The morning was normal. Almost.
The kitchen smelled of bread and steam. Anya had already made breakfast, eaten, and poured herself a cup of strong tea without sugar.
She sat at the table with a sheet of paper in front of her, drawing in pencil—slowly, carefully, keeping the shape intact, not letting it come apart in her mind.
The lamppost. The heavy base. The curl. The bend of metal that yesterday had seemed too beautiful for this world.
The steps creaked.
Viktor came downstairs later than usual. His face was gray, his gaze tired and wary, like a man who had spent the whole night arguing with himself and lost to both sides.
He walked into the kitchen and stopped in the doorway for a second.
“Good morning,” he said evenly, automatically.
Anya looked up.
“Good morning, Viktor.”
Her voice was calm, even gentle. There was something defiant in that calm: after everything, she was still saying “good morning.”
Viktor walked over to the counter and took the bread. Then the knife. The movements were habitual, precise; his hand knew them by heart. He began cutting even slices, each one measured and exact, bringing at least this into order.
The metal whispered softly over the crust.
Anya lowered her eyes to the paper again and went on shading the shadow beneath the curl.
And that was the moment Viktor saw it—out of the corner of his eye, by accident: the lines. The outline. The recognizable shape.
Something inside him jerked and began to turn—as if someone in his head had forced a rusty gear into motion. For a second the sounds became too loud: the scrape of the knife against the crust, his own breathing. A dry knot rose in his throat, and a ringing started in his temples.
He tried to hold himself together—not by thinking, not by looking, but by sheer habit, with that old instinct for control. But habit was too slow.
He did not freeze. He did not ask. He did not even take a breath.
He exploded.
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The table went over with a single blow. A plate clattered, tea splashed, the sheet of paper flew up and then fell to the floor. The pencil bounced away and rolled under the cabinet.
The chair lurched under Anya. She had no time to get up—she simply went down with all of it, with all that noise.
She hit the floor on her side and the back of her head—not hard enough to lose consciousness, but hard enough for the world to flare white for a second.
She cried out.
And before that cry had time to become a word, weight came down on her.
Viktor was on top of her instantly. One knee on the floor, his body looming over her. One hand planted squarely in the center of her chest, pressing down so she could not rise. Not touching—pinning. The way a lid is held shut so it cannot fly open.
In his other hand was the knife.
He raised it without a sound, without a threat, without a word. He simply drew it back—not like an ordinary man, but like someone removing an error from a blueprint.
Anya squeezed her eyes shut so hard her eyelids hurt. The air caught in her throat. She had no time to think, no time to make a plan.
Her body did the only thing it knew how to do.
She grabbed at the arm pinning her down—meaninglessly, reflexively, with both hands. Her fingers closed around it with the blind grip of a child: not to stop, but simply to hold on. That hand was supposed to protect her, not kill her. She clung to it the way someone clings to rescue.
For a second, the world went quieter.
Viktor froze.
The knife trembled in the air—and hung there. His shoulder jerked; a sharp spasm ran through the muscles. His palm was still on her chest, but something in its force had changed: it had not turned gentle—only uncertain.
He looked down.
Not at her face, crumpled with terror. At his own fingers—caught in those small hands.
And memory struck him not with words, but with an image: a tiny hand, warm and sticky, clutching his finger; he is laughing, bending down; “Anya,” “sweetheart”... and that feeling from back when the world had still been whole.
His mouth parted, but still he said nothing.
Because the thought struck him with sudden horror: I’m going to kill her again.
His hands began to shake.
The knife slipped from his fingers and hit the floor with a dull sound.
Viktor recoiled. He looked at his hands—bewildered, disbelieving.
He stepped back once, then again.
His face twisted—not with rage. With revulsion. Shame. The panic of a man who had suddenly realized he had once again become the very thing he had wanted to “protect” her from.
He looked down at her without blinking, and there was neither control nor power in that gaze—only emptiness, the emptiness of a man who had looked into his own abyss and recoiled from what lived there.
Then he turned sharply and left—fast, almost running.
Anya stayed on the floor amid the spilled tea, beside the overturned table, beside the sheet of paper that now lay face up on the hardwood—and on it was the lamppost.
She opened her eyes.
Her fingers were still clutching the air where his hand had been a moment before.
Slowly she pushed herself up, sat down, drew her legs in, and wrapped her arms around them. Her head lowered of its own accord, slipping between her knees; it was easier that way to keep herself in one piece. She sat there without moving, listening to the tremor running through her body and trying to steady her breathing.
Her body was shaking—fine, stubborn tremors. The back of her head throbbed, and her chest hurt where his palm had pinned her down. Inside her, that silent motion of the knife was still there—that metallic instant in which she had almost ceased to exist.
But there was no panic.
That endless cold surfaced in her eyes again.