Goran liked to think he knew how to deal with a great many things. The drunk, the rowdy, the lost, the angry. There wasn't anything the entirety of Belarus could throw at him that he couldn't handle.

Except grief, of course. And guilt. That deep, burrowing, suffocating kind of guilt that overtook his thoughts and peered at him from every dark corner. It was a judgemental thing, that guilt, whispering in his ear every minute of every day about everything he had done wrong over the span of his thirty years. Why hadn't he been a faster responder, a more exemplary apprentice, a better student, a more obedient child? Why, in every sense of the word, did he have to be Goran, who seemed to only grasp too late and cling for too long?

The questions plagued him, even as he unlocked the door to his modest home and stepped into its darkness. The dust danced in the last rays of sunshine trying their damnedest to get into the house through cracks in the curtains. The air smelled of cigarettes and stillness, the stench of the pathetic soul that inhabited the place. The floorboards creaked underfoot with each step, pained by his presence

He locked the door behind him, taking off his hat as he shuffled to the entryway table. He set the hat on its surface, kicked his shoes underneath it, and emptied rubles from his pockets to put in the old ceramic bowl. The house was quiet, as if holding its breath and standing still to avoid being seen, as if this unwelcome intruder would realize there was nothing here for him and leave.

He sat down on the couch, unbuttoning the shirt of his uniform with one hand and messing with dials on the radio with the other. He'd listen to something mindless for a while, numb his head so it would stop being cruel to him, and then... go to bed, just to start all over again tomorrow.