Chapter 3

“What will you never forgive a loved one?”

“Betrayal.”

(from Rina's interview with the portal ‘Lady’)

A fat fly was beating against the unwashed glass, and it's buzzing irritated to the point of gnashing teeth. Nikolai put down the folder, opened the window and released the insect into the wild. He didn’t return to the table, but cast a longing glance at the street, where parked cars were densely crowded in the courtyard. He looked for his own and sighed softly: because of the stuffiness, he wanted to go home early - to a cold shower, icy beer and a fan, but a stack of dusty folders from the archive clearly hinted that the working day would drag on until midnight.

It was still cool in the morning, and it seemed that May would turn into June without the expected warming, but by lunchtime the city was covered with a stuffy blanket of heat. Nikolai pulled back the tight collar of his shirt and unbuttoned another button. All meetings ended in the morning. The tie had long hung like a lifeless snake on the back of the chair, and the jacket was still lying on the visitor's chair, where Nikolai had thrown it at lunch. If not for meetings that often happened unexpectedly, he would have changed his ‘uniform’ for informal jeans and a polo. However, to hell with conventions... Vika doesn’t care about them, having stopped at such an extravagant style of clothing, goes to meetings with him, bribes clients with professionalism.

Speaking of Vika. Nikolai took a step towards the exit with the intention of asking how things were going with her. But Vika beat him to it, opened the door and entered the office. Despite the heat, she was wearing the same tight crimson tights and a black short dress.

“Did you find something?” Nikolai looked away from her long legs and with difficulty suppressed the urge to ask if she was hot. Hot. Just like him. But she doesn't show it, she tolerates it for the sake of beauty and style. So what was he saying about ‘to hell with conventions’? By the way, he needs to ask Vika to call a technician to fix a non-working air conditioner.

“I found it,” she answered shortly, carefully hung his jacket on the back of a chair and sat down. “I looked at the archives for the period from ninety-seventh to ninety-ninth years and found two more similar cases. Along with the one you told me about, there are already three of them. Two occurred in Russia, the third �" a year earlier in some Korean village.”

“Let’s talk about ours” Nikolai asked, walked around the table and sat down in his chair.

Vika opened the notebook and, without taking her eyes off the sheets covered with small handwriting, said:

“All cases occurred with a difference of several months. Your city was the third. The second was in a village.”

“Also a military?” Nikolai asked.

“Um... I need to clarify it.”

He nodded, and Vika continued:

“Everything happened according to a similar scenario: natural disasters, reduction of daylight hours, death of animals and birds. By the way, was there a reservoir in your town?”

“The lake is behind the forest. The water in it was clean, but it became muddy. The animals died. Give me the names of all the villages, Vika.”

She dictated the coordinates.

“We need to check the other years,” Nikolai sighed and nodded at a stack of folders. “Gennadiy Sergeevich doesn’t rule out cyclicity. It is necessary to check whether something similar happened in the period from the two thousandth year to the present day, or if those cases are the only ones. Well, except that something similar has started happening now. Before dealing with the current case, we need to study the past. Perhaps Gennadiy Sergeevich is mistaken and this is just a coincidence. It would be nice if so…”

Nikolai paused, involuntarily remembering what had happened in his city, and again doubted whether he was doing the right thing by returning to that case. After all, he ‘let go’ of history in the past, pacified the burning desire to get to the truth, and Gennadiy Sergeevich also understood this. Then why…

“Kolya?” Vika called out, alarmed by his silence. “Are you all right?”

He blinked and smiled tightly.

“Nothing. By the way, if you found a mention of something similar in the Korean village, then we need to expand the geography of search. Let's start with the current year, and then dig into the past. Otherwise, we will completely bury ourselves. Check out international news for the last two years. If there was something, I think you'll notice.”

“Understand,” Vika reported, got up and straightened her short dress. He looked longingly at the stack of dusty folders that Colonel Gennadiy Sergeevich had brought them. The folders need to be returned to the archives, so he'll have to deal with them first. Moreover, it was to him, once in a while, that he had already given the task to Vika.

“Looks like I'm going to spend the night here tonight,” Nikolai grumbled. “Everything would be fine if it weren't for the heat…”

“I called the service, a technician will come tomorrow and look at the air conditioner.”

“Oh! Ahead of me.”

“Not for the first time,” Vika smiled and winked. “I've already ordered pizza and cold beer, too. For two. So we're going to suffer here together.”

“Oh my god! I want to marry you!” Nikolai exclaimed, feeling emotional, but she shook her short-cropped head:

“I don't have office affairs, especially with my superiors.”

“Then I'll have to fire you.”

“And it will be your mistake!”

“You're right,” he pretended to sigh and narrowed his eyes slyly. “Who else will sit with me until the night in such a stuffy place and sneeze from dust over old papers?”

“Yeah. So-so plan for the evening,” Vika grimaced.

“You don't have to stay. If you have other plans, I'll understand.”

“There was a plan, but it fell through. If it hadn't fallen, I wouldn't have stayed even under the threat of dismissal, dear boss! I wouldn't have missed Rina's concert for anything if it hadn't been canceled.”

“Who is this Rina?”

“Serious?” Vika was genuinely amazed. “A mega-popular singer! There's no way you haven't heard of her.”

“I'm not a fan of modern pop. Give me the good old rock.”

“Pop songs!” Vika snorted indignantly. “It is immediately clear that you are not familiar with Rina’s works! But even if you're not her fan, you couldn't help but hear about her! Who doesn't write about her. Especially in light of her affair with businessman Dimitri Lebedev.”

“I've heard about Lebedev, but I'm not interested in the gossip columns.”

“I see. Although... If you haven't heard Rina sing, you've lost a lot.

“Okay. Almost persuaded. I'll go to the next concert with you.”

“If these concerts will be. Rina suddenly disappeared,” Vika sighed in frustration, got up and headed for the exit. Nikolai followed her with his gaze and, feeling a pang of conscience, thought that he should tell Vika the whole story so that she would know what he was dragging her into. She is a nice girl, and because of this case they may have problems.

When the door closed behind her, he looked at the folders with dislike, and then went online and found videos with the singer's performances.

The old bus rattled all the way, ‘complaining’ about life, ‘coughed’ with a worn-out engine and smoked mercilessly. The cabin stank desperately of diesel fuel, and Rina began to get seasick. She fumbled in her pockets for a caramel or mint gum. But she didn't eat caramel, and the gum remained in her purse, which means in a previous life. Rina leaned her cheek against the dirty but cold glass in the hope that the nausea would recede. She would like to reach the right stop. There's just nothing left. Wanting to distract herself, Rina mentally began to recall from the list everything she was going to buy at the market �" from groceries to kitchen utensils. But even this was not successful. The women sitting in front of the whole salon were discussing a certain Zina who brazenly cut off half a meter of the plot from one of the interlocutors, installing a fence in the wrong place. And behind his back, a teenager was listening to music with headphones, and the monotonous ‘bic, bic, bic’ that reached her ear pecked out the brain.

On the next bump, the bus almost lost its poorly fitted pieces of iron, which made Rina’s stomach jump, it seemed, to the very throat. She hastily clamped her hand over her mouth and rushed to the exit. How timely the bus stopped! Rina flew out into the street. And before the doors slammed behind her, she managed to hear one of the aunts still announce to the whole salon:

“She’s maybe pregnant. Poor girl…”

Pregnant… Fortunately or unfortunately - no. Rina bent over, put her hands on her knees and squeezed her eyes tightly, and then took a slow breath in and out. Fresh air quickly brought her to her senses, nausea receded, Rina wiped her sweaty forehead with her palm, checked the schedule and saw that the next bus would be only in forty minutes. During this time, you can also walk. She pushed her hair back in two braids, took off her jacket and moved along the dusty roadside towards the city.

On the way, she kept looking around, checking if the car was coming, but not to ask the driver for a ride to the city, but on the contrary, in order to get off the curb in time. She didn't want to sit down with anyone, maintain an uninteresting conversation and answer other people's curious questions. But the road remained deserted. At least she was lucky in this.

Soon the first village appeared on the way. Rina went under the visor of an empty bus stop and sat down on a bench to rest. There was a green meadow on the other side of the road, similar to the one next to her house, and she involuntarily remembered the strangeness that had happened to the tree. Why did it dry up overnight on one side, and on the other it remained green? Is it somehow connected with the crack that ripped open the ground?

Realizing that time was running out, Rina got up. Let her days not obey the schedule, but it is better to come to the market early to catch fresh herbs, fish and wok. In addition to the products, Rina planned to buy dishes and all sorts of things necessary in the household, and therefore she was going to return home by taxi: private traders were on duty near the market on a special patch, waiting for customers loaded with purchases. The villagers, who were on the way, united and took a car for everyone. Rina didn't want to sit down with anyone, so she needed to reserve a car early.

She adjusted the jacket tied at the waist and only then noticed that she was not alone at the bus stop. Because of the baggy clothes, thinness and disproportionately long limbs, Rina took this man who sat on the edge of the bench for a teenager. It was only when he turned to her that she saw that his tanned face with small features was dotted with wrinkles, and his bushy eyebrows were white, as if powdered with flour. The elderly man's head was covered with an old-fashioned felt hat, skinny wrists sticking out of the frayed sleeves of an obviously short bolognese jacket. The stranger stared at Rina with childishly round eyes, and she, embarrassed, nodded in greeting.

“Hee-hee-hee!” the old man exhaled long and jerked the hand in which he held the leash. Rina involuntarily lowered her gaze, expecting to see a curly-haired mongrel dog, but was surprised to find a pink piglet in dried mud spots.

“Heh!” the weird stranger either sighed or snorted again, and the piglet lifted up his piglet and grunted in greeting. Rina laughed and held out her hand to the piglet. He boldly poked a wet piglet into her palm. The feeling was unusual and unexpectedly pleasant. Rina grew bolder and lightly scratched the animal behind the ear, and then, realizing that she had not asked permission from the owner, looked up at him. But the stranger seemed to like the fact that his pet aroused sympathy: he twisted his mouth to the side, which apparently meant a smile, and blinked often. Rina stroked the piglet again and straightened up.

“I have to go!” she said and also smiled. The piglet sniffed her sneakers with a grunt, and the stranger ‘grunted’ again.

Rina had already turned around to leave when she suddenly heard:

“Bi…r…”

“Excuse me?” she asked in surprise and looked around. The man's face twisted pitifully, as if he was going to cry, the corner of his mouth went to his ear, and his eyes moistened.

“Bird,” he breathed, pointed his finger at the sky, and then abruptly lowered his hand. “Bird! No, no!”

Not understanding what he wanted to tell her, Rina nodded just in case and made a mournful face.

“No, no,” the eccentric old man repeated, gathered his lips into a tube and exhaled loudly. Rina spread her hands, smiled politely and backed away. After making sure that he was still sitting on the bench, grazing the pig, she turned around and hurriedly walked away.

During the entire journey, she didn’t meet anyone else. But when there was very little left to the city, Rina noticed that the path ahead was littered with dark blots. At first she mistook them for clods of earth or cow cakes, but when she got closer, she saw that the ‘blob’ was actually a dead crow. Rina shuddered and carefully walked around her. ‘Bird! No, no!’ she remembered the words of the stranger from the bus stop and hurriedly walked the rest of the way, trying not to look at the carcasses of birds littering the road. And when Rina saw a parking lot with cars ahead, she started running. But even jogging didn’t help to get rid of the unpleasant sediment. Did she hear birdsong in the morning?

A few meters before the parking lot, Rina took a step, looked at the parked cars from a distance and went straight to the driver walking near the old Audi to negotiate.

Disappointment awaited in the fish row: the counter was empty. Not a fish day? There was no delivery? Having trampled in confusion on the spot, Rina returned to the vegetable rows, and then went to the dairy �" for rustic cottage cheese and some wok.

“Do you know why there are no fish today?” she asked the freckled trader, accepting purchases.

‘Not for a week already!” she shrugged her full shoulders. “She left the river. If you need fish, then go to Southern market on Thursday. It's an hour's drive from here.”

Rina listened to the detailed instructions, thanked the woman, took the bags to the car and returned to the rows of dishes. On the way, she met a newsstand, and she involuntarily slowed down, noticing the fresh press laid out on the counter. ‘Where did the famous singer go missing?’ - read the title of the photo posted on the cover. Rina was filmed arm-in-arm with Dimitri when they were leaving one of the presentations. Then they were both happy, looking not at the lens, but at each other and smiling. Shortly before that, Dimitri proposed to her, and Rina accepted him. They were happy, full of plans for the future, he was even going to organize Rina a tour of Europe and Asia. But everything was destroyed in an instant - their future, her career and life. She herself.

Rina lingered at the photo, looking bitterly at herself �" so beautiful and happy, and then, overcoming the temptation to buy a magazine, lowered her head so that she wouldn’t be recognized, and resolutely walked past. The mood was completely ruined.