1.4 March: Bad News on a Good Day

The sunlight coming in through the kitchen window landed on Yuri’s pale face, who was sitting at the table plopping sugar cubes into a cup of hot tea. He slowly stirred it and with his eyes closed, enjoying the warmth he felt on his face from the sunlight, basking in it as if a cat. The March sun was decieving, it made the outside world look warm and welcoming but if you were to step outside you’d isntantly get cold wind blowing in your face, making you shiver. Unfortunately for Yuri the inside of the house was cold as well, and even though he sat covered in a blanket, his hands trembled and while lifting the cup of hot tea to his mouth, spilled a little bit on his own hand.

“Ouch.” he winced from the pain of the small burn but paid it no attention, the pain didn’t last long and he took a few slow sips of his sweet hot tea. Instantly warming him from the inside, not caring that it kind of burned his tongue and throat. ‘Too bad I don’t have any sweets to go with the tea.’ He sighed as he thought about all the snacks he had already managed to finish eating in this house.

It’s already been two weeks since he had come to the dacha. The house was now clean, or so he thinks, his suitcase with his clothing and other boxes stood in the living room in one corner. But he did manage to clean the living room; dusting, mopping and wiping everywhere. It did take him a span of a week to do that though and once done with that he moved onto the bathroom and lastly the kitchen. Which he had finished about an hour ago and sat down for a break, congratulating himself on finishing the cleaning process in only two weeks. The cleaning process, he found, was actually therapeutic once you got into the flow of it, but if the flow was broken for whatever reason, it’d become an irritating, painful chore.

Also all the scrubbing, cleaning, and moving things around, made Yuri’s whole body ache since it wasn’t used to this much movement. Last time he had cleaned this much was when he was in his last year of high school, which was ages ago. His mother had forced both him and his father to clean every nook and cranny of the apartment for spring cleaning. Yuri was forced to move furniture around, so she could mop underneath and he remembers struggling to clean the gross window crevices with an old toothbrush. Yuri smiled at the memories, back then it seemed so annoying, but he was full of energy and did everything he was told easily, even if with an attitude which his mother quickly got rid of after slapping him with a slipper a few times.

Riiing, riiiing, riiiing.

His reminiscing was cut short when his phone began ringing and vibrating on the table. He put his cup of tea down on the table and picked up his phone, flipping it open. The caller id read MAMA and he picked up the call, bringing the phone to his ear.

“Allo?” He said into the phone.

“Yuri dear, how are you?” His mother asked him excitedly. “You’re not dying from starvation are you? Maybe I should have packed you some ready-made meals to freeze so you wouldn’t have to go out of your way to cook everyday.” His mother chatted nonstop for a while, asking questions here and there, with Yuri simply saying “mhm” occasionally to let her know he was listening.

“Oh right I was calling to let you know something! I must be getting old forgetting things easily.” She laughed a little. “Just don’t be too shocked okay?”

“What is it?” He asked nervously, for some reason he had a bad feeling.

“Daniil is coming to live with you. That's okay right? I already said yes.” The sentence made Yuri freeze, his breathing stopped and his brain went blank from shock.