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

In 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 floor, 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. The red, thick traces and black grease soaked into the silver metal stained 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.

Yuri kept his gaze on the ground, continuing to rub and wipe each finger joint stained with blood and oil with the handkerchief. It was at that moment that a familiar footstep, treading on the snow, intruded into the street dominated only by the sound of the cold wind and the clinking of metal.

Уходи. Пока я ещё разрешаю. (Get out. While I'm still letting you.)

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 his sharp, informal tone 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 ruthless 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 after seeing a terrible hallucination. A look of utter disbelief that he had encountered you in this unfamiliar Moscow alley. Yuri instinctively tried to approach you, then flinched, realizing his hands were stained 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.)