My brother Artyom has always been the kind of man people gravitate toward. He’s confident, charismatic, successful. The kind of guy who makes everyone laugh at dinner and leaves parties with the most attention. In our family, he was the golden child — sharp suit, fancy car, dating women you’d expect to see on magazine covers.
So when he told us he was getting married, we assumed the bride would be some glamorous city girl. Model-type. Educated abroad. Maybe someone in media or PR. Someone who posted selfies from first-class lounges.
We were wrong.
Her name was Anya.
She was quiet. Soft-spoken. No makeup, simple white dress, eyes full of honesty. From a rural village outside Voronezh. She was a primary school teacher raised by her grandmother. She brought pickled tomatoes to our family dinner and apologized when someone complimented them.
The family was… surprised, to put it mildly. Some whispered, others chuckled. “Our beloved playboy chose a country girl? What happened to the man who once dated a reality TV host?”
Even I — though trying to be open-minded — was puzzled.
But Artyom looked at her like she was made of light. So we kept our questions to ourselves.
A month after the wedding, I left for a business trip. I was gone for three weeks. Artyom and Anya were living in our shared apartment temporarily until they found their own place. I didn’t think much of it. I trusted him. I barely knew her.
And then I came back.
I opened the door to the apartment and immediately sensed something was off.
The air smelled heavily of cleaning chemicals — chlorine, sharp and sterile. The hallway was silent. Too silent. The kind that presses against your ears. The living room was spotless. Kitchen — sparkling. Bathroom — pristine, hotel-level immaculate.
But it wasn’t cleanliness that disturbed me. It was the stillness. The unnatural order.
Then I walked into my bedroom.
My bed was made — hospital-tight sheets. My desk was wiped, perfectly aligned. But the screen of my laptop was on, and a document was open.
It was a letter.
Written in my name.
But I hadn’t written it.
The first line read:
“I admit I was wrong. I’ve kept this inside too long.”
It was a confession. Of personal regrets. Of memories I hadn’t thought about in years. Details no one could know but me. Words I had once said in my head — but never out loud.
I scrolled. There were several more files. All written as if by me. Others signed by my brother. Even one… in the voice of my mother, who died five years ago.
I felt cold.
I walked into the master bedroom.
Anya was there.
Sitting in a chair. Eyes closed. Headphones in. On the table beside her: a stack of handwritten pages. Dozens of them. Some typed. Some ink-smudged. Each with a different voice. Some dated years ago.
I shook her shoulder. She opened her eyes and smiled — as if everything was normal.
— «Did you write these?» I asked.
— «Yes,» she said simply. “I heard them. I just wrote it all down.”
— «Heard who?»
She tilted her head.
— «This apartment is full of unspoken things. Sometimes people speak only in silence. But if you’re quiet long enough… you can hear it.”
I called Artyom. He came immediately. At first, he laughed. Then he saw the pages.
He turned pale.
One of the letters — supposedly written by his father, who had left their family when Artyom was eight — referenced a specific event, a memory no one else could have known. Something Artyom had never shared. Not even with me.
He didn’t say a word.
Just sat down. And read.
They moved out soon after.
They bought a cottage on the edge of a forest, far from the city. Anya no longer writes. Or so Artyom says. But sometimes he calls me late at night. Says she walks by the river in silence. That she stares at the sky as if listening to something very far away.
And in the morning, there are new pages on her desk.
We don’t talk about what she is.
Or what she hears.
But I know what I saw that day in my apartment.
And I know this: we don’t fear the unknown because it’s strange. We fear it because, deep down, it sounds just like us.