It [doesn't] hurt

      Children are lied to in history lessons. People are lied to by the media, but one day the lie is broken.       The town, yes, there is a small town in Meizhou, gray, frayed, as if forever covered with a veil of gray from accumulated exhaust and greenhouse gases. People almost never get to see the sun: sometimes, closer to noon, a dusty-red piece of light breaks through from behind gray clouds, but immediately goes out, taking with it any damn hope for life in what is called the world after the Second Blow.       Eva sits at her desk with her cheek propped on her hand and looks out the gray window. What's mine, what's not mine — you can't see anything anyway, it's still just grayness. The teacher in the gray suit tells the known facts for the hundredth time, as if hammering them in. Those who consciously lived before are now too gray, of the same type, tired. The history teacher is sixty, maybe even seventy years old. He smells of mothballs, old age and, it seems, mold, so the children try to stay away from him. He always speaks monotonously, as if he holds a newspaper clipping in front of his eyes and reads without delving into the meaning, does not beat the rhythm, does not color emotionally. On September 13, 2000, a meteorite crashes into the Earth from Antarctica. A thundering explosion entails melting of ice, massive tsunamis, a giant increase in the waters of the world ocean and, as a result, flooding of most of the land. Because of so much powerful impact, the earth's axis is tilted, and the climate around the world is changing. This incident is called the Second Strike. According to scientists, the First Impact occurred 4 billion years ago, as a result of which a significant piece broke off from the Earth, which later became a satellite — the Moon.       At the beginning of September zero, a scientific expedition is held in Antarctica, all participants of which, according to official data, are considered dead. A great loss for the scientific community and humanity as a whole.       On that day, all channels switch to emergency news: "Earthquakes and tidal waves of extreme magnitude are occurring all over the world. We are already receiving reports of damage in parts of South Africa and Australia. The force of the explosion is estimated at 18 billion megatons of TNT. Antarctica itself is almost completely destroyed, and it is assumed that most of the ice will turn into steam, which will condense into massive precipitation. Coastal areas will be evacuated immediately. Please don't panic. Collect the documents and necessary things. You will be notified of evacuation within twenty-four hours. Follow the rules."       And all this, as if on a piece of paper, as if he had not been there, did not live at that time, but read it, found it somewhere, the professor pronounces without unnecessary emotions, monotonously. Yes, only before the eyes of fifth graders, the imagination draws a fragile girl who is now leading a news report on CCTV, in a gray linen dress, with calmness in her voice telling terrible things that children born in 2001 did not have to survive.       — Two billion people who lived in the Southern hemisphere instantly die due to the giant tsunamis that followed the explosion. Many people are dying in the worldwide coastal flood. As a result of the chaos that arose spontaneously, global wars break out, caused by shortages of food, housing, resources, as well as endless refugees from all over the world. Civil and ethnic conflicts are breaking out and increasing. On the fifteenth of September of the two thousandth year, there is a nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan on the grounds of refugees," the professor clears his throat and continues: "Mark this for yourself, I will include information from today's lecture in tomorrow's test. On the twentieth of September, the two thousandth, a nuclear bomb is detonated in Tokyo, resulting in the death of half a million people, and the area becomes uninhabitable. The fighting spreads all over the world and ends only on February fourteenth, two thousand and one, when the Valentine Treaty officially puts an end to the wars. By the end of these events, the world's population is halved. Thousands of plant and animal species are disappearing forever.       China is one of the first to recover. Resumes production, science, construction. The country tries its best not to interfere in conflicts, accepts everyone who wants to, distributes, directs to reconstruction work.       But the world, despite the Valentine Treaty, remains unstable and shaky: the arms race continues, which requires the smartest and strongest. To cultivate the best minds of the country, children are taught exclusively by the best professors, scientists, and figures. Studying full-time becomes a privilege. Every child, at the age of six, is tested, developed by outstanding teachers and psychologists, aimed at selecting only the most capable children. If such testing fails, the child is sent to the simplest jobs, they teach the profession in parallel, allowing and recommending to study according to old curricula, video lessons and textbooks. After twelve years, the student passes the exam and, based on its results, can apply for higher or secondary education. If his mental abilities and knowledge are not enough, he gets the position of a simple factory worker — in fact, he remains in the same place where he worked before he became an adult.       In 2007, in the city district of Meizhou, a thin, blue-eyed, black-haired girl of European appearance brilliantly passes the exam. Foster parents do not share much happiness about this, but still the mother slaps her on the head a couple of times as a sign of her respect.       Eva doesn't remember her own mother at all. She died two years ago, was killed during one of the bank robberies. Even though she was already three and eight, no matter how hard she tried, she could not remember either the voice or the face. She remembers the sunny glade she ran through, remembers the greedy boy who didn't want to share the sandbox with her. And then he knows and remembers only the hanging gray smog, gray, peeling streets, the smell of powder and the always slightly angry face of the foster mother; the barely perceptible smell of alcohol and cheap tobacco from the foster father, his eternal sitting in an armchair with a newspaper and listening to the news. The guardianship and guardianship Service makes a couple of sluggish and useless attempts to find the girl's own father, but, apparently, the mother enters a non-existent man in the "father" column. No other relatives are found. The girl's mother, as if she herself did not exist, came from nowhere, gave birth to a child and disappeared into nowhere. After all, the body was never found and buried. There are only rumors about the bank that seem the most plausible. The girl is identified as a childless married couple who own a small laundry. No one asks for their consent, they are listed in the database as childless, and orphans are primarily identified as such.       A husband and wife who have lived side by side for twenty-seven years will never love their adopted daughter. Perhaps, as it will seem to Eva later, they did not love each other either, they just got used to it, got used to it together, exactly like she did to them. She won't remember anything bad related to them.       Foster parents treat her as a full-fledged third person in the family, determine her household duties, which a four-year-old child is able to cope with; they buy things necessary for the development and life of the child, but they do not do it themselves, only occasionally educate, rather calmly and unemotionally explain what is possible and what is not, imposing sanctions as punishment: depriving the sweets, the TV, the few toys. They are somewhat surprised, maybe even a little proud of the fact that Eva passes the exam and is enrolled in the only school. The mother bakes a pie, suspends the laundry for one day, dresses up in one of her best dresses, which emphasizes the importance of the moment for the girl.       At school, Eva behaves aloof, does not find words and meanings to get to know and get closer to someone, does not feel the need for communication, replacing it with books and toys, her own imaginary worlds. Her life proceeds smoothly and at an even pace: in the morning she cleans up, cooks breakfast for herself and her parents, then attends school, comes back, cooks lunch, helps her mother in the laundry, does homework, has two hours of her own free time, which she can spend on books that are interesting to her personally, on toys or walks.       In the second grade of junior school, he acquires a good friend with whom he talks for hours on the phone, learns to shirk household duties a little, sometimes to walk a little longer than necessary in order to develop the story invented by the dolls together with Nastya. Her name seems unusual in such a backwater, her appearance is just as different from the rest of the school's students. They both look like Europeans, so maybe they converge. They don't get bored of communicating with each other and imagining stories about saving the world.       Class by class, their friendship grows stronger, and then Nastya disappears. The homeroom teacher informs that she has urgently transferred for family reasons. Eva comes to her house several times, but finds only a "for rent" sign there. Nastya and her family really moved out one day, disappeared, dissolved, and at some point it begins to seem to Eva that there was no girlfriend.