"Da." His face hardened; the question had annoyed him. As expected, really: it also prompted him to talk. "Would you care for a coffee or a tea, Kliment Ilyich? Surely you are cold after having tramped all the way out here. You must have better places to be."

"Ah, but you misunderstand. I like this job. Delivering news of deaths in dungeons is a dreary job," he shifted forward, slipped a hand into his jacket, and brought out a diminutive bottle, decorated with delicate blue flowers and cursive ideograms. He set it with authoritative gentility on the table. "Today, we celebrate a birth."

"Did Matya sell that to you? I hope you didn't spend your own money on that! I don't think anyone in the whole district can afford that soju except the importer himself." He put a hand out. "I can't accept that, Kliment Ilyich."

Konstantinov pulls another bottle from within his jacket. "That is very well, though I had intended it as a gift to your lovely wife. You struck me as sharing my sensibilities, Mitya." He turns the second bottle over in his hands, revealing the word samogon vodka. "But I didn't want to invite myself to a meal just to toast your good fortune."

He was mollified. Once again, as expected. "You do not need to bribe me, Kliment Ilyich. We both know why you are here."

"And why is that?"

Dmitri Dmitrich was silent.

"Have a drink, Dmitri Dmitrich. You seem tense."

Dmitri stalked to the side table, where a few glasses sat in a wooden tray. Everything was kept fastidiously clean, even if the materials could have been dug from the ground out back. He put a glass down for his guest beside one for himself, gesturing for the officer to fill them. After KIiment obliged, he raised one in a silent toast and knocked it back. "How did you find out?"

"Mitya." It was a paternal tone, the I-caught-you-looking-at-the-wrong-websites-on-a-vpn-and-I-understand-but-what-would-your-mother-say-young-man tone. "You told me yourself. I make it my business to check in on any young man who—" and here he started counting on his fingers— "misses school for a several days in a row; shows up at the hospital with unspecified symptoms; is discharged immediately on the insistence of the parents despite aggravating distress; whose father installs a VPN a day later; whose recent searches of the wider web including things like 'online Esper diagnosis' and 'human survival without drinking' and 'vodka cure Esper symptoms'—it doesn't, by the way." He settles into the couch with a sarcastic smirk. "But I don't really know, you know, until I get to the house and see how they react." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the wife duck away from the door, and heard a sound like a gasp.

"We don't know—"

"I will be able to tell you for certain in a few minutes, when I go up to see him."

"He cannot receive guests in this state! He is indecent."

"Your son may be in acute danger, Dmitri Dmitrich. Don't you want him to receive proper medical attention?" He let that question hang in the air. "If he is indeed an 'esper,' your family will receive a stipend of no less than two-point-three-four million rubles annually, plus a signing bonus of half that. He will of course receive his own allowance, once he has completed his training and the like. It's a precious gift to the motherland, Mitya, and she supports your generous family in turn."

"The Draft Laws make it mandatory, anyway." He held his head in his hands.

"What, his enrollment in the service? No," Kliment shook his head again, his face angelic in its sympathy. "The Provisions for Enlistment for Unique Services mandate only that you be compensated should he decide to join us. It's a unique opportunity, Mitya. His condition is delicate, and it will be for the rest of his life, but he will receive the highest quality of care and training. He will make our homeland strong again. Our homeland," he repeated meaningfully. "And he will support your family, as well. It's a meaningful sum, I'm sure you'll agree. Certainly, if nothing else," he tapped the bottle of soju on its lid, "you and your wife can enjoy a few more bottles of this in his honor every year."

"Speaking of, why don't you take it to her? I need to see to your son now." His smile was gentle, his eyes were kind, his voice was warm, and none of it implied that there was room to negotiate.

Whatever Dmitri Dmitrich wished to say, he thought better of it. Instead he sighed. "You shouldn't see him like this."

Kliment stood up and nodded toward the wall, where a wooden cross hung. "That bottom crossbar: the Christ writhed so hard in his agony that he twisted it askew. I'm sure Mary felt every twinge as strongly as her child." He lifted the bottle of soju and placed it in the father's hands, curling the fingers around it. "I understand, Mitya. I remember my mother's face when it was my turn. Pray that there is salvation amidst suffering." But stay out of my way.

His face collapsed and suddenly he was just Yun Ba-wool, father of a hapless son. Kliment felt the tears more than he saw them. Frustration, pain, shame, a soupçon of impudent hope, all tamped down like gunpowder in an old musket. Kliment's sociology workbook had called it Han. Kliment himself found it supremely sympathetic, not that he would say so. Ba-wool walked ahead, gestured at the doorway where the victim hid, made to knock, but Kliment cleared his throat and shook his head. Ba-wool's eyes flashed with that helpless gunpowder look again, and then hardened, and then softened; he sighed.

"I will speak with my wife now." The husband headed to the kitchen to console his wife, the recruiter headed toward the bedrooms to catch his prey.

No voice responded when Kliment knocked on the door, or so he thought at first. By the third, insolent "what?" he realized that the man within was calling repeatedly, voice so hoarse and broken as to be indistinguishable from the settling of the house. He opened the door and stepped through. The light was off, and it took a moment to adjust to the dim, diffuse light of the grey sky filtered through the lone window on the opposite wall. He closed the door softly behind him and regarded his charge-to-be silently.

If front of him, a thin young man faced away from him. He was standing on his toes, legs apart, hips jutted forward, arms stretched out and down, head lolled back—and stark naked, Kliment realized suddenly. He allowed himself the tiniest inhalation as he processed his surprise. That would explain why his father had called him indecent. The young man had twitched as Kliment entered, so he was aware of the presence, but he made no motion to turn around until Kliment spoke.

"Yuri Dmitrievich Yun," he intoned, and like a spell, the voice tore through the naked boy, sending him shuddering and seizing with surprise at the sound of a stranger. He whipped around, eyes wide with fear. Kliment did not react as the young man tried to cover his nakedness with his cupped hands, held awkwardly away from each other and the object of his shame so as to be comically inefficient. Kliment kept his eyes level and waited for Yuri to find them with him.

"I can't take it." The words were the wrong ones. He wanted I can't see anyone now. He tried again after a theatrical gulp and two careful breaths. "I'm sorry, I can't—" he choked on his spittle.

"You are dehydrated," Kliment said. "And I'm guessing you can't drink like this. Right?" There was a pitcher full of water and a glass on a tray in the corner, along with some long-cold toast and a small bowl of neglected morkovcha. Kliment indicated them.

Dasol just gaped. He tried to swallow a few times—tried to ignore that his tongue felt feverish and his saliva tasted of rust and his lips burned when he wet them—and eventually he got enough liquid in his mouth that he could produce speech again, but in that time the man in his room has just watched him impassively. No flinching, no jokes, no polite and studious consideration of some corner of the room so as to avoid staring at a naked man, just flat, professional observance, and it steadily eroded what little composure Dasol could manage in this state. Now that he had the physical capacity to speak, the words themselves had left him.

"Yeah," he finally said.

Kliment smiled a paternal smile. "Yuri Dmitrich, you must be on the brink of collapsing. It's been how many days?" He shook his head with sympathy. "I am Kliment Ilyich Konstantinov. The state sent me to check up on you." He waved his hand dismissively toward the young man's poorly covered groin. "Don't bother with that. I've seen so many in my army days they scarcely register. Just move however makes you comfortable until we can get you sorted out. Aren't you cold? It's winter out."

Nothing made him comfortable with this stranger watching him while everything hurt. "Thank you, I'm fine," he whimpered. "It's been—four days. I'm very thirsty but I can't. Drink. It burns."

Kliment tilted his head and took two steps forward, and Dasol whimpered again. "Everything burns. The floor burns and my breath burns and my hand against my own skin burns." He was too tired to resist crying as he explained, but luckily he was also too tired to cry, so instead he managed an exasperated, plaintive sigh. "And my bedsheets feel like razor wire."

"You look like I could knock you over by blowing hard, Yurka. You need help." He stepped closer again, and his eyes glittered. "I think one of my friends might be able to help you. But you might just waste away if you go on like this." He reached out with a gentle hand, toward Yuri's shoulder.

Dasol recoiled. "No! Kliment Ilyich, please don't touch me. Your skin will be too warm."