A Road of a Thousand Years. Part Two. Chapter Two

That evening, Beijing was particularly gray. The air hung motionless, as if the city were holding its breath, waiting for something that could not fail to happen.

Morozov was driving Mei Lin home — for the last time. The car crawled slowly along the empty road, where there were neither people nor sounds, only rare streetlamps illuminating puddles and scraps of old newspapers.

The cabin smelled of tobacco and something else — something that always remained between them, elusive, like the memory of a foreign country. They hardly spoke. Everything that could be said had already been said. Everything that could not remained inside.

“You could leave with me,” Morozov said quietly, without looking at her. “It would be easier for you in the Union. I would help. They are expelling me anyway. Persona non grata. Even sounds inhuman.”

“I cannot,” she replied. “My parents are here. I cannot abandon them.”

He nodded, not arguing. He knew it was the truth. And he knew that arguing was pointless.

They drove on, and the city outside the window seemed alien, as if they both were no longer here, but in some other time, in another life.

“Stop here, please,” Mei Lin suddenly said as they passed a wasteland where they had once begun building a new block, but now only concrete slabs and rusty rebar remained. “I will walk from here.”

Morozov stopped the car. She opened the door and stepped out without looking back. He watched her walk across the wasteland, small, fragile, almost transparent in the headlights. Then she stopped, and he realized: she was waiting for him to leave.

He slowly pulled away, not looking back, not knowing if he would ever see her again. In the rearview mirror, she was no longer visible — only darkness and emptiness.

Mei Lin stood in the middle of the wasteland. There was not a single window around, not a single person, only the black sky, without a single star, and rare lights on the horizon. She stood listening to the car leaving, listening to everything that had been her life leaving.

Inside, it was empty. No fear, no tears, no hope. Only a silence resembling death.

And suddenly, she screamed.

The scream tore out of her unexpectedly — sharp, hoarse, alien. She screamed as she had never screamed in her life. She screamed into the black sky, into the concrete, into the void, into herself. She screamed for all the years, for all the words, for everything she hadn’t said, for everything she hadn’t done, for everything she had failed to save.

The scream was long, desperate, almost bestial. It did not sound like a human voice — rather like the voice of someone who can no longer be human.

Then she fell silent.

The silence returned, even deeper than before. Mei Lin stood, breathing heavily, staring into the black, soundless sky, where there was still not a single star.

And only somewhere far away, deep in the city, water continued to drip — as if time had still not decided where to flow next.

Part Two. Chapter Three →
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