Outside the window, the Belarusian winter was a wall of gray. The brutalist apartment blocks stood like giant tombstones in the fog, indifferent and cold. Somewhere in the distance, a tram screeched against rusted metal tracks—a sound that matched the synth-line humming in Egor’s head.
The radiator hissed, a pathetic attempt to fight the creeping frost. Egor stood up and walked to the mirror. His reflection was a ghost—pale skin, dark circles, eyes that had seen too many identical sunsets over the same concrete horizon. Outside the window, the Belarusian winter was a wall of gray
The music didn't make him feel better, but it made the emptiness feel like a place he could inhabit. It was the sound of the hallways he walked, the stale bread he ate, and the silence of the people he passed in the street. The radiator hissed, a pathetic attempt to fight
The room was the color of a bruised sky. Egor sat on the edge of a bed that felt like it was made of damp cardboard. Above him, a single lightbulb flickered with the rhythm of a dying heart, casting long, jittery shadows against the peeling floral wallpaper. The music didn't make him feel better, but
He looked at the rotary phone on the floor. It hadn’t rung in three weeks. He didn't expect it to.