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Yana parked the car in the courtyard and turned off the engine. It had been a hectic day—two wedding hairstyles in a row, a capricious bride who changed her mind three times, plus the regular clients. But the register was ringing, and that was encouraging. The salon she’d opened two years ago was finally bringing … Read more

Maria stood motionless by the window. Three weeks had already passed since her husband Andrey left home. Fifteen years of life together had been reduced to two terse words in a note: “Forgive me. I’ll help.” A sharp ring at the door made Maria tense. On the threshold stood her mother-in-law, Irina Petrovna. “Come in,” … Read more

Marina and Pavel were celebrating their thirtieth wedding anniversary. After making a Napoleon cake, Marina hopefully reminded her husband of their long-standing dream. “Pasha, do you remember how you once promised to take me to Paris for our thirtieth?” she asked. Without looking up from his phone, Pavel handed her a velvet box with a … Read more

After her workout, Vika hurried home—she’d promised her husband she would make ukha, the fish soup he loved. When she walked into the apartment, she saw her husband, Leonid, sitting in the kitchen drinking wine. “Wow, so you’re drinking solo, huh… Lyonya, couldn’t wait for me? Let me at least make a snack…” “No need. … Read more

“Sveta, accept nature’s bounty! Straight from the garden—courtesy of Mom and Dad!” Pavel’s voice—deliberately cheerful and ringing—burst into the apartment’s silence. A galvanized bucket clanged as it hit the laminate in the entryway, leaving a dirty, damp circle on the clean floor. Pavel himself beamed as if he hadn’t hauled in a bucket of potatoes … Read more

— “Are you kidding me? So I wasted my time on you? Bothered my parents for nothing? Put up with everything for nothing?” — “Andrey, I…” — “I needed your apartment, you get it?!” he blurted out, and immediately fell silent, as if frightened by his own words. Svetlana met Andrey when she was already … Read more

— You’re going on vacation while I have two children! We don’t even have money to take them to an amusement park, and you’re planning to go abroad. It’s not fair. So I decided that I’ll go on vacation instead of you. Kostya came home tired and gloomy. He didn’t even take off his shoes … Read more

Marina stared at the laptop screen, where the third-quarter losses glowed in red digits. The numbers were honest, unlike the people behind the neighboring glass partition. The Kirillov family business had flourished for twenty years, but for the past six months something had been going wrong. “Marina, come here,” her father-in-law Viktor Semyonovich’s voice rang … Read more

Irina came back from the store with two bags of groceries. One—for her own family, the other—for her mother-in-law. October evening had already wrapped the city in dusk, the courtyard lights switching on earlier than usual. The woman climbed to the third floor, opened the apartment door, and the first thing she did was carry … Read more

The final payment went through on Friday evening. I stared at my phone screen, at the numbers in the banking app, and couldn’t believe it. Eight years. For eight years I’d set aside that amount every month, cut back on everything, worked two jobs for the first three. A two-room apartment on the outskirts, but … Read more