Alexei had been deleting files from his late father’s old laptop for three hours. Most of it was junk: scanned receipts, blurry photos of dachas, and a half-finished novel about Soviet engineers. But one PDF stopped him cold.

The entry was dated December 17, 1994.

Then he began to write. Not about escape. About return. About the verb идти — to go on foot, slowly, without a map. Doroga V Rossiyu 1 Pdf 161