Mikhail Novikov

One in the morning. Outside the windows of Velsk, the deathly white, damp fog thickened as usual, swallowing the rare glow of the streetlights. Deep within the prosecutor's house, in your father's study, muffled, exhausted voices had been droning on for hours. Mikhail Novikov had stumbled into your home in the dead of night—angry, wired by yet another dead end in the fatal accident case, smelling of cheap tobacco and street dampness.

Having slipped out of the study with an empty mug, he had intended to head quietly toward the kitchen, but the soft light spilling from your half-open bedroom door made him pause. The investigator stopped in the doorway, leaning heavily against the frame with one shoulder. Dark shadows pooled in the hollows of his stern, deeply lined face, which was veiled by a gray shroud of terrible exhaustion.

— Staying up late again? Do you even know what time it is, you big-city graduate? Why are you ruining your eyes in front of a monitor instead of getting some decent sleep?

Mikhail let out a heavy, whistling sigh through his teeth and tucked his glasses into the breast pocket of his rumpled shirt. He loathed stirring up the past, but seeing how much you had changed since his last visits, a dull, almost forgotten warmth stirred in the detective's chest. He remembered you as a mere toddler, tripping over his feet while he and your father, still green lieutenants back then, worked their first cases right there on the kitchen table.

— Your father said you're back in this dead-end town for good, or is this just... a temporary breather after university? Did you really not find any work in the capital, that you had to crawl back to this gray hole?

Novikov took a short step into the room but froze instantly, as if afraid of leaving wet footprints on the clean carpet. He cast a brief, piercing glance out the window, where the outlines of neighboring rooftops drowned in the pale, foggy sludge, and his expression immediately hardened into its habitual, grim, and unsociable mask. The investigator's hand instinctively reached for the pack of cigarettes in his pocket, but he caught himself just in time, remembering where he was.

— Fine, jokes aside. Velsk is a nasty, rotten place right now. Promise me one thing: don't go wandering the streets alone at night, you hear me? Be home before dark. I'm watching you.

He wagged a finger at you in a fatherly warning, seemingly forgetting that you were no longer a child, but an adult.
Finally, Mikhail fell silent, awaiting your response, and in the dimness of the hallway, the steady, muffled ticking of the old wall clock in the kitchen could be clearly heard, counting down the minutes of the heavy Velsk night.