— Chris, will you talk to your parents? I asked you to.
Oleg’s voice, usually soft and enveloping, now sounded to Kristina like an old engine idling — monotonous, buzzing, and provoking a dull irritation. She sat in an armchair with a book, but for the last ten minutes she’d been reading the same page. The letters danced before her eyes, refusing to form words. She deliberately turned the page slowly, making an exaggerated rustle meant to signal her unwillingness to enter this conversation.
“What exactly should I talk about, Oleg? About how my parents, who have saved their whole lives for a calm old age, should suddenly find a couple of extra million for an apartment for us? We’ve been over this.”
“Not for us, for our future family,” he corrected, walking up to her chair and peering into her face with a wheedling smile. He could be charming when he wanted something, and that infuriated her most of all. “Chris, try to understand — it’s logical. We’re getting married soon. My folks… they’ll help however they can. Mom called today — she said they have a special gift for us.”
Kristina lifted her eyes from the book. She knew what would come next. This prelude was familiar. A “special gift” from his parents, Vera Pavlovna and Igor Matveevich, owners of the “Kolosok” grocery chain, was always special in its uselessness and symbolism.
“What is it?” she asked without a hint of interest, bracing herself for the worst.
“An antique tea set!” Oleg blurted out enthusiastically. “Mom says it’s from her grandmother. Service for twelve. Can you imagine the memory? It’s a family heirloom!”
Kristina slowly closed the book and set it on the coffee table. The sound of the hard cover touching the glass surface was short and final. The familiar coziness of their rented apartment — the smell of coffee, the glow of the floor lamp — evaporated at once, replaced by a ringing tension.
“Oleg, are you serious right now?”
“What’s so wrong about it?” He didn’t catch the shift in her mood, still smiling his rehearsed, disarming smile. “It’s very valuable, an antique, you could say.”
Kristina stood up. She was not tall, but standing before him with her arms crossed, she seemed much taller and more imposing. She looked him straight in the eye, and the warmth that was usually there was gone.
“Even if my parents buy us an apartment as a wedding gift, what about yours? Are they planning to give us anything other than an old, cracked tea set? Or is it the same as always with them — there’s a business, but no money?”
The smile finally slid off his face. He frowned, adopting a hurt expression. That was his standard reaction to any criticism of his family.
“There you go again about money. I thought we loved each other, not kept count of who put in how much. You’re becoming so mercenary, Chris. My parents are giving us a symbol, their blessing!”
“Me? Mercenary?” She took a step toward him, and he involuntarily stepped back. “Fine. Let’s look at it from another angle. According to you, my parents should provide us with the basic asset — real estate. And yours? Yours will provide us with memories of their grandmother in the form of cracked cups? Oleg, that’s not a partnership. That’s your family trying to swallow me whole — entirely at my parents’ expense.”
He wanted to object, to wind up the same old organ-grinder tune about love and higher matters, but she stopped him with a look.
“Enough. This conversation is over. For today. We will return to it, Oleg. But we’ll continue it by my rules.”
For two days they existed in parallel universes that happened to intersect across the eighty square meters of their rented apartment. The air between them thickened, turned viscous and cold, like a November fog. They didn’t speak. Oleg tried several times to start small talk — the weather, a movie he’d watched alone — but ran into short, monosyllabic answers and fell silent. Kristina moved around the home with a quiet, detached grace. She made coffee for herself without offering him any, ate dinner with her eyes buried in her laptop, and went to bed turning her back to him before he even came into the bedroom. It wasn’t the silence of hurt. It was the silence of preparation. She was gathering strength, building a strategy, honing her wording.
On the third evening she called him. He was sitting in the living room mindlessly flipping channels, creating a noise floor to keep from going crazy in the quiet.
“Oleg, come here. We need to talk.”
Her voice, sounding from the kitchen, was calm and devoid of any emotion. He flinched. There was neither anger nor resentment in that tone, and that was the most frightening thing. He turned off the TV and went to the kitchen. Kristina sat at the table, a cup of cooled tea in front of her. She wasn’t looking at him; her gaze was fixed on the dark window.
“I’ve thought over your… and your parents’… proposal,” she began, pausing distinctly. “And I’ve concluded you were right about one thing. We really shouldn’t approach this emotionally.”
Oleg tensed. He felt like a student at an exam before a stern professor. He sat down silently on the chair opposite.
“Let’s translate all this into the language your family likes so much. The language of business. We have a joint project called ‘Family.’ To launch it, initial investment is required. My parents, as you want, contribute the main share capital — an apartment. An asset with real market value. Your parents, as they see fit, contribute… the tea set. An asset with purely symbolic value, and only for them.”
She spoke slowly, stamping each word, as if reading out contract clauses. Oleg looked at her and felt uneasy. This wasn’t his Kristina. This was a stranger, a hard woman with icy eyes.
“In any business, such a distribution of shares isn’t called a partnership, Oleg. It’s called a takeover. A hostile one — and at someone else’s expense.”
“Kristina, what are you talking about? What takeover? We love each other, we’re getting married!” His voice sounded pathetic even to himself.
“Love is wonderful,” she finally turned her head toward him, her gaze absolutely empty. “But it doesn’t cancel out the balance sheet. So here is my counteroffer. I’ll talk to my parents. Maybe they’ll agree. But on one condition.”
She paused, letting him feel the gravity of the moment.
“The apartment will be registered to me only. It will be my personal, indivisible asset in our joint venture. My side’s contribution. And you, Oleg… you’ll live in it. With me. As… let’s say, not the most valuable asset.”
It was as if the air had been sucked out of his lungs. Oleg stared at her, unable to utter a word. He felt the flush of humiliation spread across his face. “Not the most valuable asset.” It wasn’t just an insult. It annulled him — as a person, as a man, as a future husband.
“Do you even hear yourself? An asset? You called me an asset?”
“I want you to repeat this verbatim to your parents. To Vera Pavlovna and Igor Matveevich. My official counteroffer. Let them assess it in terms of their business expertise. And then you can give me their answer.”
She stood, took her cup, and silently walked to the sink. The conversation was over. She wasn’t arguing, she wasn’t shouting. She had simply presented the bill. And now she would wait to see whether it would be paid.
He returned late, when it had long grown dark outside and the city had lit its artificial constellations. Kristina heard the key scrape in the lock with an unfamiliar, angry force. Heavy steps in the hallway, the sound of keys tossed onto the shelf — none of it was his. It was the gait and manners of a stranger who had taken up residence in Oleg’s body. He entered the kitchen, where she still sat with her laptop, and stopped in the doorway, arms crossed. His face was pale, but hard muscles worked in his cheeks.
“I told them everything,” he said in a dull, lifeless voice.
Kristina slowly raised her eyes to him. She didn’t ask anything; she simply waited. She knew he hadn’t come merely to report. He had come to execute.
“They assessed it. They appreciated your rudeness at its true worth.”
He took a step forward, and in his eyes — formerly confused and ingratiating — there burned a cold, borrowed fire. It was his mother’s gaze, Vera Pavlovna’s — sharp, appraising, unforgiving of weakness.
“So, your ‘counteroffer’ is rejected. Completely. Moreover,” he made a dramatic pause, clearly savoring his new role as messenger of doom, “they said that if your parents are so well-off that they can throw apartments around, then they can pay for the entire wedding as well. And you’re not getting a single kopeck from us.”
He said it defiantly, as if it were his own personal victory. As if he had just put an insolent upstart in her place. Kristina looked at him, and for the first time in their relationship, she didn’t feel sorry for him. She didn’t see Oleg. She saw a marionette desperately trying to prove his loyalty to the master, tugging the strings so hard they were about to snap.
“Have you finished the broadcast?” she asked so calmly that he was taken aback for a second.
“It’s not a broadcast!” he exploded. “It’s my position! You destroyed everything, Kristina! Everything! We had love, we had plans, we were going to get married! And you reduced it all to assets, to deals, to humiliating my parents! Do you even understand what you’ve done? You spat in their souls!”
He paced the kitchen from corner to corner like a caged animal, gesturing and flinging accusations.
“They wanted to give us a family heirloom! To bring you into the family, to show you’re one of us now! And you? You priced it as cracked cups! All you care about is money! Square meters! You just decided you’d caught a goldfish in me, and when you realized you’d have to reckon with my family, with our traditions, you showed your true face!”
Kristina watched this performance in silence. Not a single word was his. “Spat in their souls,” “showed your true face,” “family traditions” — that was Vera Pavlovna’s lexicon, her favorite turns of phrase for morally destroying anyone she disliked. Oleg had absorbed it like a sponge and was now spewing it at her without even trying to give it his own intonation. He was a relay. Not the most valuable one, but very loud.
“Now I understand what Mom meant,” he sighed, stopping opposite her. “She saw your predatory nature right away. And I, idiot that I am, didn’t believe it. I defended you, said you were different. But you turned out to be calculating and cynical. You didn’t need me. You needed a springboard, a pass into another life. But you miscalculated. Our family is not a revolving door.”
He fell silent, breathing heavily. He had said everything he’d been instructed to say, even adding a bit of his own to look more convincing. A tense silence hung in the kitchen, broken only by the ticking of the wall clock. He waited for her reaction: tears, screaming, counter-insults — anything. But Kristina only gave the slightest nod, as if marking off another item on a list.
“I hear you,” she said at last. “Thank you for the information.”
His confusion at her calm lasted only a moment. He couldn’t allow her to end it so easily, keeping the last word. He needed to get a reaction, to crack that icy shell, to make her suffer as he did now, feeling humiliated and betrayed.
“‘Thank you for the information’? Is that all you can say? I just explained to you that you destroyed our future, and you thank me for the information?”
“And what else should I thank you for?” Kristina slowly closed her laptop. The motion was final, like a judge’s gavel. “For coming here and diligently, almost verbatim, repeating everything that’s been put into your head over the past few hours? For still not managing a single thought of your own? No, Oleg. You don’t thank someone for that. You simply take note.”
He froze. Her words hit the mark and disarmed him. His righteous anger, which he had carried so carefully from his parents’ house, suddenly felt false and alien, and he felt naked and ridiculous.
“I… I really do think that way,” he forced out, but his voice sounded unsure.
“No, you don’t,” she cut him off. “You never think. You’ve always only transmitted. First — your love for me, then — your requests, and now — your parents’ anger. You’re just a megaphone, Oleg. A good-quality, loud one — but absolutely empty inside.”
She stood and walked to the window, leaning her elbows on the cold sill. She looked at the lights of the night city but saw only the reflection of their failed project.
“You know when I asked you that question a few days ago? ‘Even if my parents buy us an apartment as a wedding gift, what about yours? Are they planning to give us anything other than an old cracked tea set? Or is it the same as always — there’s a business, but no money?’ I wasn’t waiting for an answer. I was giving you a chance. A chance to be a partner. A chance to say, ‘Kristina, that’s nonsense. My parents are wrong. We’ll solve this together, like two adults.’”
She turned to him. There wasn’t a drop of hatred in her eyes, only boundless, all-consuming fatigue.
“But you blew that chance. You ran to Mommy and Daddy to have them decide for you. To have them give you the words you should say to me. And they did. And you brought them to me. And now you stand here, filled with their righteousness, trying to make me feel guilty.”
She took a step toward him. He didn’t retreat, but his whole body tensed as if bracing for a blow.
“Listen carefully. It was never about the apartment. And not even about that idiotic tea set. It was about you. About your absolute inability to be a man instead of a son. To be my partner instead of your parents’ courier. Turns out you’re not just ‘not the most valuable asset.’ You’re a liability. An obligation. A black hole that sucks in other people’s resources — my nerves, my parents’ money — while producing nothing in return.”
She stopped a meter away from him. Her voice grew very quiet, which made it even weightier.
“Therefore, I hereby officially notify you: our joint project called ‘Family’ is being shut down. The reason: the complete unprofitability and lack of prospects of one of the participants.”
Oleg was silent. He looked at her and understood that this was the end. Not scandalous, not hysterical, but routine and final — like a signature on a company liquidation document. He had lost. Not because his parents didn’t give money, but because he himself turned out to be nothing.
“You can start packing your things,” Kristina added in the same even tone one might use to talk about the weather forecast. “No rush. I’ll spend the night at a friend’s so I don’t get in the way. You’ll need to return my keys. You can leave them in the mailbox. Your parents, I imagine, are waiting for you.”
She took her jacket from the hook, threw it on, slipped her phone and car keys into her pocket. She didn’t look at him as she passed. For her he no longer existed in that space. He remained standing alone in the middle of the kitchen, in a stranger’s apartment filled with the scent of her perfume, and suddenly realized he had just been fired from his own life. Coldly, professionally, and without severance pay.