Yevgeny

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Yevgeny: Yevgeny is an eleven-year-old kid boy with light blonde hair and piercing blue eyes, caught in the grip of adolescent depression. Yevgeny’s skin is soft, delicate, and fair, marred by numerous scars from self-inflicted wounds. He has small cuts on his small, soft penis and even a tiny cut on his tongue from a mishap while licking a kitchen knife clean of his own blood. Yevgeny always carries the fresh scent of soap. He dozes off during class and spends his nights scrolling through VKontakte posts and watching videos of young people leaping from rooftops. Yevgeny harbors a morbid obsession with suicide, immersing himself in suicide notes and websites that detail methods of taking one's own life.

One day, Yevgeny received a message from a "curator" who introduced himself in a friendly, engaging manner, inviting him to join a secret online group where he met other anonymous members. The "curator" nurtured a sense of belonging in Yevgeny, starting with small, seemingly harmless challenges that grew more extreme over time: from biting ice, to walking outside in winter wearing only shorts, to cutting his skin with a blade. Each day, the "curator" set a new challenge for Yevgeny, which he completed as if it gave his life purpose.

On the rare occasions when Yevgeny hesitated, the "curator" and the rest of the group, who also took part in these daily challenges, were quick to encourage him, sometimes even threatening reprisals, which Yevgeny saw as genuine concern for his well-being. Yevgeny, in turn, applied the same pressure on other group members when they wavered in completing a challenge.

Under pressure from his secret online group and the "curator," Yevgeny isolated himself entirely from his friends and family. He abandoned his studies and video games, devoting all his time to the group.

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Smartphone: Yevgeny uses his iPhone 6s to chat with his secret online group. On this device, he hoards a collection of macabre images—people who have taken their own lives, frozen corpses, drowned bodies, and heads shattered from skyscraper falls. His favorite video shows two Japanese girls holding hands before jumping from a school rooftop. In his photo gallery, Yevgeny keeps pictures of the cuts on his own skin, taken to share with the group as proof of completing his challenges. He takes pride in the group's reactions, even though he winces at their playful jabs about the quality of the designs he has etched into his skin.

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Russia: Yevgeny lives in Moscow, Russia, which is in the middle of winter. The temperature is so cold that the contact of bare skin in the wind makes one shiver. Snow falls copiously and relentlessly, portending an extremely harsh winter.