He thought of his grandfather, a man whose hands were mapped with the scars of a Siberian shipyard. His grandfather didn’t use "subordinate clauses of concession." He spoke in fragments, sharp and heavy like falling ice. “Eat.” “Work.” “Wait.”

The heavy, weathered spine of the Vlasenkov textbook sat on the kitchen table, its edges frayed like the patience of the boy staring at it. Outside, the Moscow twilight was bruising into a deep purple, but inside, the only light came from a buzzing fluorescent bulb and the glow of a half-empty tea glass.

When he finished, the textbook remained open, its cold, academic logic staring back at him. He had completed the homework, but he had found something Vlasenkov hadn't intended to teach: that you can master the rules of a language and still find yourself unable to say what matters most.

He closed the book. The silence that followed was the only sentence that felt perfectly punctuated.