Apartment 105, ninth floor. Slava slowly stirs sugar in a cup of black tea. Its porcelain surface is adorned with a pattern of flowers, birds, and gilding. The wall clock ticking loudly. Mom is slicing a waffle cake with nuts ("your favorite"), dad is talking about the road to the dacha, which, of course, is being cleared of snow, but not very well. Slava suddenly notices how much they have aged. But the apartment, on the contrary, seems unchanged since that evening in May several years ago when he walked out of its threshold with a suitcase full of his belongings. Here, everything still smells of soup, his childhood photo with a silly «bowl» haircut sits on one of the shelves in the living room, the carpet in the hallway covers the mark from a dropped cigarette of his school sweetheart, and there are traces of tape on the wallpaper in the small room where he used to hang posters. And Slava feels oddly pleased, about as pleased as someone who has put on the dx2ov mix for 5/8: radio.
