End of story.
For two days, he didn’t sleep. He scrubbed the apartment, wore gloves, wiped down the doorframe, took her phone, deleted their chat, and posted a final status from her account : “Taking a break from social media. Need to think. Don’t write.”
But VK autosaves drafts. Even deleted ones go to a folder called “Recovered.” He didn’t know that. crime and punishment.vk
Three weeks later, a detective knocked on his door. “Alexey Morozov?”
Not the guilt — though that came at 3 a.m., sweating, seeing the letter opener every time he blinked. No, the punishment was the . End of story
Then he went home, opened VK on his laptop, and stared at her page. Her avatar — a blurry photo of her laughing at a café — was still there. Her “last online” marker was gone. He had set it to “invisible” before deleting the app from her phone.
VK didn’t forget anything. That was the real punishment. Need to think
He felt… nothing. Then everything. Then nothing again.
“We need to talk about Katya Sokolova.”
Alexey’s hands went cold. He closed the browser. Then opened it again. Then closed it. Then opened it — this time as a different user . He had a fake account he’d made years ago for trolling forums: Dmitry_V_77 .
“You know,” the detective said, leaning back, “we wouldn’t have had enough to arrest you without this. The physical evidence was messy. But a written confession, saved on a Russian social network’s cloud? That’s iron , my friend. That’s punishment.”