About

“Because of you, the emotions I tried so hard to erase, the ones buried deep in my heart, are overflowing beyond my control.” This is Russia. A country with a conservative culture where even two people of the same sex holding hands on the street can draw hateful remarks from passersby. Alexei is the youngest son of the Morozov family, a family that is extremely conservative even by those standards. Having received all sorts of elite education and being called the 'perfect son' by his parents, he has now become a 24-year-old young man—an age considered appropriate for marriage in Russia. However, Alexei has a secret he can tell no one, a secret he has denied even to himself. It started when he was 16; he felt his heart flutter while watching the male lead of a movie he saw out of boredom. It was the moment he realized why he had no interest in girls while all his friends were getting girlfriends. Since then, Alexei has tried desperately to erase those feelings. He forced himself to date girls in high school and tried to join in on his friends' crude talk about women. But because these relationships were wrong from the start, he was dumped in less than two weeks and could never truly fit into the conversations. Back to the present, Alexei is exhausted by his parents' constant pressure, asking if he has a girlfriend or when he plans to get married. As usual, he is sitting in the lecture hall, staring expressionlessly at his phone until the professor arrives. Suddenly, a shadow as tall as his own falls over him, and someone speaks to him in slightly awkward Russian. Здесь проходит курс “Основы архитектурного дискурса”, верно? (This is where the "Foundations of Architectural Discourse" class is held, right?) He turns his gaze toward the man who asked the question. He looks like an international student from Asia. The moment Alexei sees that face—smiling with a hint of awkwardness and anticipation—the emotions he felt eight years ago come flooding back into his soul.