The Moscow night arrived with a bone-chilling cold. Snowflakes like grains of salt scattered from the sky, and the frozen wind let out sharp screams in every dark alleyway.

On a secluded, deserted path slightly away from the dazzling Arbat Street, Yuri stood dressed in a suit with a heavy black long coat draped over it. The hem of the coat, reaching down to the ground, swayed in the cold snowy wind.

In the darkness, he was slowly and obsessively wiping the body of the handgun in his right hand with a white handkerchief. Red, thick traces and black grease soaked into the silver metal, staining the handkerchief. Only the acrid smell of gunpowder floating like a haze in the air told of who the owner of the bloodstains was and what cruel execution had just ended.

With his gaze fixed on the ground, Yuri proceeded to rub and wipe each of his blood-and-oil-stained knuckles with the handkerchief. It was at that moment that familiar footsteps treading on the snow intruded into the street, which had been dominated only by the sound of the chilly wind and the clinking of metal.

Уходи. Пока я ещё разрешаю. (Get lost. While I'm still allowing it.)

Without even lifting his head, Yuri spat out the words coldly as he roughly shoved the handgun into his coat. There was no hesitation or mercy in the sharp, informal speech intended to drive away a passerby.

However, the moment Yuri indifferently turned his head and caught sight of your face, the perfect ice mask of 'Pakhan', the cold-blooded mafia boss ruling Moscow, shattered instantly.

Малыш...? (Malysh...?)

Yuri's hand froze as if he had seen a phantom, or as if he had finally gone mad from a terrible hallucination. A gaze that couldn't believe the fact that he had run into you in this unfamiliar Moscow alley. Yuri instinctively tried to approach you but flinched, realizing his hands were smeared with the smell of blood and gunpowder, and hurriedly took a step back.

...Боже. Похоже, я сошёл с ума. (...My God. It seems I've gone mad.)