The restaurant throbbed.
A pricey, airless, self-important swell of hundreds of voices—glasses chiming, laughter ricocheting, and a saxophone that kept pushing its way into everything.
Lena sat at the farthest table, tucked beside a column. The perfect place to dissolve into the shadows.
She hadn’t wanted to come. She’d begged Yegor to let her skip it, to stay away. But Sveta had called her personally three times. Not showing up would have meant war—and Lena couldn’t survive that kind of war yet. So she put on the gray dress and came.
In the center of the room, at the main table, her sister glittered. It was Sveta’s birthday, and she ruled the night like a queen.
“…and I want to say!” Sveta’s voice sailed over the music and the laughter. “I’m happy!”
The guests applauded.
Yegor—Sveta’s husband—sat beside her. He was the only one not clapping. He watched his wife with an expression that made Lena’s skin turn cold. It was the face of someone who’d reached the end of himself.
Lena caught his eyes for a second—only one. He looked away immediately.
Her heart lurched, heavy and awkward. Five years. They’d been hiding for five years.
“I have everything!” Sveta went on, standing with her glass. “A devoted husband!” She planted a theatrical kiss on Yegor’s cheek. He didn’t even react.
“Wonderful friends— all of you!”
Laughter. Applause.
“And of course…” Sveta paused, sweeping the room until her gaze found exactly what it wanted. “My darling little sister—Lenochka!”
The saxophonist missed a note.
Lena pressed herself into her chair. She knew what was coming. It was a ritual.
“Lena, stand up—why are you hiding? Let everyone look at my shy little one!”
Lena rose slowly because she had to. Dozens of curious, faintly mocking eyes pinned her in place—her simple gray dress, a hundred times cheaper than Sveta’s.
“I look at you, sis,” Sveta smiled, but her eyes were cold as cut ice, “and I think… how did we end up like this?”
Lena stayed silent. She only wanted it to end.
“We’re twins, and yet we’re so different! I’m fire!” Sveta flung her arms up dramatically. “And you…”
She laughed again, and the sound scraped Lena raw.
“You’re a gray little mouse, Lena.”
The room burst into laughter. Not vicious—just delighted. They loved Sveta’s performances. They always laughed. And that laughter—rewarding her cruelty—hurt Lena more than the insult itself.
“Always in your corner, always in the shadows!” Sveta kept going. “But it’s fine, I love you even like that. Cheers to my little mouse!”
Glasses lifted.
Lena stood there, feeling spat on, watching as Yegor slowly set his glass down without taking a sip.
He looked straight at her.
And then he stood.
Not sharply, not impulsively—slowly, as if he were shrugging off a massive weight.
The music cut out.
Conversation died.
Sveta, pleased with the attention she’d stirred up, turned toward her husband, expecting him to wrap her up or add something charming to the toast.
But Yegor wasn’t looking at his wife.
He was looking at Lena.
And he started walking toward her.
Step by measured step, he crossed the enormous hall that had suddenly gone still—leaving the shining center table for the dark corner by the column.
One step.
Another.
The quiet squeak of his perfectly polished shoes on marble was the only sound. Sveta’s perfume clung to him, and he carried it across the room like evidence.
The saxophonist froze, mouth open. Waiters stopped mid-stride, trays hovering.
Lena forgot how to breathe.
This was a nightmare. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not here. Not like this.
Their plan had been different: a quiet divorce, a careful exit, months from now. The plan they’d built piece by piece was collapsing right now because of one word—“mouse.”
Yegor passed his business partners’ table; they stared at him in open disbelief.
He walked past Sveta’s university friends, already whispering behind their hands.
“Yegor?” Sveta’s voice rang out in the cottony silence. For the first time a hard edge slipped into it—not a command yet, but panic. She laughed nervously. Fake.
“Darling, what is this—are you going to sing for my sister? What kind of show—”
He didn’t turn.
He didn’t even slow down.
He kept coming, and in that moment there was no one else in the room but the two of them.
Lena watched him and the world narrowed into the aisle between tables. She saw the muscle working in his jaw. Saw his fists clenched tight.
He wasn’t drunk. He was furious.
But not the kind of fury Sveta knew—the loud kind that shattered plates.
This was different. The kind only Lena had seen: cold, controlled, irreversible.
He stopped exactly a meter from her table.
Tall. Perfect suit. The column’s shadow fell over him, but he still seemed brighter than all the spotlights in the place.
“Yegor!” Sveta was nearly screaming now, her face twisting. “Get back to the table! Now! You’re humiliating me!”
A first shocked breath rippled through the crowd.
Yegor slowly turned his head—not to Lena. To his wife.
He looked at Sveta across the entire room.
And his voice, quiet but razor-clear, struck every guest:
“You humiliated yourself, Sveta.”
Sveta swayed as if she’d been slapped.
Then Yegor looked back at Lena.
The steel in his eyes softened. The rage drained away, leaving only bottomless fatigue—and tenderness.
“Lena,” he said.
That was all. Just her name.
But he said it the way Sveta had never heard him say anything in fifteen years of marriage.
Lena felt tears sliding down her cheeks. She couldn’t move.
“Yegor, I… I didn’t—”
“I know,” he said softly.
He held out his hand—palm open.
An invitation.
A demand.
A rescue.
The room froze. Someone coughed nervously.
“What is happening?!” Sveta shrieked, losing control completely. “You! Mouse! What did you do to him?!”
And that shriek—that last drop of poison—snapped something inside Lena.
She looked at her trembling hand.
Then at his.
And she placed her fingers in his palm.
Yegor closed his hand around hers immediately.
He didn’t just help her stand. He pulled her out of the shadows. He brought her to his side.
And there they were—together, in the middle of the room.
Her gray “mouse” dress. His expensive tux.
Her tear-streaked face. His steady, certain calm.
Her sister’s husband walked up to the “mouse.”
And the guests gasped.
Because it wasn’t just dramatic.
Without letting go of Lena’s hand, Yegor turned toward the stunned room—and toward his wife, pale with fury.
“Excuse me for interrupting the celebration,” he said in a level, almost everyday tone. “But I’m done taking part in this performance.”
He lifted their joined hands slightly, so everyone could see.
“Sveta, you’re right about one thing. You two are very different.”
He looked at Lena.
And the tenderness in his voice was so unmistakable it seemed like the crystal glasses might crack from it.
“You called her a ‘gray mouse.’”
His voice remained calm, but now the entire room was listening.
“You’ve always called her that. And yourself ‘fire.’”
He gave a bitter half-smile.
“Only your ‘fire,’ Sveta, burns everything alive within a kilometer. It demands worship, sacrifices, and endless fuel. It gives nothing back. It only consumes.”
Sveta opened her mouth—no sound came.
“And this ‘mouse’…” Yegor turned to Lena and brushed her cheek with his free hand, wiping away her tears. “For five years she’s been saving me from your fire. Five years she’s listened to me fall apart. Five years she’s stitched together the soul you tore open every day. Every. Single. Day.”
The room gasped—this time loud, together.
Five years.
“What?” Sveta hissed, like a snake exhaling.
“Five years?!” she screamed, and now there was nothing royal in her voice—only market-stall rage.
She lunged at them.
“Traitors! Both of you! Behind my back! In my house! You, mouse! You, filth!”
She swung—her perfect manicure turning into claws—aimed straight for Lena’s face.
Lena squeezed her eyes shut.
But the blow never landed.
Yegor caught Sveta’s wrist with ease. He didn’t even look at her. He looked at Lena.
“Open your eyes, Lena. Don’t be afraid anymore.”
Lena opened them. Sveta stood a meter away, twisting, trying to wrench free. Her flawless hairstyle had come undone; blotches of red flared across her face.
“I love her, Sveta,” Yegor said, tossing his wife’s hand aside. “And I’m leaving.”
“Leaving?” Sveta laughed hysterically. “Where are you leaving—to her? To her little kennel? You, who’s used to luxury! You’ll howl in a week!”
“I already howled, Sveta. For fifteen years.”
That was the last thing he said to her.
He squeezed Lena’s hand tighter.
“Come on.”
And they walked.
It was the longest walk of her life—longer than five years of waiting.
Lena didn’t stare at the floor anymore. She looked straight ahead. She felt naked under hundreds of eyes and, at the same time, armored for the first time in her life.
They passed the same tables again. Business partners dropped their eyes—strangely ashamed, as if it were their fault.
Sveta’s friends stared with open envy. Not at Yegor.
At Lena.
Envy that she stole someone else’s husband?
No.
Envy that she had the courage to leave.
“Stop!” Sveta screamed after them. “You’re not going anywhere! I’ll destroy you! Yegor, you’ll leave me everything—everything! I’ll take your company! I’ll ruin you! Do you hear me?! You’ll live in her kennel!”
Yegor stopped at the doors.
Lena tensed.
He turned back. The room held its breath, waiting for a final blow.
Yegor looked at his wife—sobbing with rage in the middle of a room flooded with gifts.
“Sveta,” he said calmly, “I was already living with nothing.”
He pushed the heavy door, and they stepped out of the suffocating, pretentious roar into cool night emptiness.
The door closed behind them, slow and heavy.
Inside, the room hung in stunned silence.
The saxophonist coughed awkwardly.
One guest stood and quietly headed for the exit, murmuring apologies. Then another. And another.
Five minutes later, Sveta was alone at the head table—a queen in an empty hall.
She stared at two empty chairs—hers and her husband’s—then looked toward the far table by the column.
That one was empty too.
Her untouched cake sat perfect and beautiful and useless—just like she suddenly felt.
And with a chill that went straight through her bones, Sveta understood: both of them—“fire” and “mouse”—had just left together.
And she, so bright and so strong, had stayed behind.
Alone.
In the shadows.
The heavy oak door slammed behind them with a soft, velvet thud, and every sound cut off.
No music. No shrieks. No saxophone. Only the distant hum of the night city.
They stood on empty granite steps. Cool, slightly damp air hit Lena’s face.
She coughed and realized she hadn’t been breathing in that hall.
Maybe she hadn’t really been breathing for the last ten years.
She was shaking.
Yegor still didn’t let go of her hand. His palm was hot and solid, and that grip was the only thing keeping her from sinking onto the steps.
“Cold?” His voice was rough.
She shook her head. It wasn’t cold. It was adrenaline, fear, five years of lies pouring out of her body.
He stopped and turned her toward him.
They stood under a tall streetlamp. He studied her face like he was seeing her for the first time.
Then he gently freed his hand from hers—and Lena panicked, clinging harder.
“Easy,” he said.
He took off his tux jacket—expensive, flawless.
And draped it over her shoulders, over her gray dress.
The jacket wrapped her in weight and warmth, smelling like him. Her trembling eased a little.
“Yegor…” she whispered. “Our plan… everything went wrong. We weren’t supposed to—”
“We were,” he cut her off.
He smoothed a loose strand of hair back from her face.
“We were supposed to do this five years ago, Lena.”
He glanced at the restaurant windows blazing behind them.
“I couldn’t anymore,” he said simply. “I listened to her humiliate you—again. And I realized our ‘quiet plan’ was just another lie. Another concession to her. So she could have a comfortable divorce. And you… you’d still be sitting in the shadows even after it was over. I couldn’t. I couldn’t let her speak to you like that for one more second.”
Lena stared at him—hers. Finally hers.
There was no triumph in his eyes. Only a huge, scorching exhaustion.
“What… what now?” she asked.
It was the scariest question.
“Where are you going? To her? To that little kennel?” Sveta’s voice rang in her ears.
Yegor gave a small smile, as if he’d heard her thoughts.
“Right now? Right now we’re going to drink tea. In your ‘kennel.’”
He looked at her, and for the first time all evening something warm sparked in his eyes.
“Honestly,” he added, “I’ve always hated that restaurant.”
“You’ll… have problems,” she said.
“We’ll have problems,” he corrected. “And that’s the point.”
He took her hand again—this time over the jacket.
“Are you ready?”
Lena looked at the glittering sign. The bass of the music still throbbed faintly through the walls.
She remembered the guests’ laughter. Her sister’s icy eyes.
Then she looked at Yegor—at his tired face that, for the first time in years, looked alive.
“Yes,” she said.
She wasn’t a mouse anymore.
And he wasn’t a prize.
They were simply two people who had just stepped out of the shadows.
Yegor raised his hand to stop a passing taxi. The car glided to the curb.
He opened the door for her.
Lena slid inside. He got in beside her.
“Where to?” the driver asked, eyeing the strange pair in the mirror— a woman in a gray dress and a man’s expensive jacket, and a man in just his shirt.
Yegor gave Lena’s address.
The taxi pulled away.
Neither of them looked back at the restaurant blazing with lights, where a party had just ended.
Epilogue
The taxi rolled through the night city.
Streetlights smeared into long yellow ribbons. Lena watched them with her forehead against the cold window.
Yegor didn’t let go of her hand.
They didn’t speak. All the words had stayed behind in that hall.
Now and then the driver glanced at them in the mirror. He’d seen plenty. But this couple was different—money clung to the man like a scent, and the woman clutched his jacket like it was oxygen. The driver stayed quiet, sensing he was carrying people away from either a catastrophe… or a victory.
Their building came into view—an old, quiet five-story walk-up.
“We’re here,” the driver said.
Yegor paid.
They got out. The entrance. A dim bulb. A key scraping in a lock.
The door opened, and they stepped into her apartment—her “kennel.”
Yegor paused on the threshold.
A small entryway. Neat. The air smelled of books and her perfume.
He’d been here dozens of times—secretly, in fear, always rushing. He’d entered like a thief. He’d left before dawn. He’d hated himself for it.
Tonight he walked in for the first time without hurrying.
Lena switched on the light in the little room.
“I… I’ll be right back,” she said, heading for the kitchen, still wrapped in his jacket.
Yegor slowly took off his shoes.
He stepped into the room. A simple sofa, a bookshelf, a table by the window. No marble. No spotlights.
He went to the window.
He looked at the lights in other people’s apartments across the way.
From the kitchen he heard the kettle click.
That ordinary, domestic sound hit him harder than all of Sveta’s screams.
A few minutes later Lena came in.
Two plain mugs in her hands.
She set them on the table.
Only then did she take off his jacket and carefully hang it on the back of a chair. She was left in her gray dress again.
She sat across from him.
“That was… terrifying,” she said quietly.
“That was honest,” he replied.
He lifted his mug. His fingers trembled slightly.
“Sveta… she’ll destroy you,” Lena stared at the tabletop. “She’ll take everything. The business, the house…”
“She already took it,” Yegor said. “She took fifteen years of my life. She won’t take any more.”
He drank.
“It’s… just tea,” Lena said, embarrassed.
“It’s the best tea I’ve ever had,” he said, smiling.
And that smile—the first real one—warmed her.
“What have we done, Yegor?”
He covered her hand with his.
“We… survived, Lena.”
He looked at her—tired, tear-streaked, and so familiar.
“You’re right, you’re different,” he said. “She’s a fire that demands to be watched. And you’re the warmth people want to live inside.”
He stood, walked around the table, and knelt in front of her.
He didn’t kiss her. He simply rested his forehead on her knees.
“I’m home,” he whispered.
Lena threaded her fingers into his hair.
Tomorrow would bring noise: lawyers, calls from furious partners whose banquet had been wrecked, accusations, division of assets.
Sveta wouldn’t forgive. She’d take revenge—long, expensive, and dirty.
It would be a long and ugly battle.
But this first night—they won.
A “gray mouse” who turned out to be the only one strong enough to love for five years, and a man exhausted by fire who finally chose warmth.
They sat in a small kitchen.
And they didn’t care what was happening outside the window.