The bus sighed to a stop at the edge of the forgotten village, its doors opening with a tired groan. Olesya stepped out into the quiet drizzle, pulling her thin coat tighter around her belly. She was several months pregnant, exhausted, and carrying a grief that felt heavier than the child inside her. The driver gave her a sympathetic nod before steering the empty bus back down the road, leaving her in a silence broken only by the soft hiss of rain.
The village hadn’t changed since the last time she’d been there—bare branches rattling in the wind, crooked fences leaning like old men, narrow dirt paths that turned slick beneath her boots. Olesya walked slowly, her umbrella trembling slightly in her hand. Every step carried a memory. Andrey’s laugh, warm and unrestrained. The calloused hands that used to cup her cheeks. The way he whispered her name like it was something fragile.
She had not grown up knowing softness. Her childhood belonged to the orphanage—cold corridors, endless chores, and the kind of loneliness that settles in bone. She survived vocational school next, working factory shifts that painted her clothes in metal dust. She never expected to meet someone like Andrey: an engineer who showed up in grease-stained overalls but spoke with a gentleness that disarmed her from the start. He noticed things no one else ever bothered to see. The way she flinched at praise. The way she saved every tiny kindness like treasure.
Their lunches together turned into walks home. Walks turned into evenings spent talking in her cramped dorm kitchen. One night, he kissed her under a single flickering bulb and everything in her life shifted.
When she found out she was pregnant, she panicked—but Andrey reacted as if she’d handed him the sun. He proposed that same night with a shy, hopeful smile. “I want you to meet my family,” he said. “Come with me next weekend.”
But fear wound its way into her chest. People with families, real families, had never looked kindly at girls like her. So she hesitated. “You go first,” she told him quietly. “I’ll come later.”
He agreed—but he never returned.
Rumors spread fast. “He got scared.” “He ran from responsibility.” “Who knows where he is now?” Olesya refused to believe any of it. He wasn’t that man. Not him. But weeks passed with no call. Then one evening she overheard the truth whispered in the factory break room: Andrey had been mugged near a train station on his way to see his parents. He’d fought back. He didn’t survive.
For three months, she carried that truth in silence. Today she had come to bury the last piece of hope she’d been clinging to.
She reached the cemetery gates, her hand trembling as she pushed them open. The cold smell of wet earth filled the air. She found his grave easily—someone had left a small candle, its flame long extinguished. She placed her chrysanthemums down, knelt, and let the storm inside her finally break. Tears soaked into the soil as she whispered apologies she knew he’d never hear.
When the chill began creeping under her clothes, she stood to leave—only to realize her phone was gone. Panic fluttered weakly in her chest. She checked her pockets, her bag, even brushed along the ground. Nothing. A wave of dizziness washed over her. Her back ached, her head throbbed, and she was suddenly aware of how long she’d been standing in the rain.
A nearby mausoleum offered shelter—dark, old, and silent. She pushed the door open and stepped inside, leaning against the wall. “Just a minute,” she whispered to herself. “Just to rest.”
Then a faint buzzing cut through the quiet.
A phone lay on the stone floor—definitely not hers. She bent down slowly, picked it up, and pressed the answer button before she even thought about it.
“Hello?” she managed.
“Oh! Someone answered—thank God!” a man’s voice said. “That’s my phone. I lost it yesterday.”
She swallowed, her voice thin. “I’m… I’m in the cemetery.”
“That makes sense,” he said quickly. “I was working there. Probably dropped it. Are you all right? You sound—”
“I wasn’t feeling well,” she whispered.
Her vision blurred. She blinked hard, but the walls tilted anyway. Her hand loosened. The phone slipped from her fingers, clattering to the floor.
“Hello? Hey—are you okay? Hello?”
His voice grew distant, swallowed by the darkness overtaking her.
The last thing she felt was the cold stone beneath her cheek—and the faint kick of the baby inside her—before everything went black.
