We were traveling home on the overnight train after a week at the seaside. Four people in the compartment: me, my wife Marina, her mother Galina Ivanovna, and my wife's younger sister, Katya. That same Katya, who had been sunbathing in a micro-bikini on the beach this whole time, laughed too loudly next to me and seemed to accidentally brush my back as she passed. Twenty-three years old, a seven-year age difference with Marina, and as if from another universe: uninhibited, with a daring gaze and a constant half-smile. The compartment smelled of old wood. We'd already been driving for six hours; the black silhouettes of trees flashed past the window, occasionally catching a glimpse of a lighted window in a small house. My wife and mother-in-law were already snoring evenly on the upper berths. Marina snored softly, breathing out. My mother-in-law was emitting such a powerful roar that the windows rattled. I lay on the lower berth by the window, Katya on the opposite lower bert... continue reading

My name is Daniil, I'm 21. Summers at our father's dacha were always a strange mix of boredom and tension. Especially after he married Irina two years ago, and she burst into my life—Maya, my now half-sister. She was 19, and she was the embodiment of everything that both drove me crazy and terrified me. Not the kind of beauty you see on magazine covers, but a real, natural beauty. Bright red hair that she always wore in a messy ponytail, freckles on her nose, and gray eyes that could see right through you. We lived in the same house, our rooms separated by a thin wall, and I could hear her tossing and turning at night. We constantly bickered over trivial things—who washed the dishes, what movie to watch—but beneath this game of "evil brother and sister," something else smoldered. Something forbidden, something sharp, something that took our breath away when our hands accidentally touched at the dinner table. We both felt it. The estate stood on the edge of an old, de... continue reading