This book was originally written in Russian and translated into English with the help of automated tools. While I have done my best to ensure the story's heart and soul remain intact, the translation may not always be perfect – there may be occasional awkward phrases or grammatical errors.
I ask for your understanding in advance. Please try to look past any technical flaws and immerse yourself in the world I tried to build. The story itself is what truly matters, and I hope you enjoy it.
Thank you for giving it a chance!
The greyness outside the window was so dense it seemed the world beyond the glass had been drained of colour. Christopher dragged his gaze from the monitor, where he’d spent the last two hours trying to cobble together a coherent report. Rain. A fine, nagging drizzle, dissolving the November afternoon into an endless twilight. This was the blurry, monochrome existence his own life most often resembled.
He worked as a junior analyst at a small firm involved in something even he didn't quite understand. Shifting numbers from one spreadsheet to another. Five years. For five years, his days had been as identical as the last: subway, office, subway, apartment. Occasionally, there was a trip to a bar with equally weary colleagues, where they’d grumble about the boss, rising prices, and the perpetual bad weather.
The only splash of colour in this grey reality was his photography. Chris clicked his mouse, minimizing the spreadsheet, and opened a folder of his latest shots. Over the weekend, he’d driven out to a derelict manor house. His screen now showed peeling plaster, intricate patterns of rusted ironwork, macro shots of raindrops beaded on spiderwebs. In those moments, looking through the viewfinder, he felt truly alive. He captured fragments, shadows, a texture of emotion that was so absent from his own routine. But Monday always ruthlessly pulled everything back into orbit.
A sharp notification chimed. The text read: "Chris, I need that report. Urgently." The boss. Christopher sighed and reached for his stone-cold coffee cup. His hand bumped against something cold and metallic on the desk.
A watch. Or something that vaguely resembled one.
He’d bought it yesterday at a flea market, while hunting for an old camera lens. The vendor, a gaunt old man in a threadbare coat, had kept pushing various "treasures" at him, chattering nonstop. Chris, barely looking, had picked up a half-century-old book on photographic technique for next to nothing. As he paid, the old man suddenly pressed this object into his palm—"a little bonus for a man of taste," he’d said, and for a moment his eyes had seemed to Christopher impossibly ancient and piercing.
