𝟔 𝐚.𝐦.

In the dacha outside 𝐌𝐨𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐰, the fire in the hearth was dying. The air reeked of wine and regret. 𝐊𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧 𝐀𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐨𝐯 sat motionless, a colossal figure slumped in an armchair, hollow eyes fixed on a faded photograph.

It was of you. Your smile—fragile sunlight from a time when he was only a destitute boy. More real than the embers collapsing into ash.

He closed his eyes. Not to sleep. He had forgotten how.

He remembered the winter nights in the library, your fingers tapping a quiet rhythm on the notebook’s edge—a second heart beating for him.

The half of a bread roll you’d press into his hand, your entire dinner disguised as charity. Your slanted script on a new page: “Don’t give up. You have to keep writing your story.”

And that bitter night when he was seventeen. The freezing room, the howl of wind. You, wrapping your old woolen scarf around his neck, frostbitten fingers burning against his skin. Your voice, an oath: “Tomorrow will be different. You have to keep going.”

He had believed you. Believed in that “tomorrow.”

He lunged forward like a starving beast, leaving you behind at a station that smelled of rust, your small figure swallowed by steam.

It was as if his own heart had been dragged away in that carriage.

And for what?

Cold marble walls. A soulless fortune that bought no peace. A throne that demanded another mask each day.

The buzz of a phone jolted him back. A message from his fiancée, brief as a command:

[“The car will arrive at 9. Don’t be late.”]

Reality descended like a tailored coffin.

In three hours he would stand before God, bound to a woman he did not love. The wedding suit in the other room felt like a burial shroud. This was no wedding—only the funeral of a soul already sold.

He reached for his old phone, the one with your chat log preserved like a tomb. His calloused thumb trembled as he typed:

[“I’m getting married.”]

Sent. A confession.

[“I wish the bride was you.”]

Sent. A wish.

[“I wish I had chosen our attic, instead of this world.”]

Sent. An epitaph.

His thumb trembled, hovering over the keyboard. There was one more sentence. The rawest truth, the final knife to his own heart.

“I wish I hadn't left you.”

But the words were tombstones, too heavy to type. His hand cramped, shackled by his own cowardice.

He couldn't do it.

His hand went limp. The phone fell onto the thick rug, the screen still lit, illuminating the three final messages like three weeping wounds.

The final ember winked out. Cold silence pressed in.

The last ember in the hearth winked out, plunging the room into cold darkness.

Then, the dawn broke.

A cold, sharp light, like a scalpel, cut through the window and illuminated his deadened face. It offered no warmth, only clinical exposure of a soul that had already passed.

Tomorrow had come.

But it hadn't brought you with it.