So you’ll tell him, Aunt Gal? Or should I?” Lera’s voice was as sweet as an overripe peach—and just as sticky. She lazily stirred sugar into a cup of cheap instant coffee, leaving brown rings on the saucer.
“I’ll tell him, sweetheart. I will,” Galina—Kirill’s mother—waved her off with a plump hand. “Don’t worry. Kiryusha’s an understanding boy. He can see the family’s got problems. You don’t abandon your own. You’ll live here until you get back on your feet. There’s room for everyone.”
Anatoly, the father, sitting at the table and methodically crumbling biscuits into his tea, grunted in agreement without looking up from the newspaper. His involvement in family affairs was always limited to that dull, approving sound—meaning total agreement with his wife and a total unwillingness to get into the details.
The kitchen had the relaxed, almost dacha-like calm of a lazy day off. Outside, the November wind howled, but in here it was warm and smelled of yesterday’s borscht. Lera already felt in control. She knew her cousin Kirill was the kind of person who never said no—a workhorse the whole family had been sitting on for years, very comfortably. He paid for this huge three-room apartment bought on a mortgage; he sent money to his parents; he solved their problems. Which meant he’d solve hers too. The fact that she’d moved into his personal bedroom without warning—along with her live-in boyfriend—didn’t seem like brazen nerve to her, just a minor family formality.
The key turned twice in the front door lock.
“Oh—speak of the devil,” Galina spread into a pleased smile. “Kiryusha’s back.”
Kirill stepped into the hallway, set a heavy suitcase and a laptop bag on the floor. Two weeks of trips to factories in the Urals had drained him to the limit. All he wanted was a hot shower and to collapse into his bed. He pulled off his boots—and immediately ran into something that shouldn’t have been there. By the wall stood a pair of worn men’s sneakers, size forty-five, and on the coat rack hung someone else’s padded jacket with a greasy collar.
He walked into the kitchen without a word.
“Kiryush, hi, sweetheart! Welcome home!” his mother rushed at him, trying to hug him.
He gently moved her aside. His gaze slid over Lera and stopped on his mother. He didn’t ask a single question. He simply looked.
“And we, um… Lera’s in trouble. She was kicked out of her place,” Galina began babbling, feeling her cheerful confidence start to crack under that cold, exhausted stare. “So I thought—your room’s empty most of the time anyway… She and Maksim will stay with you for now.”
Kirill didn’t reply. He turned and went down the hallway to his bedroom. The door was slightly open. He pushed it and froze on the threshold. The air inside was stale, чужой—alien. It smelled of unfamiliar women’s perfume and something sour. On his bed, under his blanket, tangled together, two people were asleep. He recognized Lera. Next to her lay a big guy with the start of a bald spot. His hairy arm lay possessively on Kirill’s pillow. Their clothes were piled on the chair; on Kirill’s desk stood an opened bottle of beer and a plate with scraps and gnawed cores.
Kirill stared at it for a few seconds. His face showed neither anger nor surprise. It looked like a mask carved from gray stone. He quietly pulled the door shut and, just as silently, returned to the kitchen.
His mother, father, and Lera looked at him with tense expectation. They were waiting for a reaction—outrage, shouting, pleading. Anything but this.
Kirill, without saying a word, walked to the utility cabinet in the corner. Opened it, pulled out a roll of large black 120-liter trash bags. Tore off two. And with those bags, headed back to his room.
“Kiryush, what are you doing?” his mother’s voice trembled with a bad premonition.
He didn’t answer. He walked in and snapped on the light. The sleeping pair on the bed shifted irritably. Maksim cracked one eye open.
“Hey… who are you?” he mumbled, still half-asleep.
Kirill ignored him. He went to the chair and, in one motion, swept all the clothes into the first bag. Jeans, T-shirts, women’s underwear, socks—everything flew inside. Then he went to the desk. Laptop, chargers, makeup bag, beer bottle, plate—everything went into the second bag. He didn’t separate, didn’t sort. He moved quickly and methodically, like a санитар.
“What the hell are you doing, you bastard?!” Maksim was fully awake now, sitting up and trying to cover himself with the blanket. Lera stared at her cousin with eyes wide in horror.
Kirill cinched the bag tops tight. Took one in each hand, turned, and left the room, leaving the shocked, half-naked couple behind. He dragged the bags through the apartment, past his parents frozen in the hallway. He opened the front door, then the door to the shared stairwell—and with force, hurled both bags toward the elevator. They landed with a dull thud.
He left the stairwell door open. Returned to the kitchen. Took the pack of cigarettes off the table, shook one out. Only then did he look at his relatives’ petrified faces. His voice was absolutely calm, without a single note of emotion.
“I pay sixty thousand a month for this apartment. I support all of you. And as long as I’m doing that, there will be my rules here.”
Kirill’s last words fell onto the kitchen table like chunks of ice, instantly freezing the cozy atmosphere of the family tea time. Galina stared at her son as if he’d started speaking some foreign, threatening language. Her round, usually kind face elongated, and confusion froze in her eyes—quickly replaced by offense.
“What do you mean—your rules?” she recovered first, her voice taking on shrill, defensive notes. “We’re family! Lerochka is your sister, she needs help! Don’t you have a heart? Throwing your own blood out into the street at night!”
At that moment Maksim materialized in the kitchen doorway. In nothing but sweatpants, bare-chested, he looked both sleepy and aggressive. He rubbed his face and stared at Kirill.
“Listen, hero. Give the stuff back. Who gave you the right to touch it?”
Kirill didn’t even turn his head. He kept looking at his mother, as if Maksim didn’t exist in that room, that apartment, that universe. That complete, absolute ignoring hit the guy harder than any threat could have.
“My room is my room,” Kirill repeated, enunciating every word. His calm was scarier than any shouting. “It’s not a flophouse and not a charity. Especially not for people who didn’t even bother to warn me.”
“But where are we supposed to go?!” Lera shrieked, springing up from the chair. The performance—the helpless victim act—had begun. “We got kicked out! We have no money! You want us sleeping at the train station?”
“That’s interesting,” Kirill slowly shifted his heavy gaze onto her. “But how do I put it… I don’t care. You have a boyfriend. Looks perfectly able-bodied. Solve your problems yourselves. Not in my bedroom.”
The father, who had been silent until now, decided to step in. He carefully folded his newspaper, took off his glasses, and looked at his son with the air of a wise patriarch he had never actually been.
“Son, let’s not swing from the shoulder. Everyone got carried away. The girl needs help. Let them stay a week, two—then we’ll figure something out…”
“A week won’t do it, Dad,” Kirill cut him off. “And you know that perfectly well. First it’s a week. Then a month. Then ‘we found jobs, we’re just about to get our first paycheck.’ I’ve been through this. Enough.”
He paused briefly, sweeping his gaze over all three of them: his mother, ready to erupt with righteous fury; his father, already regretting that he’d gotten involved; and Lera, her face twisted into the grimace of insulted innocence.
“Rule number one,” he said coldly and clearly. “My room is my territory. Your guest and her… gentleman”—he spat the word as if it tasted bad—“have exactly three hours to take their bags and disappear from this apartment. It’s 20:17. At 23:17 they must not be here.”
“You’ve lost your mind!” his mother screamed. “You won’t dare! I won’t allow it!”
“You will,” Kirill’s gaze turned hard as steel. “Because if at 23:18 they’re still here, I call the police and file a report for illegal entry. A bank statement is enough to prove this is my apartment, and all of you are just living here.”
He gave them a second to absorb it. Then he delivered the second, decisive blow—aimed not at Lera, but straight into his parents’ hearts.
“And one more thing. Since we’re talking about rules. Starting tomorrow, you two will also pay for living here. Rent for your rooms. Yours, Mom—twenty thousand a month. Yours, Dad—twenty-five; it’s bigger. Money to my card by the fifth of every month. No money—you’ll be looking for housing together with Lera. Am I clear? Three hours starts now.”
He turned and left the kitchen, leaving behind a ringing, stunned silence. He wasn’t just kicking out an insolent relative. He had just blown up the cozy little world his family had built at his expense—and handed them the bill for the wreckage.
Kirill went to his room not to hide, but to claim it. He flung the window wide open, letting icy November air pour into the stale space, heavy with чужой sweat and cheap perfume. The wind immediately scattered some advertising flyers Lera had left on the desk. Kirill scooped them up and tossed them into the trash. Then he stripped the crumpled bed linen off the bed, holding it with two fingers as if it were the hide of a sick animal, and threw it into a corner. The bare mattress looked lonely and dirty.
His mother was the first to enter the room. She didn’t burst in shouting—she seeped in like poisonous fog. Her face was dark red, her hands trembling slightly.
“Do you even understand what you’ve done?” she began in a quiet, hissing voice that was worse than any scream. “You humiliated us. Your family. In front of that… Maksim. You made your own mother a laughingstock.”
Without looking at her, Kirill pulled clean sheets from the closet.
“I put two strangers’ things in the hallway. Strangers who were sleeping in my bed. That’s all I did.”
“Strangers? Lerochka is a stranger to you?!” Galina raised her voice. “I remember how your father and I scraped together our last money so you could afford your first computer. How your aunt—Lera’s mother—loaned us money when your father’s factory stopped paying wages. And this is how you repay us? With your coldness? Money blinded you?”
Kirill carefully spread the fresh sheet, smoothing out every crease. His movements were precise and calm, like a surgeon’s—nothing like someone in the middle of a scandal.
“Money didn’t blind me, Mom. It opened my eyes. I can see I’m paying for an apartment where I don’t even have my own room. I can see I’m supporting grown adults who treat it like a privilege. And I can see you’ve all decided this will last forever. You were wrong.”
The father appeared in the doorway. He tried to look authoritative, leaning on the frame.
“Kirill, stop. Don’t push your mother. We get it—you’re tired, you’ve been on the road, nerves. Let’s do this: they’ll sleep here tonight, and tomorrow we all sit down and calmly discuss everything like adults. And this money thing… you said that in the heat of the moment. It’s not human to demand rent from your parents for a roof over their heads.”
“Is it ‘human’ to move a stranger into your son’s room—the son who pays for that roof?” Kirill slid a pillow into a case and fluffed it. “There’s nothing to discuss. You heard my terms. Time’s ticking.”
Behind his father, Lera and her кавалер Maksim appeared—already dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. He clearly felt humiliated and was looking for a way to strike back.
“You get your wires crossed, ‘boss’?” he rumbled, stepping forward. “Think you’re the smartest one here? We’re not going anywhere. Let’s see you call the cops. They’ll sort out who’s right.”
Kirill finally turned toward them. He looked straight through Maksim and into Lera’s eyes. There was no hatred in his gaze. There was something worse—icy contempt.
“So you all think it’s normal that I pay the mortgage on this apartment, and you moved my cousin and her boyfriend into my room without asking? Great! They have three hours to move out. Or I call the police!”
He pulled his phone from his pocket and checked the screen.
“Two hours and forty-three minutes left. You can start packing. Or you can stand here wasting your time. Your choice.”
He walked past them, pushing through the stunned crowd of relatives like an icebreaker through ice. He went to the bathroom, shut the door, and turned on the water. The loud roar of the shower became the sound of a timer starting—counting down the final minutes of their familiar, comfortable life. And for him—the first breath of clean air in his own home.
Three hours passed. Exactly to the minute. The wall clock in the kitchen—a cheap plastic circle with painted fruit—showed 11:17 p.m. No one had left. Lera and Maksim sat at the table with a defiant look. They’d dragged their bags back from the stairwell into the hallway and were waiting to see what happened next. They were sure Kirill was bluffing—that it was just an emotional outburst from a tired man, and it would pass if they pressed a little and waited it out. His parents sat beside them, forming a silent but solid alliance. Their posture said they were waiting in reproach. They expected apologies.
The bathroom door opened. Kirill came out in a clean home T-shirt and sweatpants. He didn’t look at anyone. He went to the kitchen, poured himself a glass of filtered water, and drank it in slow, measured gulps. The air in the kitchen was thick, charged with unspoken accusations, like the moment before a storm.
“Well?” his mother asked with a poisonous little smirk when he set the glass down. “Time’s up. Where’s your police, commander? Or did you change your mind about dragging your own blood to the station?”
Kirill looked at the clock. 23:18. Then he looked at his mother.
“I didn’t change my mind.”
He took his phone out of his pocket. Everyone tensed. Lera instinctively shrank into her chair. Maksim frowned, bracing for an unpleasant talk with the patrol. Anatoly sighed heavily, anticipating shame.
Kirill scrolled through contacts and hit call. He put it on speaker. A cheerful male voice came from the phone.
“Hello, Kir! Hey! What happened?”
“Hi, Seryoga. Am I interrupting?” Kirill’s voice was completely casual, businesslike.
“No, we’re not asleep yet. How’d you get in?”
“Fine. Listen, I’ve got something for you. I’ve got two rooms freeing up here.”
A confused silence hung in the kitchen. Galina looked at her husband, not understanding. Two?
“Wow!” the voice on the phone said. “Which ones? You kicking your parents out or what?” he joked.
“Exactly,” Kirill answered without a trace of a smile. At that moment his mother’s face turned into a gray mask. “Yes—same apartment. Starting tomorrow, you can move tenants in. Find decent people who can pay. A family is fine, but no kids and no animals. Two months upfront. I’ll send you photos of the rooms now. All right—talk soon.”
He ended the call and set the phone on the table. Turned to his relatives, frozen in place. His father stared as if he’d just been punched in the gut. Lera and Maksim sat with their mouths open, finally realizing the scale of the disaster they’d triggered.
“I see you didn’t understand,” Kirill said calmly to his parents. “You decided that since I pay the mortgage, this is a shared family apartment. No. This is my apartment. My asset and my burden. And if you don’t respect my rules, then you’ll live by the rules of the market. The mortgage won’t pay itself. So starting tomorrow, your rooms are being rented out.”
He paused, letting them feel the depth of the abyss opening beneath them.
“You have a choice. You can go live with Lera, of course. She needs help—she’s family. I’m sure she and Maksim will be happy to take you in. Or”—another pause—“there’s a second option. My room. As soon as Lera and her boyfriend get their things out of here, you can move in there. The two of you. You’ll live in one room, like when you were young. That’s romantic, isn’t it?”
He looked at them without anger, without pity. With the cold calm of someone who had made a final decision. He hadn’t just kicked out an insolent cousin. He’d crossed his parents out of his life, turning them from хозяева into pathetic tenants with no rights, completely dependent on his will. He left them nothing—no pride, no status, not even the illusion of control.
Without waiting for an answer, he turned and walked to his room. He didn’t slam the door. He simply closed it softly behind him. The click of the lock sounded in the stunned kitchen like a gunshot, cutting off their old life. At the table sat four people who had just lost everything—and the only ones they could blame were themselves