Chapter 28

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The morning passed without incident.

The fact that Alexei had not contacted him left Yuri feeling unsettled, but there was little he could do from here. Guarding a civilian proved to be a far more helpless task than he had anticipated. Even with the weight of protecting a client, the lack of an immediate threat forced him to keep his nerves coiled, leaving him nothing to do but wait.

Cherriot remained quiet for nearly four hours. After emerging from the room, he loitered aimlessly near Yuri, eventually pulling out a laptop with a stark white apple logo to cycle through a flurry of videos. Throughout the process, Cherriot murmured about being bored, a habit that seemed as natural as breathing. His restlessness wasn’t just in his words; his entire posture on the sofa radiated a lethargic, stifled energy.

From his position, Yuri could not see the laptop screen, but the audio reached him with perfect clarity. Cherriot could not settle on a single video, skipping from one to the next in rapid succession. Yuri was a man of immense patience, yet after four hours of listening to the endless, frantic rhythm of switching clips, a sharp irritation began to fester in his chest.

So if he isn’t talking constantly, he has to be restless in some other way.

But it was not Cherriot’s restlessness that truly annoyed Yuri. It was the gnawing doubt that forcing a man who should be moving with vitality to sit trapped inside was truly for his benefit. Going further, he felt a flicker of irritation at himself for even briefly considering that it might be right to take Cherriot out for some fresh air.

Sunk into the single-armchair, Yuri stared at Cherriot with an expressionless face. A moment ago, Cherriot had been lying on his back, cradling the heavy laptop as if it were a phone. Now, he had shifted to lie facedown on the sofa, his body stretched out to watch the screen. The three-seater sofa was fairly large, yet it looked cramped for him, and the fair, pale face turned down into that tight space held none of the liveliness Yuri had seen yesterday.

…Hm.

Yuri lowered the book in his hand and turned his gaze to the window. Because the day had started early, it had only just passed noon, and the sun was pouring light down onto the earth as if claiming the season as its own. The lake glittered so brightly with ripples of light that it looked almost white, appearing incredibly, achingly cool.

Two hours should be fine.

Even knowing the thought was highly irrational, Yuri found himself contemplating a trip outside. There was no immediate threat, and even if they shut themselves away, that alone would not protect them from the danger stalking them. Of course, he knew staying still was the safest, most ideal method. In a hunt where one side chased and the other was pursued, the factors deciding the winner were the patience to wait without breathing and the decisive resolve not to miss an opening.

But my job is…

The focus on protection was suddenly interrupted by a desperate, impulsive urge to see Cherriot relieved and happy. Yuri’s pale brow furrowed slightly, and he narrowed his eyes. Tap, tap. His index finger lightly struck the cover of his book. The small sound rang quietly in the stillness. His deliberation continued for several minutes.

While thoughts of Cherriot drifted through Yuri’s heart like dandelion seeds caught in a breeze, Cherriot finally found something to hold his attention. He turned on a video of this year’s Stanley Cup Final and propped his chin in his hand. When the team name Red Maple appeared on screen, Yuri found himself listening despite his intentions. He held a rough memory of this game, as the name Red Maple had echoed across all of Vancouver throughout the playoffs.

And at the center of that whirlwind was always Cherriot Goodnight.

Cherriot had debuted in the NHL with the Florida Panthers, been traded to the Chicago Blackhawks, and then crossed into Canada two years ago to become the captain of the Red Maple. Yuri remembered the wave of expectation that spread through the city—the hope that with Cherriot Goodnight, the Red Maple might finally claim their first Stanley Cup in a decade.

That was the extent of what Yuri knew about the man. He had seen his face in advertisements, too. When Alexei told him that the man whose looks made him easy to mistake for an actor was the much-talked-about Red Maple captain, Yuri had skeptically estimated how comfortable that man’s world must be and simply walked past the shop displays featuring his face.

The highlight video first explained each team’s Stanley Cup history, then moved on to the players drawing attention. It rattled off league-leading goal counts, the Maurice Richard Trophy, the Hart Memorial Trophy, and his strengths as a center. The commentator praised Goodnight at a rapid pace, finishing with the note that the only thing he had yet to win was the Stanley Cup.

Yuri realized that, at some point, he had become deeply focused on the commentary. Cherriot, described in the voice of a distant stranger, was an extraordinary being who should never have even brushed past a man like Yuri. He had forgotten, buried under the chaos of their current situation, that Cherriot was a man who could spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a whim, someone deeply loved by the world. Instead of feeling awed that he was sharing a space with such a man, the situation felt jarringly contradictory. It was so alien that his stomach lurched, and a wave of deathly depression surged over him.

Yuri recalled the source of this dreadful feeling. Around the age of fourteen, while walking through an alley in Saratov with Alexei, he had looked up at a ballet company poster and seen a world existing entirely outside his own for the first time.

Alexei and Yuri, who missed school more often than they attended, stuck together while helping with Igor’s work. At the time, Yuri’s position was stable, thanks to his father, who worked faithfully under Igor. Because his father had insisted they spare Alexei—the child of traitors—Alexei had survived. But Igor had no intention of forgiving Alexei’s parents for daring to attempt to escape Saratov. He spared Alexei not out of mercy, but because he wanted to inflict even greater despair upon the bloodline of traitors.

So Yuri deliberately spent more time with Alexei. For the sake of the boy who could not mix with the other children, who had slept and grown up under Igor’s men, Yuri took on the filthy errands thrown at Alexei. He had to. The friend he had known since childhood was family, and if it meant protecting someone precious, Yuri could gladly shoulder the dirtiest work.

The day they first discovered that ballet poster had been a day spent escaping from a ruined situation. The two boys, whose voices had not even changed yet, had been collecting money under Igor’s orders. When Igor needed someone to visit those who had failed to make payments and were stuck in shabby circumstances, he used boys like Yuri.

Back then, Igor was especially cruel to Alexei. Alexei’s father, Mikhail Sorokin, had been a valued subordinate, and Igor was furious that a skilled, silent trigger man had dared to disobey him.

The bonds of a criminal organization were fear and violence. To make a thorough example, Igor captured Alexei’s parents the moment they tried to escape and butchered them in front of everyone. Fortunately, Alexei did not see the act itself, but he saw the aftermath: his parents’ corpses, their limbs soaked in blood and riddled with bullet holes.

Igor found Alexei’s mind admirable for not collapsing at that sight, yet he also despised him. To tame the dog that did not fear him, he forced a child of that age to perform tasks adults could not endure. Ordering him to return with ten thousand dollars within half a day was one such task.

Ignoring Igor’s order that Alexei do it alone, Yuri went with him. They headed for the tent village in the most remote corner of Saratov. Even before entering, the street reeked of urine, a truly disgusting place.

In the tent village lived gaunt men addicted to drugs, wandering like zombies; a mad woman who chewed on tangled, dandruff-ridden hair and screamed intermittently; an old man with swollen legs who soiled himself by the roadside, oblivious to onlookers. People lived like that there.

It was a place that would have horrified outsiders, but Yuri and Alexei lived among such scenes. Everyone who wasn’t addicted and debt-ridden was gathered in the western part of Saratov, and outside that small district, every place was uniformly miserable. So, Yuri was not afraid of going there.

Both boys were bigger and tougher than their peers, and they entered the village. They passed between addicts who had lost all selfhood, stepping without thought over pools of urine drying on the street, and found the Polish man picking up discarded cigarette butts from a trash can to smoke the remnants.

Igor called him Boris. In truth, his name was Wojciech, but what mattered to Igor was not his identity. It was the amount of money he could extract.

At first, Wojciech had poured his railway earnings into buying drugs, but later he began taking them on credit. Igor’s method was to willingly extend credit to those falling into addiction, turn them into full-blown addicts, and then, when they had nowhere left to escape, squeeze them until he had taken their very souls.

Usually, Wojciech lay slack and soaked in drugs, his eyes cloudy like dead fish. But that day, for some reason, his eyes were clear. He had been putting a filter in his mouth, one smeared with saliva, ash, and dregs, lighting it without hesitation when he spotted the boys.

“You’re Volkov’s brats, aren’t you?”

“You saw us last time too, and you’re only remembering now? If you remembered that, hand over the money you owe.”

Alexei went straight to the point. The boy left alone after losing his parents had to please Igor to protect his younger brother. Alexei had to secure that money today.

Yuri quietly stood beside Alexei and checked the surroundings. They could enter this place as if it were nothing, but originally, it was a dangerous place adults told boys never to enter. People who had nothing left to lose were capable of anything. To preserve their lives for one more day, they impulsively committed acts worse than beasts, acts morally impossible to imagine.

And Wojciech, too, was a man driven into a corner.

“It’s because of criminal bastards like you that I ended up like this. You said if I paid even a little, you’d keep giving it to me. Keep, keep, keep giving it, keep…”

Yuri learned later that the clarity in his eyes had been a symptom of withdrawal. Wojciech’s face turned the color of misdirected rage, like a melting candle, and with a shout, he charged at Alexei.

The two of them were only fourteen.

Even though they were tall and strong for their age, they were not old enough to subdue a man in his mid-twenties who had spent his life doing physical labor. They had not yet mastered the skill, nor did they have the experience to anticipate an ambush.

Wojciech, his eyes crazed, tackled Alexei and began strangling him. The irrational judgment that if he killed the brats and ran, he would not have to pay, spurred him on like a ghost. Instead of panicking, Alexei struggled desperately to pry off the man’s hands, and Yuri grabbed whatever was nearby and hurled it at him.

No one helped them. On that street, there were only living corpses, and in that filth-ridden space, the two boys struggled to survive. Alexei’s complexion grew pale. Seeing his friend’s face turn white, Yuri’s head went cold, and he threw himself at Wojciech to save him.

He bit his ear off.

Because Yuri bit down until Wojciech screamed and threw his head back, until half the flesh of his ear tore away, the man released him. Blood pouring from his left ear, the man whipped around. His eyes glowed red even in the shadows. To kill the boy who had dared bite him, the man charged with a howl. A heavy hand struck Yuri’s cheek, and a boot trampled his belly where muscles had not yet fully settled. Pain like his organs would burst rose along with the metallic taste of blood.

Once Alexei recovered his breath, he charged at Wojciech again. Like that, they were beaten for each other, bloodied, flesh torn and noses broken, until they escaped that place.

They did not collect the money.

The two had struggled with everything they had and made the man back off, but when they saw him lying on the ground, blood pouring from his ear, they could do nothing more. They simply could not speak.

“Let’s go.”

After a long silence, Alexei spat blood and said this. Yuri swallowed the blood that had flowed into his mouth and nodded. Perhaps it was blood from inside his own mouth. Either way, it did not matter.

They walked the long road back to report their failure to Igor. During the entire walk, no one helped the blood-smeared boys. People knew that children walking around in such a state could only belong to Igor Volkov.

The two arrived in an alley lined with a huge dumpster and piles of waste. If they passed through here, an empty avenue would appear, lined with factories and abandoned buildings. One of Igor’s workplaces.

As Yuri walked, estimating what punishment they would receive, Alexei stopped. Yuri turned back. Alexei was looking up at a poster on the wall. They had passed this street dozens of times, but Yuri saw it for the first time.

On the poster, a ballerino and ballerina stood in unfamiliar poses against elegant lighting. The date, time, and title were written in stylish fonts.

Petrushka.

A ballerina in a white lace tutu, a ballerino in blue bottoms with a costume that exposed his upper body, and girls in red skirts decorating the background.