Twilight was thickening in Viktor’s sterile house. In the immaculate kitchen, scrubbed to a shine, the smell of hot dough and melted cheese felt alien—defiant. Anya served slices of pizza on thin porcelain plates, moving smoothly and confidently. Viktor sat opposite; in the light of the bare bulb his face looked as if it had been carved from gray stone.
Anya didn’t rush to start talking. Methodically, with precision, she cut a piece of pizza on her plate with a knife and fork. She obediently followed the etiquette he had imposed, showing Viktor that she was a perfect, calibrated element of his system.
And yet while her right hand lifted bites of food to her mouth, her left hand seemed to have a mind of its own. It rose slowly to her face, and Anya, without lifting her gaze from the plate, began winding a strand of hair at her temple around her index finger. She did it rhythmically, winding the strand into a tight coil, then letting it go, only to begin again.
Viktor froze. His hand with the fork stopped halfway. He watched that motion as if he were looking at a blueprint that had come to life—and discovered a critical error in it.
Of course, it wasn’t exactly the gesture his daughter used to make. But that resemblance was enough. Something inside him shifted with tectonic force, splitting into two incompatible parts.
One half of his being—the inconsolable father—craved that likeness. He wanted to be deceived; he wanted to see, in that motion, the resurrection of his girl, to fill the void inside himself with at least this crooked reflection.
The other half—the cold Architect—felt the problem. The resemblance caused him pain, reminding him that the original was dead, and the woman sitting in front of him was a stranger, defiling his memory simply by resembling her.
The split left him powerless. He couldn’t demand that she stop, and he couldn’t bear to watch it without shuddering.
Anya kept winding the lock as if she didn’t notice his state. At last she set down her utensils, aligning them neatly on the plate.
“Viktor,” her voice cut the silence like a scalpel. “For some reason I feel like making myself some buckwheat for lunch tomorrow. Just buckwheat with butter. I don’t know—I haven’t eaten it in a long time. Will you allow it?”
Viktor was taken aback. He swallowed the lump stuck in his throat and said:
“Yes, all right. If you want to, go ahead.”
“Thank you… Just don’t help me with it,” she tossed out playfully. “I want to make it myself. I think that would be better.”
Viktor said nothing. Then he rose slowly. The chair beneath him gave a soft but distinct scrape over the tile. A heavy, lingering confusion hung on his face—he looked like a man who had suddenly lost his bearings inside his own home. Without looking at Anya and without a word, he turned and left the kitchen, disappearing into the darkness of the hallway. His departure was quiet, but in that quiet you could feel his habitual inner order beginning to crack.
…
Four days later she went to the store and came back with a heavy kraft paper bag. Inside it was exactly one kilogram of the sourest green apples she could find. The same “honest” apples that used to make the real Nyuta’s jaw ache.
In the evening Viktor came into the kitchen and stopped in the doorway.
Anya was sitting at the table in the half-dark, lit only by the narrow beam of the lamp over the countertop. A brown paper bag sat open in front of her, filled to the top with green apples. She wasn’t cutting them with a knife and fork. She took a whole apple and bit hard into the tough skin.
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Crunch.
The sound in the kitchen’s silence was deafening. Anya chewed slowly, intently, staring at a single point in front of her. Juice ran down her lips, but she didn’t wipe it away immediately, letting the acid burn her skin.
“Oh, Viktor, try one.” She held one out to him, looking straight into his eyes.
He hesitated, but took the apple. Cut off a small piece, tried it, and immediately winced, nearly setting it aside.
“They’re too sour, Anya. Impossible to eat.”
“But I think that’s honest,” she shot back, still chewing. “There’s no fake sweetness in them. Just the essence.”
At that moment, a chill ran down Viktor’s spine. The air in the kitchen seemed to turn icy, and he felt an invisible, ghostly presence brush against his fingers. It was a phrase from back then, from the time when his daughter was still arguing with him, defending her right to things that were “real.”
Viktor leaned forward, his face twisting. For a moment he was gripped by a wild, uncontrollable urge to slam a hand down on the table, scatter those damned apples across the floor, crush them—anything to stop that crunch and that terrifying resemblance. His hand jerked; he nearly snapped.
Anya caught the movement instantly. She went still with the apple in her hand and asked quietly:
“Is something bothering you, Viktor? I haven’t broken any rules, have I?”
That question nailed him to the spot. The split inside him became tangible. He had set his own order, and now he had no right to destroy it by giving in to a momentary rage. But it wasn’t only that.
Guilt inside him screamed for him to stop this torture, but another part of him—starved for the image of his daughter—begged her to go on. He wanted to savor this illusion; he wanted to believe Nyuta had returned, even if the return caused him unbearable pain. He froze between the desire to destroy the apples and the need to watch her eat them.
Viktor slowly lowered his hand and straightened, trying to force the indifferent mask back onto his face. But his breathing stayed heavy, and his gaze remained pinned to the strand she had begun winding around her finger again.
He stood and watched her for so long that Anya managed to eat the whole apple down to the core. He didn’t move—only the muscles along his jaw under thin skin twitched several times.
Then he slowly lowered his gaze to the table—to the open bag, to the green gleam of the apples—and just as slowly let his face settle back into its blank mask.
“Put it away… please,” he said quietly, too politely.
He didn’t wait for an answer. He turned and left—not quickly, not in panic, but at the careful pace of someone leaving a room where he had started to feel physically sick, yet wouldn’t allow himself to show weakness.
Anya was left alone in the kitchen. She set the core neatly on the plate, wiped the juice from her lips with a napkin—slowly, pedantically. Then she picked up the bag, tipped the apples into a bowl, and put them away in the cupboard. She didn’t need to hurry. She needed the cameras to see only “obedience.”
In the morning she came down to the kitchen as usual and froze in the doorway. A sheet of paper lay on the table. White, smooth, aligned perfectly with the edge of the countertop.
DIETARY RULES:
Only a limited range of fruit is permitted.
Sour varieties of apples (including green ones) are forbidden, as well as any foods that cause jaw spasms and increased salivation.
Eating with hands is not permitted. Utensils only.
Purchasing food must be pre-approved. No improvisation.
Anya read it twice. The third time she didn’t really read—she simply registered it the way you’d register a clinical reading.
The ban was absurd, and that was where its power lay. He wasn’t “banning apples.” He was banning what they did to him. He was trying to cut out of reality the sour trigger she had found.
Behind her, a light switch clicked softly. Viktor came in so quietly she hadn’t heard his footsteps. He stopped at a distance, leaving the kitchen island between them—not furniture, but a boundary.
“I made rules…” he said uncertainly, “for health. Sour is harmful.”
He didn’t look at the bowl. Didn’t look at the fridge. He looked at her—exactly at the spot where her fingers sometimes reached for a strand of hair. As if checking whether the gesture would appear right now.
Anya lifted her gaze to the paper and nodded very slowly.
“All right, Viktor. As you say. It really is important.”
She said it with a smile. Like a student who had accepted order.
And like someone who had just understood she’d hit a nerve.
Viktor let out a barely noticeable breath, as if he had finished a difficult calculation and finally found something solid to hold on to. He turned and left, leaving the sheet on the table—as a mark of ownership.
Anya waited until his footsteps faded, and only then—already with her back to the camera—allowed herself one short, imperceptible breath.
Not of relief. Of clarity: she was hitting him exactly where it hurt.