What hurts more: the audacity of a stranger or the treacherous silence of the one closest to you? This evening was supposed to be an introduction, but it turned into an ordeal where everything was at stake – home, dignity, and the future.
Kira adjusted the silk pillow, the color of baked milk, lying on the austere gray sofa. She ran her palm over it, feeling the cool smoothness of the fabric, and fluffed it slightly to make it look fuller, more enticing. This pillow was a mere trifle, bought on sale at some furniture store where Kira had wandered in without any particular purpose, just to kill time before a meeting. It wasn’t expensive, but there was something festive, non-essential about it, a kind of quiet luxury that people who have already resolved all their major life issues can afford.
Kira hadn’t resolved them yet, not at all. But this pillow was a promise that one day she would. It was a small down payment on the future calm and settled life that Kira was building with her own hands, meter by meter, payment by payment.
She loved this hour before sunset, when the sun, no longer hot but somehow tired and gentle, peeked into the large, floor-to-ceiling window of her living room. The rays cast long golden stripes on the light laminate floor, snatching the chrome leg of a floor lamp, dust motes dancing in the air, and the glass door of the bookshelf from the semi-darkness. At this time, the apartment, her one-room studio on the 17th floor of a new high-rise in Zarechye, filled with tranquility and quiet dignity.
Kira glanced around, and a familiar warmth spread through her chest, a mixture of pride and relief. Here it was, hers, 42 square meters of personal freedom, for which she had to pay for another 28 years. The monthly mortgage payment amount – 54,300 – was engraved in her memory like a name on a soldier’s dog tag. Sometimes, waking up at night, she would repeat it to herself, and this number would make her feel either scared or, conversely, calm. This number was an anchor, keeping her in reality, not letting her relax, but also not allowing her to drown in doubt.
She was 32. At an age when her childhood friends were already sending their children to the second grade, complaining about their husbands, and exchanging apple pie recipes, Kira had spent the last seven years working with almost no vacations: first as an assistant accountant, then an accountant, then a senior accountant in a small but stable logistics company. She denied herself new dresses, trips to the sea, and frivolous spending, saving every spare kopeck for the down payment.
She had lived in rented apartments that smelled of other people’s lives, other people’s cooking, other people’s sorrows. In one, with the landlady’s old mother constantly crying behind the wall; in another, with cockroaches that no poison could kill; in a third, with windows overlooking a constantly humming avenue. And all those years, she dreamed. Not of a prince or a white horse, but of her own bathroom without someone else’s hair in the drain, a kitchen where she could leave a vase of flowers on the table without fear of it being knocked over, and of silence. The right to her own, undisturbed silence.
And then, a year ago, it happened. She stood in the middle of a concrete box with rebar sticking out of the walls, inhaling the sharp cement dust and crying with happiness. Then came months of renovations. She chose the tiles herself, drove to the building supply market for wallpaper, haggled with workers, and learned the words “spackle,” “primer,” and “screed.” Roman, whom she had been dating for about six months, helped as much as he could: he brought bags of dry mix in his car, provided moral support, and praised her taste. He admired her energy, her determination.
— You’re tough as nails, Kirusha, — he would say, hugging her, — a real man in a skirt.
Kira would just smirk. She would have gladly traded her “tough as nails” persona for a little feminine weakness, but life didn’t provide that opportunity.
And now everything was ready. Light-colored walls, simple but functional IKEA furniture that she and Roman had assembled over two weekends, a kitchen with white glossy cabinets—everything was clean, new, hers. She walked barefoot around the apartment, enjoying the smoothness of the floor, feeling like the captain of a ship that, after a long and grueling voyage, had finally entered its harbor.
The sharp trill of the phone made her jump. Roman. Kira smiled and swiped her finger across the screen….
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