
“And who are you?” she asked, as if her presence here was the most natural thing in the world.
Andrei blinked. For a moment, he thought he had the wrong floor. But the familiar scratch on the doorframe and the doormat with cats, which Olya had chosen last fall, said otherwise.
“I’m the owner of this apartment,” he said slowly. “Who are you, and where’s my wife?”
The woman set the cup on a side table.
“I’m afraid you’re mistaken. I’m the owner of this apartment. My name is Irina, and I’ve been living here for a month.”
A chill ran down Andrei’s spine. He decided it must be some sort of prank or a mix-up.
“Listen…” he began, but Irina was already heading into another room.
A minute later, she returned with a folder of documents.
“Here you are. The sales contract, the title deed. Everything is official.”
Andrei grabbed the papers with trembling hands. Despite his fatigue, he immediately recognized Olya’s signature—distinctive, with a recognizable flourish. The date of the deal indicated it had happened a month ago.
“This is some stupid joke,” he muttered. “A prank, right?”
“No prank,” Irina replied calmly. “I bought this apartment from Olga Sergeevna. She was in a hurry to sell and offered me a good price.”
Feeling disoriented, Andrei walked into the living room and sank into an armchair. The room looked entirely different: new curtains, different furniture, unfamiliar scents. The family photos had disappeared from the walls, Olya’s favorite throw was gone, and the books on the shelves were all someone else’s.
He took out his phone and dialed his wife’s number. “The subscriber’s device is switched off or out of network coverage.”
“Don’t bother,” Irina said. “She changed her number.”
“How do you know that?” he asked, turning to her sharply.
“How do I know?” she repeated, sitting down on the edge of the sofa. “She warned me that you’d come back from your trip and start looking for her. She asked me to tell you that this was her decision.”
“What decision?!” Andrei exploded, jumping to his feet. “We’ve been together for ten years! We have a shared business, shared plans. She couldn’t just—”
“Leave?” Irina finished for him. “She could. And she did.”
He rushed into the bedroom. The closet was filled with someone else’s clothes—no trace of Olya’s things. In the bathroom, there were unfamiliar toiletries; in the kitchen, different dishes. It felt as if Olya had never existed there at all.
Andrei began feverishly calling friends, relatives, colleagues. But no one knew anything—or pretended not to know.
“Maybe you should calm down?” Irina appeared in the doorway again, holding a cup of tea. “You don’t look well.”
“To hell with that tea!” he roared. “What’s going on? You must know something!”
She shrugged indifferently.
“I only know she sold the apartment and decided to start a new life.”
“Without me?” he whispered, feeling his world begin to blur.
“Was it really so good with you?” Irina asked unexpectedly.
Andrei looked at her intently—for the first time, truly looking. Something in her eyes seemed familiar to him. Something he had seen before, somewhere…
“Who are you, really?” he asked, his heart tightening with apprehension.
The woman gave a sad, understanding smile.
“I’m Sergey’s sister. The same Sergey Olya used to talk about now and then.”
Andrei went cold. Of course he remembered Sergey—his wife’s first love, her college friend. They had talked about it before… or had they? When was the last time they had really talked about anything besides work?
“They ran into each other by chance two months ago in a café,” Irina continued. “Olya was feeling low. She told him how distant the two of you had become. How she started to feel invisible—first over small things, then everything else.”
Instinctively, he clenched his fists.
“I was working! For both of us!”
“Really?” Irina tilted her head. “When was the last time you asked her how she was feeling? Not about the business or reports—just her state of mind?”
Andrei tried to respond, but his tongue felt stuck to the roof of his mouth. He couldn’t remember.
“She tried to get your attention,” Irina’s voice softened. “She signed up for dance classes, changed her hair color, started taking antidepressants. But you didn’t notice any of it.”
Each word felt like a blow. He did vaguely recall something: Olya mentioning dance lessons, maybe showing off a new hairstyle. But back then, he’d been focused on a project, an important deal… Everything else faded into the background.
“And then Sergey came along,” Irina continued, stopping by the window. “He knows how to listen, how to notice the small things. With Olya, he did what you hadn’t done in a long time—he made her feel alive again.”
“She could’ve told me!” Andrei exclaimed.
“She did,” Irina answered quietly. “You just didn’t hear her.”
He sank into an armchair, the world going blurry around him. Memories came flooding back: Olya asking him to go on vacation, suggesting they talk about something important, crying into her pillow. Each time, he had some excuse, assuring her that “it would all pass.”
“Where is she now?” he asked in a dull voice.
“I can’t say,” Irina shook her head. “She doesn’t want you to know.”
“I have a right—”
“A right to what?” Irina interrupted. “To force someone to stay where they’re unhappy? To hold on to someone who’s suffocating next to you?”
Andrei was silent. Dusk was falling outside, lights flicking on in the neighboring buildings. He recalled evenings spent with Olya, their plans, their dreams… When had it all ended? When had work become more important than anything else? When was the last time he looked into her eyes and simply said, ‘I love you’?
“What now?” he asked after a long pause.
Irina shrugged.
“Now you have a choice: start legal proceedings, try to get the apartment back and track her down… or let go and reflect on why this happened.”
“And you? Why do you need this apartment?” he asked.
“To help her start over,” Irina replied. “Formally, the apartment is in my name, but I transferred the money to her. It was her inheritance from her mother.”
Andrei stood up, feeling a sudden heaviness in his chest.
“Could I at least take my belongings?”
“Of course,” she nodded. “All your things are neatly packed up in the storage room.”
He headed for the door but stopped on the threshold.
“You know… I really did love her.”
“I know,” Irina answered quietly. “But sometimes love isn’t enough. You have to really see the person beside you before you lose them forever.”
An hour later, Andrei left the building, suitcase in hand. Light shone in the windows of their former apartment, and he could just make out Irina’s silhouette behind the curtain.
Somewhere, in another city, Olya was starting a new life. Without him. And he? He had to figure out where exactly he had gone wrong. Maybe sometimes you have to lose everything to realize what truly matters. The heavy suitcase in his hand felt like the symbol of a decade of life now reduced to a small bag. Yet somewhere deep inside arose a strange thought: perhaps everything had happened exactly as it needed to.
Andrei hailed a taxi, giving the driver his friend’s address. In the rearview mirror, he caught a final glimpse of the warm, glowing windows of their former apartment—windows that were now utterly foreign to him.
The car pulled away. He didn’t look back—why would he? The past was gone, and the future stretched before him like a boundless emptiness. It was frightening but also full of possibility, like a blank sheet of paper on which a new story could be written.
First, though, he needed to learn how to read between the lines—otherwise, he might miss what was most important once again.
Max’s place greeted him with the familiar mix of coffee and cigarette smells. His scruffy, clearly sleep-deprived friend opened the door, casting a quick glance at the suitcase.
“So it’s serious?”
“Yeah, it’s over,” Andrei said, stepping inside and dropping onto the couch. “Still can’t believe it.”
Max sat down next to him, silent for a while.
“Wanna talk about it?”
And Andrei started explaining everything: the woman in their apartment, the paperwork, Sergey. Max listened closely, not interrupting, just shaking his head from time to time.
“You know, I did warn you,” he said when Andrei finished.
“About what?” Andrei asked hoarsely.
“That you were burying yourself in work too much. Remember your birthday last year? Olya organized a party, invited all your friends, baked a cake… and you spent the whole evening on your phone. Work, work…”
Andrei winced. The memory of that night resurfaced, crystal clear. Olya had indeed gone to a lot of trouble—she’d gathered all their closest friends, and he had spent the entire time replying to work emails. Back then, it had seemed like those issues couldn’t possibly wait.
“The worst part is, I can’t blame her,” he sighed, staring at the ceiling. “She’s right. I really did stop noticing her.”
“So what now?” Max asked gently.
“I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t.”
The days that followed blurred into one endless stretch. Andrei kept going to work, but everything felt strange and unreal. He couldn’t focus, his mind was elsewhere. Word spread quickly in a small town, and soon everyone in the office knew.
One day, he inadvertently looked at the photo on his desk—him and Olya on vacation three years ago. Their last trip together. In the picture, she was smiling, holding his hand. When was the last time they touched each other so warmly, so lovingly?
His phone buzzed—an unknown number.
“If you want my opinion, start small. Pay attention to what’s happening around you, to the people in your life right now.”
It was Irina. He wanted to fire back a sharp reply or just delete the message, but instead he saved her number.
That evening, back at Max’s place, he suddenly asked:
“How’s your Marina? Has she finished her studies?”
“She has,” Max said with a smile. “Now she’s working as a schoolteacher. The kids adore her!”
Andrei was surprised. He had been best man at their wedding, yet he hadn’t even asked how Marina’s schooling was going. How many other people around him were living their own lives while he never noticed?
The next day, for no particular reason, he stopped by accounting to see how Nina Petrovna was doing after her recent illness. She was taken aback, but then her face lit up, and she spent half an hour telling him about her grandchildren.
On his way back to Max’s, he now took a different route—passing the building where he’d once lived with Olya. Sometimes lights were on, sometimes everything was dark. One day, he spotted Irina leaving the building in workout clothes, yoga mat under her arm. She saw him and gave a brief nod.
A week later, he mustered the courage to text Irina:
“You were right. I really was missing a lot of important things.”
Her reply was almost immediate:
“Better to realize it late than never.”
“You know what I’ve realized?” he said to Max that evening, sitting in the apartment. “All these years, I was obsessed with the future—saving money, growing the business, planning ahead. But the present just slipped through my fingers.”
“So now what? What’s changed?”
“Now I want to learn to live in the here and now. Just be.”
He started noticing things he used to ignore: the smell of fresh pastries from a street café in the morning, the janitor whistling while he swept, the laughter of children on their way to school. Before, he’d have missed it all, his attention buried in his phone or his thoughts consumed by work.
A month later, Andrei moved into a new apartment—a small studio in a newly built neighborhood. He packed up his things and thanked Max for letting him stay.
“Will you stay for dinner?” Max asked. “Marina baked a great pie.”
“Definitely,” Andrei replied, smiling. “I have time now.”
That evening, he messaged Irina again:
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For making me stop and think. You said those words on purpose, didn’t you?”
“Maybe,” she replied cryptically.
His new apartment was quiet—a different kind of quiet than his old place. There was no sound of Olya’s footsteps, no rustling of her turning pages, no clinking of dishes in the kitchen. But this silence felt special, like a blank page waiting for new colors.
He took out an old photo album—the one connection to his past he’d held onto. Their first date, a trip to the seaside, their housewarming party… So many moments he had once taken for granted. How could he have failed to treasure them?
A few months later, Irina sent him a short message:
“Olya lives in Saint Petersburg now.”
“How is she?”
“She’s happy. Studying to become a designer. It was always her dream.”
“I never even knew.”
“Well, now you do.”
Andrei closed the album and walked to the window. A new neighborhood unfurled below—different sounds, smells, people. Somewhere out there, in another city, Olya was fulfilling her old dream. And he? He was learning to see the world around him anew. Learning to notice details, to feel moments.
Deep down, he understood: this was just the beginning of a long journey. A journey to find his true self—someone who could not only plan for the future but also live in the present. Someone who knew how to love, to feel, to observe.
For now, he watched the first snowflakes dancing outside his window. For the first time in a long while, he truly saw each flake, each pattern on the glass—just like when he was a child, and the whole world felt so magical and full of wonder.
Maybe that’s how a new life begins—with the ability to marvel at the simple things. With the willingness to stop and just be, right here and now.