Outside the windows, garlands glowed with warm light, their reflections trembling in the glass where Christmas trees sparkled faintly. From inside came the muffled strains of holiday melodies. Beyond those walls, however, ruled a different world—a white, breathless silence. Snow tumbled down in heavy flakes, as though an unseen hand endlessly poured it from the sky. The quiet was so profound, it felt sacred, like standing in a temple. No footsteps. No voices. Only the low howl of the wind in the pipes and the soft hiss of snow as it wrapped the city in a shroud of forgotten fates.
Kolya Sukhanov stood on the porch, numb, not yet grasping that this nightmare was real. The icy wind cut his face; the cold soaked through his thin socks. At his feet, half-buried in the drift, lay his backpack—a final reminder that this was no dream.
“Get out of here! I never want to see you again!” His father’s hoarse, hate-filled shout split the silence, followed by the slam of the door right in Kolya’s face.
Thrown out. On Christmas night. Without clothes, without farewell, without the hope of return.
His mother had stood nearby, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed. She hadn’t spoken. She hadn’t stopped her husband. She hadn’t whispered, “This is our son.” Instead, she had only bitten her lip and shrugged helplessly, hiding her tears.
Silent. Always silent.
Kolya stepped down into the snow, each flake seeping into his slippers like needles. He had no idea where to go. Inside, his chest felt hollow, as though his heart had slipped somewhere beneath his ribs.
That’s it, Kolya. You belong to no one now. Not even them. Especially not them.
He didn’t cry. His eyes were dry, though pain burned in his chest like fire. Crying was useless—it was too late for that. Everything was over. There was no way back.
So he walked. Aimlessly. Through the storm, beneath the streetlamps that lit empty streets. Behind windows, families laughed, sipped tea, unwrapped gifts. And he wandered—unseen, unnecessary, a shadow during a holiday meant for everyone but him.
He didn’t remember how many hours passed. Streets blurred into one long blur of snow and silence. A guard drove him away from a doorway; strangers turned aside at his gaze. To them he was no one. A ghost.
That was how his winter began. His first winter of loneliness. The winter of survival.
For a week, Kolya slept wherever the city allowed—on benches, in bus shelters, in underground passages. Shopkeepers, guards, strangers all drove him off. Their eyes showed no pity, only annoyance, as if his ragged jacket and swollen eyes reminded them of something they feared becoming.
He ate whatever he could find: scraps from bins, or—once—a loaf stolen from a stall while the seller’s back was turned. His first theft. Not from malice. From hunger. From terror of dying.
At night he found refuge in an abandoned basement of a crumbling apartment block. It stank of mold and cats, but the faint steam from a nearby pipe was enough to keep him alive. He made a nest from newspapers, cardboard, rags scavenged from the trash.
Sometimes he sat there shivering, dry-eyed but shaking with sobs that never reached the surface.
One day, an old man appeared. White beard, a cane. He glanced at Kolya once.
“Alive, eh? Good. Thought it was just the cats in the bags again.”
He set down a tin of stew and a crust of bread, then left. Kolya didn’t thank him. He only ate, greedy, with trembling hands. But the old man returned from time to time, bringing food, never asking questions. Only once did he speak more:
“I was fourteen too when my mother died. My father hanged himself. Survive, boy. People are bastards. But you—you’re not like them.”
Kolya held onto those words. He repeated them in the nights when strength failed him.
Then came the morning he couldn’t rise. Fever burned his skin, his body shook with chills, his legs collapsed beneath him. He barely remembered crawling up the basement stairs before blacking out in the snow. The next thing he felt was warmth—human hands lifting him.
“My God, he’s frozen through!” A woman’s voice, sharp but trembling with worry, reached him.
That was the first time he saw Anastasia Petrovna. A tall woman in a dark coat, her eyes tired but filled with care. She pressed him against her, as though she already knew he hadn’t felt such warmth in years.
“Hush, son. I’m here now. You’ll be all right. Do you hear me?”
And he did hear. Through fever, through delirium—those words broke through like fire in the dark.
They brought him to a shelter on Dvoretskaya Street. Peeling walls, but clean sheets. The smell of soup, potatoes, cabbage. And most precious of all—sleep without fear. His first peaceful sleep in months.
Anastasia Petrovna visited daily. She asked about his health, brought books—not childish fairy tales, but Chekhov, Kuprin, even the Constitution.
“Listen, Kolya,” she said one day, handing him the book. “If you know your rights, you are no longer defenseless. Even when you have nothing.”
He nodded. He read. He absorbed. Every word became a lifeline.
Day by day, something inside him grew—a spark, alive and stubborn. A determination to become someone who understood. Someone who could protect. Someone who would never again walk past a barefoot child in the snow.
When Kolya turned eighteen, he passed the Unified State Exam and entered the law faculty at Tver State University. It felt unreal—more like a fragile dream than an actual future. Doubt gnawed at him, whispering that he would fail, that everything would collapse. But Anastasia Petrovna only smiled and said:
“You’ll make it. You have something most people lack—a spine of steel.”
He studied by day and worked by night, mopping floors in a shabby snack bar near the station. Sometimes he dozed off in the storeroom between shifts, clutching a thermos of bitter black tea. He devoured books, pinched every coin, starved himself until payday. Slept little. Wrote his papers. And not once did he say, “I can’t.” Not once did he surrender.
By his second year, he had become an assistant in a legal consultation office. At first he only swept floors, filed papers, and ran errands—but he was close. He watched. He listened. He absorbed cases the way others absorbed music, turning them into a living textbook.
By his fourth year, he was drafting statements himself—for free. Especially for those who had no money. Once, he was sent to help a woman in a threadbare jacket.
“You don’t have money, do you?” he asked quietly. “Don’t worry. I’ll help.”
“And who are you?” she asked with suspicion.
“A student, for now. But soon someone who can defend you for real.”
Her lips trembled into a smile, as if hearing for the first time: You are not alone.
At twenty-six, Kolya was already working in a major law firm. But he never stopped offering free consultations to those with nowhere else to turn. Orphans. Women after abuse. Old people cheated out of their homes. No one left his office empty-handed.
He remembered too well what it meant to be unwanted. And he swore no one else would feel that way if he could prevent it.
His parents had vanished from his life that Christmas night. He never looked for them, never called, never even tried to remember. That night he stopped being their son. And they stopped being his parents.
Now, years later, as snow once again swirled outside his office window, two figures appeared at his door—a stooped man and a woman in an old headscarf. He recognized them instantly. Something cold and ancient stirred inside him, like voices echoing from a world long gone.
“Kolya…” his father rasped, voice broken. “Forgive us… Son.”
His mother brushed his hand, eyes brimming with tears. But not the same tears as before. Different ones.
Kolya said nothing. Just watched. No rage. No cry. Only emptiness.
“You’re late,” he answered evenly. “I died for you that night. And you—for me.”
He rose, walked to the door, and opened it.
“I wish you health. But there is no road back.”
They lingered a moment, then left. No pleas. No excuses. Just silence. As if they knew: there had been one chance—and it was gone.
Kolya sat down again, opened a new file—about a boy who had run away from an orphanage. He read, focused, steady. No trembling. No doubts.
Nothing he endured was wasted. Not the nights in the basement. Not the stolen scraps of bread. Not the endless “go away.”
All of it had forged him into the man who could now say to another:
“I’m here. You are not alone.”
And deep within, he still heard Anastasia Petrovna’s voice:
“Rights are your shield—even when you have nothing else.”
Now he himself was that shield. For those who stood barefoot in the snow.