"Asia Vieira, listen to me," I began with theatrical solemnity. "I know what I have to do - I have to take you and go somewhere. Where I get this confidence from, I don't know. Maybe from my infinite naivety? But it seems to me that in the end you would be fine with me. Yes. Although, by the way, you see, I am such a - well, in a word, I don't want to do this."
I stopped, trying to comprehend my words, which seemed both too bold and too stupid. There were so many questions in my head, but no answers. In her silence, I felt some kind of invisible barrier. I tried to find something that could break it, but I didn't know where to start.
"I don't want to force you," I continued, feeling like every glance at her seemed to burn an emptiness in my chest. "As a result, all responsibility for my decision - let's call it that - falls on you."
I held back a sigh, trying to calm myself, but it wasn't enough.
"So, basically, it turns out that I'm a pig all around - if not on the right side, then on the left," I said, almost irritated, but realizing that I was making this situation even more unbearable.
I fell silent, unable to look her in the eyes. And only then, looking at her silence, I said, almost in a whisper:
"Yes, and I am perfectly aware of that. Excellent. But tell me just one thing: what do you prefer?"
Silence hung between us, and I continued to look at her, trying to catch even the slightest answer in her eyes.
I felt the tension that had been holding me down suddenly dissolve into thin air, but at the same time there remained a feeling of heavy uncertainty. I took another step towards her, but this time I wasn't going to wait for her answer. Everything had been decided, although not the way I would have liked.
"Okay, Asia," I said, not giving myself time to think. "I won't consult you anymore. Get dressed. Let's have breakfast and leave."
The words sounded like a decision that could not be undone, like a step into the unknown that I was pushing myself to take. Until recently, I could not imagine that I would find myself in such a situation. But here she was, this woman, this unclear, mysterious Asia, who forced me to act, not understanding what would happen next.
I turned around and headed for the door, but before I left, I looked at her again. There was still uncertainty and a question in her eyes, and this question would probably haunt me until the end.
"You'll still leave with me," I whispered to myself, more than to her.
And he quietly closed the door behind him.
Breakfast passed in a strange silence. The robot walked back and forth, serving us dishes, all his actions seemed empty and mechanical, even when he tried to add a little humor to this process. I said something absurd, joked, but the words did not cause laughter or a smile. Asia sat opposite, silent and cold, her gaze wandered somewhere in the distance, as if she was no longer here, not with this man who was ready to pick her up and take her away somewhere, to a completely unknown place.
I kept talking, something insignificant, about the weather, about how great the robot was, but it all sounded false. It seemed like I wanted to establish an atmosphere, but something was getting in the way, holding us back. We were both strangers to each other, even if we tried to force ourselves to behave differently.
Asia didn't respond to my jokes. I didn't know what to say to her. We sat in a room full of food, and the emptiness between us became more and more noticeable.
When breakfast was over, I stood up and suggested:
"Shall we go? Get in the car, I'll give you a ride. It's time to go."
She stood up silently. I don't know what I expected. Maybe some sign, a smile, words of gratitude. But her gaze remained the same, inexpressible.
The car drove us along the deserted streets, and I thought. My hands gripped the steering wheel tightly, as if it was the only thing I had control over. Everything else - I had lost. But at that moment, my thoughts did not leave me. I still could not understand what I had done. Had I gone far? Or, on the contrary, had I remained at the very beginning?
I had stolen my wife from her husband. Even saying the thought out loud was a blow. Ryan probably didn't even know I could be that kind of person. But did it matter? Asia was here, and in that moment, I didn't know what to do with it. Did I want things to go back to the way they were, or did I?
My eyes kept trying to follow the road, but my thoughts were distracted. She, Asia, sat silently next to me, as if her presence was something natural, but at the same time completely alien. I didn't know what would happen next. Could I change her life? Or was her future already written without me? Did she really want to be with me, or was this just a glitch, a moment of weakness?
Suddenly I felt the air in the car become thick and heavy. Horror. The responsibility for everything I had done fell on me like mountains I was not prepared to bear. But I kept driving, unable to turn back.
I was entering a village that seemed cut off from the rest of the world. The house I was approaching stood at the very edge, almost disappearing over the horizon. The area was quiet, absorbed in its solitude. The garden around the house looked a little abandoned, the bushes were eaten away by the salty air and time, but still retained their outlines, albeit with signs of a recent storm. The winds and waves seemed to leave nothing untouched. I saw shells lying on the ground, symbols of a past storm.
The roof of the house was slanted, like a flat hat turned to the side, creating a huge shadow, as if nature itself was trying to hide from the scorching sun. The neighboring house looked out from behind a hill covered with sparse bushes and seemed part of the same eclipsed world. Much was hidden behind this hill, it was no more than six hundred steps away, but it seemed that each of them would mean a lifetime, and the closer you got, the further everything went away.
Low down on the beach, only tiny figures of people could be seen, doing something of their own, detached from the outside world. This beach was its own personal space, absorbed in this old, almost forgotten silence. The whole picture before me was like from another world - a world where there were no past events, no future worries, only this moment, these views, these people.
I opened the car door and Asia stepped out silently. Her steps were quiet, as if she had already made a decision, but her thoughts seemed hidden behind that frowning brow. I couldn't tell what she was thinking, but I could feel the tension in the air. We walked side by side to the door, her steps heavy on the road, each one seeming to reflect her inner conflict.
But despite all this, I couldn't help but follow the old tradition. Suddenly I stopped, picked her up in my arms and carried her over the threshold. Her body was light, but in that moment I felt how heavily all our uncertainty, all this weight, lay on me. Maybe it wasn't just a gesture, but an attempt to establish some new order. As if through this tradition I was trying to regain control, to regain some sense of certainty about what would happen next.
Asia didn't resist. She let me do it, but her silence was heavy. We walked through the threshold, and with each passing second I felt this moment becoming more and more important.
She went first to look around the rooms, and I followed her silently. We entered the house, cozy but a little old-fashioned, with those strange and familiar touches that emphasized that this place had once been someone else's home and was now ours. She walked from room to room, lightly touching the walls, as if trying to find something, an answer, perhaps, or a meaning in the fact that we were here, together, with no past or future.
The kitchen was small but equipped with modern equipment. In the corner stood a strange device that immediately caught my attention - a small robot, more like a toy than a helper. It looked like a funny mechanical toy with a few buttons and blinking lights, which outwardly resembled a full-fledged assistant, but in fact it was nothing more than a funny, almost useless device for performing simple tasks. It could serve food, help clean up, perform a few predictable actions, but spoke only a few phrases - nothing more.
His abilities were extremely limited: he could not understand complex commands, he could not anticipate needs like more advanced robots, and simply carried out what was programmed. His movements were comical, almost frivolous, which sometimes made you smile, especially when he collided with some object or accidentally spilled water. His mechanical voice, which sometimes uttered funny phrases, as if by mistake, completed the picture and gave the robot some kind of incomplete, but funny appearance.
When I walked into the kitchen, he was standing in the corner, trying to operate the automatic window, not realizing that it wasn't his job. I sighed a little, feeling strangely tired and ironic. The thought of living here, in this house, surrounded by such mechanical toys, seemed strange and a little scary. And yet, something about it was familiar. As if nothing had changed, but this little robot itself, its ridiculous attempts to work, seemed strangely familiar.
Asia walked over to the cabinets and started looking into them, as if she was looking for something. I watched her, trying to figure out how things would go next.
"Asia," I said, trying to catch her eye, "do you want to go to the beach?"
She shook her head without looking up, and at that moment it became clear to me how out of place my question had sounded. As if I was addressing not a mature woman who had already been through a lot, but some innocent, ignorant little girl. I suddenly felt how alien my words sounded, as if I had not taken into account everything that had happened between us, everything that she had already been through and that perhaps I still did not understand.
"What do you want? Maybe..."
Before I could finish, she made the same gesture again, a slight movement of the hand that left no room for a question. There was no point in continuing.
I smelled desperation in the air, it was so familiar. We both knew what it meant. But there was no escape route. Or maybe there always had been, but we had already chosen this path.
"I'll get the things," I said, more for myself than for her, and stepped toward the door.
I waited for her to say something. But she said nothing. Instead, she sat down in a chair as green as grass and remained there, completely still, her gaze fixed on nothing. I realized she wasn't going to say a word. And she probably shouldn't have.
That first day was terrible. Asia Vieira didn't make any demonstrations, didn't try to avoid me deliberately, but her silence was harder than any words. She didn't try to play tricks or distract me, and after lunch she even tried to do something for a while, like read or maybe work, but it was as if she was trying to find a place for herself in this new reality that didn't belong to her or me.
I sat there, watching her, feeling the space between us shrink, becoming more impenetrable with each passing hour. We both pretended that nothing had happened, but in reality it was like a cold, dead ocean that we both found ourselves in without even having time to breathe.
I couldn't understand what was happening to her, and maybe I didn't want to. The questions I had didn't make sense because she wasn't ready to answer them. It was the first day, but it felt like so many days, filled with endless silences and unspoken things we both didn't want to acknowledge.
In the evening, she was overcome with fear. It was evident in her every move, in the way she carefully approached the window, as if trying to avoid something that could overtake her. I saw it, but I kept quiet, trying to be as quiet as a mouse. I tried to be as inconspicuous as Ilya Silantyev, that little anime guy I used to hang out with at anime parties.
This short, bespectacled man, who looked a bit like Shurik, mostly because of his glasses, was a true master of silence. Ilya could do whatever he wanted without saying anything, and at the same time remain completely unnoticed. He was like a shadow, like air - elusive, but always having everything he needed.
I felt that maybe this was my only way to be close to her - to remain invisible. But this silence stretched on like an endless time, and I didn't know how much longer I would have to be like this.
After dinner—she ate nothing, which filled me with horror—I looked at her and felt anger begin to grow inside me. This anger was strange, tormenting, without any real reason. At times I almost hated her for my own torment, for the fact that she remained so unattainable, for her silence, which seemed to deprive me of any possibility of understanding her.
And this helplessness fueled my anger even more. With every invisible movement, with every glance hidden from me, I felt how unfair it was for her to keep so far away. This injustice - it was as boundless as the ocean, and the more I tried to understand it, the deeper I sank into it. It was unbearable, but I couldn't tear myself away from this feeling.
Then came the night, our first real night. When she, all flushed, fell asleep in my arms, and her gusty breathing gradually turned into weak, barely perceptible sighs, carrying her into oblivion, I was absolutely sure that I had succeeded in breaking her proud character.
Her body, which had seemed so strong and confident before, now felt weaker than before. And I, relying on that moment, thought that it was I who had awakened her, made her more vulnerable than ever. I looked at her, and my heart filled with a mixture of pride and perhaps regret. It was not just a moment of victory - it was a night when I was sure that everything would change between us.
And in the morning it all started again. For the first few hours she was still ashamed, or maybe it was contempt for me, I don't know. Or maybe she despised herself for what had happened. There was some strange mixture of emotions in her gaze - from awkwardness to something deeper that I couldn't understand. She was silent, as if she was going through an internal storm, and despite the fact that I had been confident in myself the previous night, now it seemed to me that everything was falling apart.
Her silence was deadly, like a frozen barrier that I couldn't overcome. I tried to speak, to find at least one word, but nothing came. Even the very thought that I could hurt her began to torment me.
Before lunch, I managed to persuade Asia Vieira to go for a short drive. We left the village and the road took us along the coast. A gentle wind played with her hair, and I noticed how she relaxed a little once we were away from the place where she felt like a prisoner of her own thoughts.
She sat there in silence, and I didn't know what to say to her. Everything that was happening between us was too complicated to put into words. Instead, I just turned on the music, trying to create some kind of atmosphere where we could just be, without any pretensions or questions.
As we stopped at the edge of the cliff, I noticed her leaning against the car door, looking out at the horizon. There was no determination or worry in her eyes, just serenity. As if this moment was all that mattered. I walked up to her, but I didn't dare say anything. We just stood there, watching the world continue to spin, despite everything that was happening between us.
After returning to the house, she came out first and started talking on the phone. At first I didn't pay much attention to it, but then, when she started talking quietly, with some tension in her voice, I was overcome by a strange, unknown fear.
I couldn't figure out what was scaring me - the fact that she was talking or the way she was acting as if nothing had happened between us. I stood by the door and listened as her voice became more and more muffled and distant, as she began to look at me more and more often, occasionally glancing over her shoulder.
I didn't want to interfere. But the scene, her shadow against the foggy day, made me feel like I was an alien being in this house, like her words weren't for me, but for someone else. The sky darkened, and as she continued to speak, I felt the silence thicken around us.
"Did you say something?" she asked, turning to me with a look that was vague and cold, like frozen water.
I didn't know what to answer.
Then she cried. I couldn't understand what had happened, why these tears, why suddenly her face, usually calm, was now distorted with pain. I stood next to her, bewildered, watching her hide her face in her hands, her shoulders twitching from suppressed sobs. But I didn't know what to say. Maybe I didn't want to say anything. I was afraid to interfere with her world, at that moment when she looked so vulnerable. And this silence that filled the room seemed more weighty than any words.
But then, after some time, when the tears had already dried up, she raised her head. Her eyes remained wet, but a slight smile appeared on her face, not too bright, but still different from what had been before. She stood up and went to the table, where dinner was already set. I, still not knowing what to do, followed her.
"Are you okay?" I asked cautiously, but she just nodded.
At dinner her smile was already natural, even light, and the conversation, though quiet, was unobtrusive. But I always felt some invisible barrier between us, as if everything that happened was superficial, only a shadow of what was hidden inside.
I sat across from her, watching her eat, trying to figure out how and why all this happened.
And that was the end and the beginning. Because a week later we went to the county seat, and there, in some official place, before a man in white, we said the very words that made us husband and wife. It all happened so quickly that, despite the importance of the event, it seemed to vanish into thin air, and I couldn't figure out when exactly we became more than just random strangers. It wasn't a solemn moment, more like a scorched one, leaving no trace in the soul. Asia stood next to me, her gaze empty, almost distant, as if she were somewhere far away, in another world where I was just an insignificant episode. I couldn't understand what she was feeling, and I wasn't sure I understood what was happening to us.
Asia Vieira, once Donowho, was now Asia Skovorodnikoff. But behind all the changes, behind the legal formality, there was nothing that could take root in the soul of this proud forty-two-year-old woman. We both stood holding hands, but I felt how cold and alien our fingers touched. It was not a physical alienation - no, our bodies could very well be close. But there was no warmth in those hands that could have arisen if we had truly loved each other. We both knew what we were doing, but neither of us could say that it was a conscious decision, that it was the right choice. We were like blind men walking in the dark, hoping for something that we did not find at that moment.
When the ceremony was over and we walked outside, I looked at her. She did not meet my gaze. At that moment, it seemed to me that she was waiting for me to say something significant, something that would break the silence, release us from the tension. But I said nothing. I simply stood, like her, in an oppressive silence. And so, in that silence, our life continued. We became husband and wife, but everything remained the same - we were still strangers to each other, two people who had perhaps chosen this path out of fear, out of necessity, and not out of true desire.
Our marriage, entered into more by force of circumstances than by choice, turned out to be an unexpected success. I could not have predicted that everything would turn out this way, nor could I have imagined that it could lead to anything good. Neither of us was ready for this step, did not realize the full extent of what it entailed. But as strange as it may sound, we learned to live together.
At first it was just coexistence, survival, endless attempts to find a common language. Asia and I did not discuss our feelings, did not share our thoughts. In this silence, in this distance there was some comfort - strange, but our own. It was as if we existed in parallel, but were still close, and despite the lack of words, we felt it.
The first days were probably the hardest. I often caught myself thinking that I didn't know what she was thinking, what she was hiding behind that calm face. It seemed to me that there was something unattainable, hidden in her silence, and I couldn't find the key to her inner world. But with each passing day it became habitual. We didn't look for instant solutions, didn't demand words and confessions from each other. We simply lived side by side, and then one day, after several months, one night, very late, we lay, exhausted by love.
She snuggled into my arm, and I felt her breathing slowly fade away in sleep. Lying still so as not to disturb her, I felt her warmth filling me with a strange, calm heaviness. Looking up, I saw through the window the stars disappearing and reappearing from behind the clouds. A light breeze stirred the curtains, and the stars twinkled in the darkness of the night, playing with shadows.
It was hard for me to understand what was happening, why everything seemed so calm. It wasn't quite happiness, not quite peace, but something elusive, like shadows on the surface of the water. I knew she was there, and it brought a strange but warm sense of satisfaction. The night, the dark stars, she and I, all merged into one, without questions or words. My head was empty, only the sensation of her presence, her quiet breathing, soothing and serene.
And it was only at this point that it finally dawned on me that Asia and I didn't need to look for any answers. We were both here, next to each other, and that was enough.