Zhenya woke up disoriented and sleepy. 

“Turn it off already.” An annoyingly high-pitched woman’s screech came from the other side of the bed. It was probably Daria. Or Ilona. Not that it mattered.

Zhenya didn’t mind his phone ringing. Quite the contrary; with the melodic ringtone lulling him, he would have fallen back to sleep in an eye-blink. But, god… if that woman opened her fucking mouth one more time, he’d blow his own brains out. Or hers. 

But he wasn’t sure where his gun was, so he couldn't. "A sec," Zhenya said, reaching for the phone. In pitch-darkness, he knocked over some stuff off the night stand, one of them falling down with a muffled thud. Zhenya braced for his ears to bleed, but the woman didn’t react. Thank god.

Zhenya grabbed the ringing phone. He tried not to peek at it. He really did. But when he finally hung up, the screen flashed so brightly, he had no other choice but to look. Eleven AM. Five missed calls, seven messages, and not a single consideration for Zhenya’s splitting hangover headache. A typical Bogdanov move.

Zhenya let out an annoyed grunt and rolled back onto his pillow, resting the phone on his chest. He kept starting into the darkness until his eyes could trace the faint contours of the ceiling.

He didn’t have to do it.

He didn’t want to do it.

But knowing him, he’d just keep on calling and calling. 

And calling...

Zhenya sighed and clicked the call-back button, pressing the phone to his ear. It beeped instantly, signaling a connection, but nobody spoke. That arrogant bastard.

“You called?” Zhenya said, only now realizing his mouth was so dry, tongue stuck to his palate, turning speaking into a rather bothersome task.

“Where are you?” his father asked icily.

“I’m busy.”

“You were sleeping, weren’t you?”

Zhenya rolled his eyes. Old man never gave up on a chance to ridicule him. “Get to the point.”

“I need you to take out the trash.”

Right.

Zhenya could do it, of course, he was good at it. The best. But, god, he wanted nothing more than to chug an icy glass of water, and then to go back to sleep. And his head was killing him. “Listen,” Zhenya said. "I really cannot do this right now.”

There was a prolonged pause before his father spoke, and Zhenya could feel his eyelids growing heavier with each passing second. “You either do it, or you’re out,” father finally said and hung up.

If you weren’t at father’s feet, you were at his throat, and Zhenya had a sudden urge to slit it. 

It was never Vova or Vadim who took out the trash. No. They got to do the “big boy” jobs: shake important hands, deal important money, and suck important dicks. They never had to get their hands dirty. And why would they? Zhenya will take out the trash, father says. Of course he will, he has nothing better to do.

Fuck. To hell with this fucking job. This fucking family. This fucking money—

“Fuck you!” Zhenya yelled abruptly, launching his phone into the darkness where it hit a wall with a loud bang.

The woman jumped out of sleep, and hurriedly turned on the bedside lamp. She wasn't Daria. Nor Ilona. “You're okay?” she screeched, and Zhenya wanted to pour bleach into his ears. “What happened?” 

“Get out,” Zhenya commanded.

The woman furrowed her thin brows. “What?" She swiftly pulled up the blanket, covering her chest as if Zhenya hadn't seen naked tits before. “What’s gotten into you?”

“I said, get out, you bitch.”

“What the fuck?” the woman yelled, “You're in my house.”

Fuck. Zhenya quickly glanced around, and the room soon came into picture. Way too poorly furnished and way too shaggy to be one of his apartments. And the hideous crumpled curtains obscuring all of the light… Right, right. He had crashed at her place. Or came here willingly. Or whatever.

It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter at all. He quickly got dressed and left without leaving a trace but the dent in the wall where his phone had landed.

It was supposed to be an insipid job: take out a few gunmen and the main target—some foreign mole, whose name Zhenya didn’t even bother to pronounce. That’s it. And then, finally, sleep. Oh, and get that icy glass of water, and maybe kill the bitch with the screechy voice too. 

But by the time Zhenya reached the fifth floor of the abandoned apartment complex where his targets were, he realized something was off. Three of the gunmen had already been neutralized. Not as thoroughly, though, so it couldn’t have been one of his father’s dogs. But it was thorough enough to make Zhenya’s job easier than robbing a crippled kid. 

It was bizarre. So bizarre that Zhenya felt a glimmer of intrigue flickering in his stomach. If Zhenya’s instincts were right, it was probably the main target's doing.

Will he finally meet his equal? If so, ruining him was going to be so fun.

Zhenya finished off the immobilized targets, and hurried up the stairs.

Suddenly, a few loud grunts came from the floor above. Zhenya froze in the middle of the stairwell, listening attentively. Heavy footsteps. Men grunting. Two, three at most. Waiting patiently, Zhenya lit up a cigar and rested his back against the cold hallway wall. The sharp smoke didn't mix with his headache well, but it gave him just enough of a boost to keep his eyes open wide, and his gears spinning.

A single loud thud, and silence. Was the main target exterminated? Zhenya furrowed his brows. No, no, highly unlikely. The main target was alive, he was. He now was waiting for Zhenya, for him to fall into the main target's trap.

How exciting.

With an unbridled devious grin, Zhenya rushed up the stairs leading to the rooftop, as quietly as his pounding heart allowed.

And then he saw him. The main target.

Yes, the target was alive and well, and yes, the remaining gunman now laid lifeless like an aborted fetus. But disappointment was all that Zhenya could feel.

The target had his back exposed to anyone who was coming up the stairs. His fucking back... a rookie mistake.

A stupid mistake.

Zhenya let out a deep, soundless sight, with vapor billowing from his mouth and dissolving into the breeze. Killing pitiful amateurs gave Zhenya as much pleasure as killing flies. It was his own fault for getting his hopes high, though.

With one swift blow from the handle of his pistol, Zhenya sent the unsuspecting target crashing to the ground. He fell face down by Zhenya's feet, right cheek kissing the rough, concrete floor. Completely knocked out and pathetic.

Zhenya didn’t even care to see the target's breathing face anymore. He drew on his cigar, inhaling sharply, and pointed his pistol to the back of the target's head.

The target laid motionless, only his thick dark hair shifted, dancing with a faint gust of wind.

It looked oddly familiar, the deep umber-brown hair. Seemingly dark at first, but as it caught glimpses of the dim midday sun, it began flickering like a warm kindling fire.

What an odd thought.

Zhenya exhaled a cloud of heavy smoke, slid his index finger onto the trigger and, a—

snowflake, so lonely,

ascended from heavens,

vast and unbidden, until—

eyelashes caught it, the

mellow, blue frost,

eternally fragile, yet destined aloft

Zhenya’s vision froze and so did his heart, and all that he saw and all that he felt was blinding snow white.

Zhenya shook his head like a wet dog until his vision came rushing back. "What the fuck," he whispered hurriedly, rubbing his eyes like a maniac.

He was back to where he was supposed to be: towering over the motionless target, the pistol secured in his right palm. The snow was gone, and so was the white. Just a few snowflakes scarcely fell down one by one, dying out right before they reached the ground.

Was he going crazy? Would he even know?

Zhenya bit a chunk of his inner jaw. It was probably just a lack of sleep. Dehydration. That, and whatever substances he took the last night. They were most likely still in his system, playing him like a chess piece. Otherwise, he was fine. He was good. He just needed to focus and finish the job.

Finish the fucking job.

Finger on the trigger, eyes on the target’s head and—

SNOW.

Heaps of it, up to his knees, greedily swallowing Zhenya’s feet from below.

"What the?" Zhenya exhaled confused. "Again?" He stepped forward, but the snow dragged him down, and before he knew it, he was falling.

The weigh of Zhenya's body broke through the thin, icy crust, and he landed on his knees into a deep snowy pit. He ground his teeth, taking in the ache from the impact and glanced around. The wast whiteness was blinding and sharp, its touch numbing him into stillness, turning his limbs sapphire blue and stiff.

It wasn't good. His arms and his knees began trembling like guitar strings and they stung. Really stung. He had to get out of here now, before he froze to the ground, but he couldn't push himself up. He looked down. Fuck. It was too late. Way too late.

No matter how hard he pulled, he couldn't tear his flesh away from the icebound ground. The merciless cold quickly traveled up. "No," he wanted to protest, but his mouth froze shut. He could feel it rising it in his chest too; not just the cold, but the realization, the fear, that this was the end.

Desperate for warmth, he held in his last temperate breath. Soon his eyelashes froze too, obscuring the view like old cobwebs, and suffocating white was all that he saw with his eyes.

But in his mind, an image emerged. The target. His goddamn back on that rooftop. What a fool. And his hair, his dark dark hair, void black in the shadow, but igniting like flames under the sun; a shade so warm and alive, it seemed out of place in this forsaken nation.

Zhenya didn’t know why he thought of him now, but his hands stopped trembling. So, he kept kindling the fire.

Blinking through frozen lashes, Zhenya saw something emerge from the snow just ahead. A shape. Indistinct at first, larger and larger as it came into view. A pile of fur? A monster? A beast?

No. Zhenya blinked again, ice from his eyes slowly turning into water, running down his cheeks in a chilly, steady stream. A rabbit. A rabbit with a head larger than bear's, and a body of a size of a wolf; his ears, so wast, they could wrap Zhenya like a baby.

The creature laid still and lifeless, but his fur… his thick, brown fur shimmered with life and warmth, and Zhenya could feel the ice melting from his heart too. He needed it. He needed that warmth.

Zhenya summoned all of his strength and pulled his arms up. The ice cracked like glass, and he finally tore his palms from the cruel cold ground.

Zhenya didn’t think. He didn’t question. His body acted on instinct, as if driven by a primal need. He lunged forward, wrapping his blue arms around the rabbit's cumbersome body. The fur was impossibly soft—just as he thought it would be—dense, and radiating heat, making Zhenya's own winter coat dull in comparison.

Warmth flooded him instantly, melting not only the ice from his body, but the ice within his veins too. And when Zhenya inhaled, the cold didn't sting his lungs anymore.

Zhenya pressed himself to the creature's body, and buried his face deep deep into the thick fur. The rabbit smelled good. So good. He smelled of fire,

of bruised knees and strawberry jam,

of home, but not the one that he had.

And, for a moment, the world stopped spinning. And he was safe, and warm, and all was good.

"Zaika," The word escaped Zhenya's lips, so distant yet tender like a long forgotten dream. He didn't know what it meant—what it actually meant—but it was precious, and he felt his throat tightening. And he didn't want to let go.

But Zhenya's head jerked back involuntarily. The headache came rushing back, and his eyes opened wide.

Noway.

It wasn't the rabbit he held in his embrace. It was the target, his motionless back pressed against Zhenya's chest. The target groaned weakly, moving his fingers a bit, and Zhenya let him go in an instant, jumping back on his feet.

Zhenya stood for a minute, trying to make sense of it all. His heart fluttered like a fish out of water, not quite dead, not quite alive, and utterly breathless. The target still laid on his stomach, but he was starting to move his arms now... five more minutes, give it or take, and he will be up, and his father, he will—

Zhenya picked up his pistol from the ground.

..

Wind carried the distant sound of sirens, and heavy clouds soaked with snow. Sharp urban cement was soon covered with a soft layer of settling snowflakes, heaps of them falling down on Zhenya's windshield as he sped away.

It wasn't supposed to snow today. It was November. But many things weren't supposed to happen that day. But they did.

For the first time in forever, Zhenya couldn't finish the job.

And he wanted to see the Main Target alive.
Again. And again.
And again.

Kwon Taekjoo was his name?