Alexander did not immediately realize how long he had been standing on the threshold, clutching the folder of contracts as if it could protect him from what he saw.

The girl raised her eyes, and in that look there was neither fear nor a plea for help — only the fatigue of someone who had learned too early to rely only on herself.

— Mom isn’t home, she said quietly without stopping her work. — I’m almost finished with the order.

The word “order” sounded so ordinary that something inside Alexander tightened painfully.

He stepped into the apartment and noticed in the corner a mattress without sheets, an empty refrigerator with the door half open, and a stack of unpaid bills carefully tied with thread. On one of them he saw his own name.

— Where is your father? he asked, trying to keep his voice steady.

The girl hesitated for only a second, and that pause was enough.

It turned out the father had “temporarily gone away for work,” as they told the neighbors, but in reality he had been in the hospital for several months after an accident the family told no one about.

The mother worked nights and hid from creditors during the day. The rent was late not because of carelessness, but because every ruble went to medicine.

Alexander slowly set the folder on the table. For the first time in many years, numbers stopped being just numbers to him.

For the first time, he broke his own rules and, taking the stack of receipts, wrote on the one bearing his name: “Paid.”