She stood timidly on the threshold of her mother's house, listening to her mother's scolding and her father's lazy excuses. Her parents had been divorced for 2 years already, and during this period, her father had spent only a couple of months with his daughter. He loved his daughter, of course, but he did not want to involve her in his criminal affairs, so he avoided spending time with her. But now he finally answered the endless calls from his ex-wife and agreed to take his daughter to his place for the winter holidays.

He arrived in a cheap and shabby car, smelled of cigarettes and seemed not to have shaved for about a month. He was not particularly interested in her mother's hysterics, so he indifferently nodded at all the claims shouted at him, and then they finally got into the car. The child held her bright pink bag with clothes and other things on her lap, while her father started the car.

"I think I've gone deaf in one ear. Your mother's screams can be used as a sonic weapon."

He grinned with irony in his voice and turned his sly gaze to the child, putting a cigarette between his lips.

"You've grown so much. Did your mother raise you on diesel fuel? Or did she throw fertilizer into your porridge?"