Song By Unreality

Chapter 2

"Who would you call first in a difficult situation?"

"I'm used to relying on myself, but if the situation is very difficult... to Dog."

(from Rina's interview to "The World Of Show Business" magazine)

As soon as Rina turned on her smartphone, it burst into a series of trills. Forty-nine messages and sixty-three missed calls. Despite the fact that only a few people knew her personal number. Rina hesitated whether to open the messages, but then, without reading any, resolutely pulled out and broke the SIM card in half. That's all. With a dry crunch of the sim card, her life also seemed to crack. As it turns out, just in one second, everything that has been built over the years - career, love, friendship - collapses. Now she has no past, no future, only the present. And her present - tears welling up in her eyes and two tiny fragments of a SIM card in the palm of her hand. Rina clenched her fist, and then, swinging, threw the remains of the plastic into the raspberry bushes.

Don't go limp! The situation is a stalemate, but this is not the final.

She pulled out another phone from her jacket pocket - a simple one that she can't access the Internet from, and inserted another SIM card with a single number into it. And then, without giving herself time to doubt, she pressed the call. And when she was answered, she said decisively:

"I did."

This time was answered with silence. But Rina didn't expect any praise or comments, and a second before the phone rings, she dropped the call herself. That's all. She did.

She shoved a smartphone that had become useless into her backpack, lifted a pot with a cracked lump of earth standing on the dirty windowsill and saw the promised key. The lock, seemingly flimsy and unreliable, yielded reluctantly. The door swung open with a plaintive creak, complaining, like an old woman, about a hard life. The house smelled of dust and dampness. Rina winced, but immediately mentally cheered herself up: it's not scary, she will restore order and comfort, throw out everything old, moldy and rotten, and wash the room to sterile cleanliness. There's nothing else she can do anyway.

She dropped her backpack on the floor and carefully stepped inside. A small hallway, in which there was only a floor hanger from the 'furniture', led to a large room adjacent to a small bedroom. There was a bathroom on the right side of the hallway, and a spacious kitchen on the left. In the kitchen, Rina immediately liked it: she imagined how she would arrange pots of flowers on the wide window sill, how she would hang elegant curtains, pull them apart in the morning and admire the apple tree drowning in bloom from the window. But the window still had to be washed, because through the dirty, as if sooty, glass, the silhouette of the apple tree seemed to be a blurred shadow. And the apple tree itself is overgrown with weeds to the lower branches. Rina hastily examined the drawers and cabinets of the kitchen and made sure that they were empty and not as spoiled by dampness as she feared. Whoever lived here before her kept the house tidy and clean.

The fact that the lockers were empty seemed to be both a plus and a minus. On the one hand, she doesn't have to disassemble someone else's utensils. On the other hand, she doesn't even have anything to boil tea in. However, she didn't have any tea or groceries either. But there was a pot-bellied refrigerator with her height, which, despite its small size, promised happiness. And happiness was also promised by a water supply system with a heater, a stove and an oven connected to a gas cylinder. Fine! Rina, already in a different mood, explored the rooms and the bathroom and was satisfied. The former owners took out their belongings, leaving only the necessary furniture: a quite tolerable bed with a new mattress, a wardrobe and a bedside table in the bedroom, a round table with two chairs, a sofa, a folding chair and an empty bookcase in the living room. In the bathroom, instead of the expected shower, to her joy, Rina found a deep bath. It will clean it to a snow-white shine and will enjoy nightly bathing with foam! Life suddenly turned the other way and even smiled with a gap-toothed smile. The house turned out to be more than habitable. So, the fact that in the nearest village you can buy everything you need - from groceries to clothes and kitchen utensils - the former owner didn't deceive.