“Are you going to give her feathers next? Or a full-size golden statue?” Katya looked up from her tablet and stared at Ulyana like she’d just suggested turning their souvenir shop into a secret brothel.
“Come on,” Ulyana sighed, leaning back in her chair. “It’s just a pendant. Antique. With garnets. It’s actually very elegant—even for your sarcastic soul.”
“For my soul, sure. For Galina Pavlovna it’ll be like waving a red rag in front of a bull. She already thinks you’re some kind of marketing hallucination, and now you’re giving her jewelry. Like you’re trying to buy her approval.”
“That’s exactly what I’m doing,” Ulyana said with a bitter half-smile as she reached for her phone. “I’m trying to purchase it—because it doesn’t come any other way.”
Katya’s gaze softened slightly. These talks resurfaced every three months, after every visit to the “husband’s family,” as Ulyana called that crowd, refusing to risk the word relatives.
“Listen… maybe forget them?” Katya said. “Seriously. You owe them nothing. You’re forty-one, you’ve got a company, a whole chain of locations, you signed a contract with SibirSouvenir, your packaging is designer-level—so good even the Chinese didn’t think of it first…”
“I have Denis,” Ulyana cut in quietly. “And I want him to… I don’t know. At least not be ripped in half between me and his mother.”
“Is he actually ripped in half,” Katya asked, “or does he just act like it’s hard?”
There was no answer. That question hit the sore spot every single time—like a needle finding the same nerve.
That evening, the phone rang. That call—the one that always begins with a polite “Are you busy?” and ends with an offer that determines the next spiral of self-destruction.
“Ulyan, hi. Listen—Mom’s having her jubilee on Saturday. Seventy-five. I thought… maybe you’ll come with us?”
“How will she take it?” Ulyana’s voice sounded calmer than she felt.
“She’ll accept you. I promise. Everything’s changed. I talked to her. She realized she was too harsh.” Denis’s voice was soft—like a sweater fresh from the dry cleaner—but the familiar pressure was already there.
“The same mother who called me ‘a souvenir girl without a diploma’ at the last dinner?”
“Well…” Denis exhaled noisily. “She worries. She’s from another era. Back then it was different—higher education, departments, ethics…”
“Right. Hierarchy by degrees, contempt for anyone who made it without the right ‘papers.’ I get it.”
“So… are you coming?”
Ulyana paused for a second. Then she looked at the little box lined carefully with velvet—and nodded, though he couldn’t see her.
“I’ll come. But only for you.”
“Thank you. You won’t regret it.”
Oh, Denis. You overestimate my ability to regret things when everything has been obvious for ages.
The celebration was held in a textbook apartment of Soviet-bred academic intelligentsia: tea-rose curtains, books stacked two rows deep on the shelves, porcelain figurines in the cabinet, and a smell of something like fish under marinade—something that had clearly seen better years.
“And here’s our business celebrity!” Galina Pavlovna announced it like an indictment as Ulyana walked in.
“Good evening,” Ulyana smiled. “Happy birthday.” She offered the pendant box.
“Thank you, dear.” Her mother-in-law took it, peeked inside for a heartbeat, and placed it on the windowsill. “Denis, help me bring the salad. Since someone, apparently, considers cooking beneath her.”
Ulyana sat on the edge of the sofa, feeling as if she were being scraped down layer by layer—patience, self-respect, restraint.
“So, Ulyana,” someone at the table asked brightly, “what are you selling these days?”
“We’re producing a souvenir collection for the championship. A new line on eco-friendly materials. Everything meets the national standards. We even have interest from Finland.”
“Eco-souvenirs?” Galina Pavlovna practically sang. “Well, what a novel term—for science.”
“For business, Galina Pavlovna,” Ulyana smiled. “Science is your domain.”
“Oh yes. Science isn’t useful to anyone now. The main thing is selling whatever you can—as long as it’s in a pretty box.”
“You don’t like packaging?” Ulyana asked with a light, sharp smile. “Funny—because the pendant you didn’t even open is sitting in a pretty box.”
“Tension” is far too gentle a word for the pause that fell. Denis came in with the salad and stopped short, feeling the cold front in the room.
“What’s with the tone?” he said quietly as he sat beside her. “Ulyana, please. Don’t start.”
“I’m not starting,” she said. “I’m continuing—being convenient.”
“You’re acting provocative. This isn’t a corporate event. This is family.”
“This isn’t my family,” Ulyana replied. “And apparently it never will be.”
“Maybe you just want too badly to be accepted,” Denis said, and there was pity in his voice. Pity for himself.
“Or maybe you want too badly for me to fit the picture your mother’s been painting since the nineties.”
He didn’t answer. He only looked away, as if trying to study a stain on the wallpaper.
When everyone left, Ulyana stepped out onto the balcony. It was chilly; the air smelled of city dust and dinners drifting from open windows. In her hand was a glass of white wine—slightly warm, just like the night’s atmosphere.
The balcony door creaked, and Denis appeared in the doorway.
“I’m sorry. She’s just… the way she is.”
“And me?” Ulyana asked. “What am I?”
He stayed silent. And that silence told her more than any words could.
“I don’t want to keep trying anymore,” she said, staring into the distance, toward the blinking lights in strangers’ windows. “I didn’t build my life just to be asked—over and over—to become someone else inside it.”
Denis didn’t answer. He only closed the door softly and went back to the kitchen, where his cozy, boiled, intellectual world was already beginning to cool.
“Do you honestly think I did that on purpose?” Ulyana stood at the mirror, slowly removing her earrings. “That I wanted to ruin your mother’s evening?”
“I think you could’ve held back,” Denis said, his voice dull, almost exhausted. “It would’ve been a normal night. No scenes.”
“That wasn’t a scene. That was a response. To years of contempt.”
“Or maybe you just can’t stand it when someone doesn’t applaud you,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed with his head bowed. “Does everyone else besides you have the right to an opinion?”
“Of course they do. Just not in the format of: ‘You’re not worthy of my son because you don’t have a Moscow State University diploma.’” She spoke quietly, but her voice rang like cold steel. “We’ve lived together seven years, Denis. Seven. And in those seven years she hasn’t said ‘thank you’ to me once—not even for the stupid stuffed cabbage rolls I brought her in winter when she was sick. All I ever got was ‘poison’ and ‘modern pseudo-products.’”
“She just doesn’t know how to be different. That’s how she was raised. You’re a smart woman—you should understand.”
“And you?” Ulyana turned. “Were you raised? Do you know how to protect your wife? Or do you—like your mother—think I’m ‘from the wrong circle’ and I should feel lucky you even noticed me?”
That cut. He lifted his head.
“Don’t push it. I love you.”
“Really? And at what point in this love did you decide I should drop everything just to ‘stop irritating your mother’?”
“That’s not how I said it!” He jumped up. “I said that if you switched to something calmer, more academic—”
“More academic? What—write a paper on how souvenir products affect the climate?”
“Don’t mock me.”
“How else am I supposed to react when you seriously suggested I sell my business and buy a summer house near your family’s so we could ‘spend more time together’? Do you even hear yourself?”
He turned away. Silent. As if somewhere in the dust by the baseboard he might find an argument.
The next day she arrived at work before everyone else. Opened her laptop, then shut it again and stared out the window. Outside: the usual bustle—cars, a janitor, a courier carrying coffee in a paper bag. Inside: a flat, heavy emptiness, like asphalt after a storm.
Katya walked in, nodded, and set down a cup.
“So I was at my Aunt Zina’s yesterday,” Katya said. “Same song: ‘Back in our day we embroidered and had babies, not all this nonsense.’ I tell her, Aunt Zina, you’ve been retired for twenty years, and I’m dragging a mortgage, coordinating designers, hunting logistics people… When exactly am I supposed to embroider?”
“And what did she say?” Ulyana asked.
“She goes, ‘You should’ve embroidered before thirty.’” Katya sat down and pulled out her tablet. “How are you?”
“With me it’s simple,” Ulyana said, looking at her nails—perfect manicure, done in a rush yesterday before the jubilee. “They love me as long as I’m convenient. As long as I smile, buy gifts, and swallow everything.”
“Classic.” Katya nodded. “So what now?”
“Now I’m thinking about how to leave the right way,” Ulyana said. “Without collapsing halfway.”
“Leaving isn’t about doing it beautifully,” Katya replied, standing and coming closer. “It’s about surviving. You’re strong. Just remember—you’re not choosing yourself for the first time. And you won’t be choosing yourself for the last.”
That evening Denis came home with wine and fresh éclairs. He probably thought sugar would be enough to patch the cracks.
“I talked to Mom,” he said as soon as he walked in. “She’s upset. She said maybe she went a bit too far.”
“And you?” Ulyana asked. “What did you tell her?”
“I told her you’re sensitive. That you want to be liked, you just show affection in your own way. That you—”
“You called me sensitive?” Ulyana stepped closer, slowly. “Do you understand how that sounds when I endured humiliation for seven years—yet kept going there, smiling, bringing gifts?”
“I was trying to smooth it over…”
“If you want to smooth things over—cut out your tongue,” Ulyana said, picking up the remote and turning off the TV Denis had switched on automatically. “Listen carefully. You’re not an idiot, and you’re not blind. Which means you’re choosing. You’re consciously choosing whose side to be on. And you chose. Or rather—you never chose at all, because you’ve always been ‘everyone’s friend.’”
“I just don’t want a scandal,” he said hoarsely.
“And I don’t want to be a prop in the set of your peaceful life,” she said, walking into the kitchen and turning on the water, then snapping around. “And yes—about what you said yesterday… Do you really want me to sell my business?”
“I said it in the heat of the moment. I just… I feel like we’re drifting. Like you live more and more in your own world.”
“The world where at least I’m not graded by how many dissertations are in the bloodline?” She set her hands on the counter. “In my world, I actually like myself. In yours, I’m always some kind of ‘almost acceptable.’ And you’re fine with that.”
He came closer and tried to take her hand.
“Don’t leave now. Please.”
She pulled her hand back—not sharply, but like someone who’s no longer afraid of being misunderstood.
“I haven’t left yet,” she said. “But I’m not with you anymore.”
He stood there, stunned—rooted to the floor. He wasn’t used to her coldness decorating a conversation; this time it ended one.
That night Ulyana didn’t sleep. For the first time in ages her head wasn’t full of plans, figures, shipments. Only phrases. His phrases. His mother’s. Her own. Old, dusty memories: the first time he asked her to move in, how he swore he didn’t care what his family thought, how he kissed her forehead and said, “You’re the realest thing I have.”
How little “real” there turned out to be.
Before dawn, without changing clothes, she grabbed a bag, packed her laptop, passport, charger, and walked out of the apartment. No door slam. No note.
Walking through the early-morning city, she didn’t feel free—not yet. But she felt an emptiness, and she knew that sooner or later something would come to fill it. Something hers.
One morning at five, Ulyana woke up to the sound of her own voice. She’d been shouting in her sleep. Not from a nightmare—just an inner dialogue, too loud, too long, finally forcing its way out into voice, into a shout, into air. She sat up on the couch in a rented apartment overlooking a construction site, wiped sweat from her forehead, and stared at the window. Dawn was already breaking. The city kept living despite her private catastrophe.
She’d been there a month. Temporary housing—a two-bedroom with crooked walls and a battered kitchen—felt less like exile now and more like shelter. Everything that used to be an anchor—an inherited apartment with parquet floors and her husband’s silent reproach—now irritated her even in memory.
The phone was quiet. Denis hadn’t called in a week. Their last conversation ended with his line:
“If you left so I’d beg you to come back—it won’t happen.”
“I didn’t ask you to,” she answered calmly. “I just decided I’m done burning myself down for your cozy little hell.”
After that he vanished. Smoothly. Almost gracefully. The way people disappear when they’ve spent their whole lives dodging real decisions.
Ulyana sat in a café, awkwardly stirring a cappuccino that had gone cold long ago. The place was loud—people crowding, someone laughing too loudly, someone arguing with the barista. Ulyana heard none of it. She was staring at her laptop screen: an official message, black on white—congratulations from the regional trade office. Her first export contract. Germany. Souvenirs inspired by Old Slavic ornaments.
“Now do you believe me?” Katya dropped into the seat across from her, glowing. “You’ll be singing the EU anthem every day now.”
“I don’t believe it’s real,” Ulyana said. “It all feels… impossible.”
“Because you got used to living inside someone else’s coordinate system,” Katya replied. “The one where you’re ‘the scholar’s wife,’ ‘a business without a diploma,’ ‘trying hard, but not properly.’ And now—you’re just you.”
Ulyana smiled. Small, but honest.
“And you know,” she added softly, “I still want to call him. Tell him. That it worked out. That I didn’t break. And—most importantly—that I don’t regret it.”
“Don’t do it, Ulyana,” Katya warned. “You’ll turn back from a woman with a business into a girl holding proof like a shield. And you outgrew that version a long time ago.”
“What if I’m not trying to prove anything?” Ulyana rested her hands on the table. “What if I just want to hear that he’s… at least a little proud of me?”
Katya looked at her for a long time.
“He had his chance. More than one. He didn’t choose you. He chose… comfort. A familiar picture of the world. And you didn’t fit inside it.”
“I know,” Ulyana nodded. “It just hurts. Even when you’re doing the right thing.”
Two days later there was court. The divorce went through quickly. No fights. No splitting assets. They didn’t even show up—lawyers handled everything.
Denis didn’t write a single word. No letter, no text. Silence was his final argument. She never found out what he felt when he realized she was gone—no longer beside him, no longer beside his old system, no longer beside his mother, who still believed that a woman without a philology degree should at least be embroidering.
He disappeared—like a ghost she’d lived with too long, mistaking it for love.
Six months passed.
The new office was spacious, with tall windows. The team had grown. Katya was now creative director. They hired a logistics manager. Ulyana met their Hamburg partners in person for the first time—in September. They gave her a leather folder and sincerely admired the Slavic symbolism collection. Ulyana even laughed: once people told her to her face that it was “all nonsense,” and now that “nonsense” was going to export.
One evening, closer to eight, she stayed alone at the office. Quiet—just the occasional car outside, the hum of the air conditioner. She poured tea from her thermos and sat by the window.
Her phone held hundreds of messages—business and personal. Congratulations, requests, offers. Among them was one new message. No name, just a number.
“You’ve become more beautiful. Stronger. I think about you often. I’m sorry I didn’t choose you. You were right.”
Her heart jolted. Not with joy. Not with hope. With a strange, deep, almost maternal pity. For him. For the person she used to be.
She didn’t reply. She deleted it.
That night she had a strange dream: she was running barefoot through a forest in a white shirt, dragging a suitcase. The suitcase was light—almost weightless, like air. When she reached the edge of a clearing, a city lay ahead. Lights. Sound. Life.
She smiled—and kept walking.
Epilogue
Sometimes Ulyana remembers. How they sat in the car arguing about how much she “owed” for the apartment. How they fought about why she needed an English presentation if “no normal people export souvenirs.” How Galina Pavlovna would straighten her blouse and whisper, “A woman should be more modest.”
Now she knows: a woman doesn’t owe anyone anything.
She sits by the window with a glass of white wine. Her new partner is an Italian named Marco—he laughs a lot and adores everything she does. But it isn’t about him.
It’s about her. Because for the first time in her life, Ulyana chose herself—and stayed with that choice.
And she will never again explain why.