I get ready quickly, without fuss. My heart pounds anxiously, growing stronger with every minute, as if something heavy and unbearable swells inside me. The journey takes two days — long and exhausting — but I don't even feel tired. It's not physical fatigue. Only anger and anxiety eat away at me, twisting in my stomach with every kilometer. I travel without thinking about time, distance, or the long road ahead. Throughout this journey, my mind is occupied by one thought: what happened to him, to my son? Why don't I know? Why wasn't I there?
I return to the city I once consider home, but now it feels alien to me. Every street, every building reminds me of the pain that once lived here. The pain I tried to forget. Too much pain is connected to these streets, these doorways, the looks of people. I left here many years ago — abroad, to the man I once loved with all my heart. But love, like many things, gradually turns into resentment, estrangement, hatred. Everything that once seemed the meaning of life becomes emptiness, and I leave to forget.
Alexander and I are once like wounded animals, howling at each other in pain. We take out our grievances without noticing how we destroy everything around us. But time heals, as they say. We find a language to communicate. Only warm, calm friendship remains. No passion, no reproaches. Once a month — heartfelt, honest conversations. That's all we need. But now, at this moment, I can't help but feel that something is gone forever.
And now I'm here again. In the city I once fled from. But this time — with a purpose. I don't come to remember, not to go back to the past. I come to save. And even if everything I once knew now seems foreign, I have to do it. For him. For Maxim.
Approaching the dormitory, I take a deep breath. The old building smells of stale air, paint, and youth — restless, noisy, full of uncertainty. There is life here, but it's foreign to me. I climb to the right floor, forcing myself to take step after step, as if the very weight of this place pulls me down. I find the door behind which, I'm told, my son once lived, and knock.
The door opens, and a skinny, dark-haired guy appears. He looks about nineteen. His gaze is defiant, like someone who thinks he knows everything about life. He looks at me as if I am interrupting his most important business, and I feel irritation rising.
"Who are you?" he asks, with a tone as if I am disturbing his great doing-nothing.
"I've come to see my son," I say, holding back the growing anxiety. This guy clearly isn't one for politeness, but I have to keep myself composed.
He frowns, confused.
"To whom?"
"To Maxim. Does he live here?" My voice grows a bit tense. Questions pour out, and I can't make myself stop.
He mutters something, as if my questions annoy him.
"And who the hell are you, lady?" His tone starts to annoy me. The guy's manners are like a street dog's. I barely hold myself back.
"I'm his mother. Where is my son?" I say firmly, feeling how this conversation stirs a storm inside me. I am not going to stand and wait — if he doesn't help, I'll just go in myself.
He blinks; his expression suddenly changes as if realizing I'm not joking. His tone immediately softens into something obsequious.
"Mom? Oh, pardon my attitude towards you. I just… didn't know who you were. But Max doesn't live here anymore."
My heart freezes. Everything slows down like in slow motion. Words can't get into my mind; they get stuck somewhere in my throat.
"Why? And where does he live now?" I can't hide the confusion and despair in my voice.
He shrugs as if this is all routine to him and adds, rubbing salt in the wound:
"At his girlfriend's, Katrin's. They're together there all the time now. Practically living like a little family."
I clench my teeth to keep from screaming. Everything around blurs, and inside me something cracks. My son. He builds his life without me.
I hold a scrap of paper in my hand like a weapon and walk away, feeling the anger boiling in my chest. Everything inside me swirls, but I try not to show how painful it all is. My son, my boy, and that girl who got into his life. How can she? She doesn't even know who she is dealing with. His mother is coming.
I can't help but think how times have changed. Youth today are shameless, brazen, not a bit respectful. How can you speak to your mother in such a tone, like that kid from the dorm? He doesn't know what to say, doesn't know who I am, but even when he realizes, he doesn't bother to show the slightest respect. I find myself thinking more and more that the world is changing, but not for the better.
I remember Maxim, his childhood. He was different. I remember him so clearly, as if it all happened yesterday. His curious eyes, quick steps, endless questions when he pulls my hand. His laughter, ringing and sunny, is my personal melody of happiness. He is my world. Then come the fights — big and small. Alexander and I forget we have a child. We bury him in our pain, our selfishness, and he shuts down, disappears. Lost inside himself.
I think it is forever. But even becoming quieter, more restrained, he still remains kind, hardworking, polite. Teachers say he is a good boy. And now… that boy disappears, dissolves into emptiness. I can't understand it. Where is he?
The taxi drives into a prestigious neighborhood — clean streets, trees, well-kept building facades. But this outward beauty can't hide the rot that has settled in my son's life. Everything is wrong.
I climb the steps; they feel foreign, but my legs don't tremble. I am determined. I know what I have to do. I knock. One — two.
And then I hear him. His voice. Light, cheerful, as always. But it isn't the voice I expect to hear.
"I'll be right back to you, baby girl..."
Baby girl? That word hits me like an electric shock. His voice is cheerful, relaxed. But not for me. Because he isn't speaking to me. Inside, something freezes. I take a step forward, and the door opens.
And there he is. My Maxim. He stands before me, and his smile is exactly the one I remember so well. But it vanishes the moment he sees me.
"Mom?" His voice falters, breaks, like a thin string snapping under the weight of an unexpected blow. Shock and confusion freeze in his eyes — so genuine that for a moment it makes my heart ache.
"Hi, son," I say, forcing a smile. It is strained, unnatural, like a cracked mask. Inside, everything trembles, tears apart, but I force myself to look calm. I haven't come to shout. Not to beg. I have come to fight — coldly, calculatedly, bloodlessly.
He is silent, confused, like a teenager caught red-handed. His gaze darts around, finding no support, and in it I see for a moment the boy I once knew and loved with all my heart. But that boy has lost his innocence. His heart and soul are no longer the same. Something inside him has broken. Or someone has broken it.
"Max, who's there? I've missed you already," comes a voice. Light, with honeyed notes of falsehood.
And there she is. Emerging from the depths of the apartment, as if surfacing from darkness, softly stepping barefoot over the dirty floor — a shadow, foreign, devoid of warmth and life.
She walks slowly, lazily, as if she doesn't even want to bother with extra movement. She wears all black: a featureless t-shirt, vulgar tight shorts, nails carelessly smeared with thick black polish. Her appearance is as empty and heavy as a starless evening, as a day without hope.
Her eyes — thickly outlined with black eyeliner, clumsily and roughly — look too large and heavy for her sharp, tired face. Her gaze is prickly, gripping, as if she is already looking for something to pick on, someone to humiliate with her pathetic semblance of arrogance. Scarlet lips sharply stand out against her pale skin, making her look like a porcelain doll — cold, lifeless, and strangely unpleasant.
A nonconformist. Of course. Just as I suspect.
All this deliberate "specialness," the cheap desire to stand out — painfully banal. "Not like everyone else" — a funny attempt to seem deeper than she really is. Every detail — from careless clothes to the fake heaviness in her gaze — screams of showy defiance, a wish to attract attention by any means, even through dirt and challenge.
She slides a look over me — slow, politely disdainful, as if she has already measured my worth and found it equal to zero. And I feel it sharply — that icy contempt, hidden behind a thin veil of politeness.
Her look says: "I'm the boss here. You're nobody."
And my son... my boy... stands between us, squeezed as if caught between two worlds. An adult man, but in this moment — again small, lost, torn apart. But this is no longer the boy I raised. He probably doesn't realize he has become a toy in someone else's hands. That he has allowed this gray shadow to take away all the good in him. No. He is still mine. My blood. My heart. Only now he is blinded. Blinded by her.
Looking at her, I feel a wave of cold, bright anger rise inside me. Not fear. Not hurt. Contempt.
This person isn't worth being afraid of. She is... emptiness disguised as rebellion.
The girl slides her glance over me with a slight, almost lazy smirk. Polite, barely noticeable — but I feel it. Contemptuous cold wrapped in feigned politeness. As if she knows more about me than she should. As if she is waiting for this moment.
Slowly I shift my gaze to my son's clothes. He stands before me as someone I barely recognize, and that strikes me more than I could have imagined.
He looks thin, like a shadow of himself. His face is slightly sunken, as if the past months spent with her have drained all life out of him. Bones show under the skin, and I can hardly believe this is the same person I remember. His eyes, once full of light and hope, are now dim, dull, with an expressionless look that seems empty. He is exhausted, as if life has taken away not only his strength but his very sense of reality. He isn't just tired — he is burned out, like a field after a long drought, and it is painfully obvious.
On his arms I notice blue spots and scratches. Dark marks that can't be accidental. These are not just bruises — they are traces of pain, traces of what he has endured, marks of sleepless nights, a struggle, perhaps with himself or with what surrounds him. I can't ignore them, though I try. Every mark on his arms is a story he is hiding, unwilling to show, but still leaving behind.
His black t-shirt is crumpled, without a hint of care. It hangs on his shoulders as if it were just a part of his pain — uncovered, not hiding what he is going through.
Worn jeans with ripped knees. These holes seem to reflect the broken moments of his life, lost hopes, and dreams. He is a stranger to me, as is this world he has chosen.
Once he wore a blue shirt — the very one I gave him for his graduation evening, with pride and trembling. I remember how his face lit up with joy when he put it on, how clean and bright he was, and his style was light and neat. I was proud of him, proud of his achievements, his future. That was the moment I thought I could be proud of him forever.
His style was bright, clean, neat — like a reflection of his heart back then. I could feel that invisible thread between us, his heartfelt sincerity, his striving for the light he carried.
And now? I shrink into my place, hardly believing what stands before me. He is a rebel, a street kid, a hooligan, and I can't help but feel this change — as if he has been broken by someone else. By foreign hands. And it hurts like a knife piercing the heart.
And all this metamorphosis — her doing. I can't help but feel that bitterness inside, the pain that touches me, but I clench my teeth to hide it. I always blame her, though I understand it isn't entirely her fault. But something inside me can't forgive. I can't forgive myself for letting this happen.
Because of her, he ends up in the hospital. Because of her, his grades drop. Because of her... I lose my son. My child, my pride. My everything. It feels like losing him again and again, every day, every step.
But I don't allow myself to show even a drop of pain or a spark of anger. I hold on, but all the pain, all the weight that has clenched inside me, does not disappear. It is inside me. And I know I will carry it for a long time.
I step forward. Slowly, as if through a sticky fog of pain. Gently, almost reverently, I touch his shoulder — familiar, dear, but already so distant. My palm trembles, but I clench my fingers, forcing myself to stand tall. I come to fight. For him. For us.
"May I come in, Max? I'm just passing through. Wanted to talk. A little."
Softly, motherly. Let him relax. Let him let me in.
Because I have already entered their home. And that means soon I will start tearing down everything she has built.