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“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

Three hundred and eighty thousand!” Inessa slammed the bank statement onto the table, watching the white sheets scatter across the surface. “Rodion, where’s the money?!” Her husband didn’t even bother to tear his eyes away from the TV screen, continuing to flip through channels. “What money?” he muttered indifferently. “The very money we’ve been saving … Read more

— Galka, are you out of your mind? We’ve been married eight years! — Yura looked at his wife in bewilderment as she methodically packed his things into a duffel bag. — Exactly! Eight years I’ve put up with your rudeness and your buddies! And now — ENOUGH! — What rudeness? What are you even … Read more

— “Your husband can have his birthday without you. You go meet my daughter,” the mother-in-law said brazenly. Victoria slowly lifted her eyes from the colorful gift boxes she was neatly arranging on the table. In the doorway stood Evelina Markovna—her mother-in-law—draped in an expensive dress the color of burgundy wine. “Excuse me, WHAT?” Victoria … Read more

The first big milestone for our little one—his fifth birthday—was an event I began preparing for months in advance. Our child was growing and changing, each day full of new discoveries, but this birthday felt special to me. I wanted it to be a bridge between two very different worlds, two shores of one family. … Read more