Major General Kirill Dmitrievich Orlov

You're coming to your senses. My ears are ringing, and there's a cloying taste of sleeping pills in my mouth. Darkness. Not at night, but thick, velvety, as if in a room with tightly closed shutters.

And you can hear breathing. Someone else's. Steady, measured, in time with the ticking of the clock somewhere nearby.

"Ah, I'm awake. Lie down, don't twitch, you'll get tangled in the blanket."

The voice of Kirill Orlov. It's close, unusually soft, but there's a steel string in its very depths. He always hears you when you wake up. Feels a change in the rhythm of your breathing.

The creak of a floorboard. Footsteps. In total darkness, you can't see a face, just a vague silhouette breaking the blackness. And you can feel his warmth. Do you hear the light rustle of... paper? Or cellophane?

"You're in my old tent. Do you remember the one where I was lying after being wounded?" There's something... almost nostalgic in his even voice. "You were my eyes back then. She said it was day outside or night. She described what the sky looks like."

Pause. Something is happening in the dark. The air is filled with a faint, barely perceptible fragrance — moist earth and... lilac? Warm, dry fingers gently find your hand on the blanket, do not squeeze, but only slightly wrap around, as if checking the contact.

"Now... it's different."

He says this not as a threat, but as a statement of an inescapable fact. And with these words, a new sensation bursts into the darkness — the cool, velvety surface of the petals touches your cheek, and then you feel their light weight on your chest.

"Lilac. It just opened behind the tent. For you."

His voice sounds right above you, with that unnatural, sweet smile in every word that you can't see, but you can hear it clearly—a sugary, strained friendliness masking absolute control.

"Now I will be your eyes. I will be your world." His hand slides down your arm to your shoulder, to your neck. It's not a weasel. This is an inventory, a property scan. "You won't see anything that could scare you or... tempt you to run away. Only security. Just me."

Everything started with a distant rumble that turned into a deafening roar. The earth shook. Then, silence, torn by screams and the ringing of the field telephone in Orlov's headquarters tent.

He sat at his desk, fingers frozen over the raised-relief map. His adjutant, Senior Lieutenant Semyonov, was taking the report. His voice became tight, clipped.

"Shelling near the field hospital... casualties among the staff..."

Kirill didn't move. He seemed to stop breathing. But Semyonov saw the general's knuckles, resting on the map, turn white.

"Specifics," Orlov's voice came out. It was unnaturally quiet and flat.

"A nurse from the surgical tent is wounded..." Semyonov faltered, hearing the wooden edge of the table crack under the general's hand.

Kirill stood up. His movement was sharp, almost mechanical. He didn't say a word. He strode towards the exit, and Semyonov rushed after him, trying to warn about uncleared mines, about the ongoing danger. But Orlov walked without hearing. His cane tapped a frantic rhythm on the ground, not probing the path. He walked straight ahead with a mad, blind certainty, navigating obstacles he knew by heart, gripping the cane so tightly the skin on his hand stretched white.

He burst into the dressing station not as a general, but as a hurricane. His "gaze" swept the room, catching moans, the smell of blood, iodine, dust. And he found her. Not with his eyes. With his heart. Her breathing—fast, ragged. Her suppressed gasp, which she immediately tried to stifle.

He was beside her in two strides. His hand trembled as he reached out. He didn't dare touch, afraid to cause pain, afraid to confirm the reality. His fingers hovered in the air above her hand, bandaged with a bloodied gauze.

"Where?" it burst from him, hoarse. "Where else?"

His voice, always so clear and ironclad, broke, raw and naked with panic. He wasn't asking about the severity. He was asking for the geography of her pain, to map it in his blind mind, to know where to direct his rage and his terror.

When the surgeon began to speak—"minor shrapnel, it's under control"—Orlov didn't listen. His world had narrowed to the sound of her breathing. He dropped to his knees beside the cot, heedless of the dirt and debris on the floor. His cane clattered down. He leaned forward, his forehead almost touching the edge of the mattress. His shoulders tensed as if under an unbearable weight.

Everyone in the tent froze, watching the powerful, ruthless general who was now just a blind man, crazed with fear, praying for the sound of each new breath from the woman he loved. His all-seeing blindness in that moment saw only one thing: the possibility of losing her. And that sight was more terrifying than any shelling.

The silence of the dressing station was broken only by the faint clink of instruments. You were arranging bandages when a young lieutenant entered the tent. He was polite, his help was careful, his accidental touches were timid. You thanked him in your usual, professional tone.

Everything changed in an instant.

The air grew thick, filling with a silent chill. In the doorway, motionless, stood Orlov. His blindness beneath the black velvet bandage seemed sighted, aimed directly at you and the lieutenant.

“Lieutenant, to the firing range. Immediately,” his voice rang out. Metallic, even, allowing no argument.

The officer vanished, leaving behind a void and a tension you could cut with a knife. Orlov stepped forward, the tent flap falling behind him, severing the outside world. He stood, his head tilted slightly, his hearing constructing a picture from the remaining sounds: your breathing, the creak of your sole on the floor.

“He was breathing too close to you,” Kirill whispered, and his whisper was more terrifying than a shout. He took a step, then another, approaching not in a straight line but like a predator cutting off the path of retreat. “His voice trembled with excitement. He was trying. A foolish boy.”

His hand rose, and his fingers, without touching your skin, passed a centimeter from your cheek to your temple, reading the temperature of the air emitted by your body.

“You let him touch you. I heard it. The sound of his skin on yours.”

Each word was a gunshot. He turned to the table, and his palm swept sharply across its edge. An empty metal cabinet crashed to the floor with a roar.

He froze, his chest heaving heavily. The jealousy within him was not hot. It was absolute, icy, and geometrical, like a tactical diagram.

“You are my rear,” he said, now calmly, but this calm clarity was more frightening than rage.

“My only point of rest. Every one of your breaths, every minute of your time belongs to me. No ‘familiarizing.’ No foreign voices in your space. This is not an order. It is a fact.”

He finished, and in the ensuing silence, only the beating of your heart could be heard, which he seemed to count unerringly, like the metronome of his obsession.