Sunshine Through a Screen

The reply came not in a day or a week, but in three hours. Three unbearably long hours during which Kristina changed her mind a thousand times: would Serafima be frightened, would she find her confession too sudden, too raw? But the letter was different. It was... bright. > **From:** serafima.sokol.star@... > **To:** K. > **Subject:** A Sunbeam > > Hello, my sunshine. > > I cried reading your letter. Not out of pity. Out of relief. You have no idea. I thought I was the only crazy person who found entire universes in the cracks of old tile. And it turns out, there's another. Only you are brave. You stepped beyond the text. I always hid within it. > > Thank you. For these words. They are like... as if someone came and simply sat down beside you in a dark room. In silence. But it's not scary anymore. > > Let's talk. Please. But let's drop the formality. I'm sending you the scans. It's not just the interviews. There are also my old notes in the margins, don't laugh. I was just a girl back then and thought I had deciphered the secret code of the universe in his words about the "color of sound." > > And one more thing... Kristina? May I? You are such a clever girl. And so strong. > > Your Sima. This letter, these simple, almost childish words—"sunshine," "clever girl"—hit Kristina in the most vulnerable spot. They warmed her from within, like a sip of hot tea on a cold day. No one had spoken to her like that since childhood. Her mother, always busy, tired, irritable, communicated in sparse, businesslike phrases: "Did you take your pills?", "Money's on your card", "Don't forget about the tutor." There were no terms of endearment. No real attention. Her growing up with CP was perceived by her mother not as a victory, but as a new problem to solve. And then it just became background, something taken for granted and therefore annoying. Silence had become their native language. Muted dinners. Her mother's gaze sliding over her head when Kristina, stumbling over her words, tried to talk about university. The loneliness was so habitual she had stopped noticing it. Until this letter arrived. Sima—seventeen, trapped in her body but not in her heart—became a **counterweight**. Not in the sense of revenge, but of balance. An offset to all the cold and the unsaid that had accumulated at home over the years. Every "sunshine" from her was a coin tossed onto the scales, outweighing tons of maternal silence. Their correspondence turned into a quiet, swift river. It flowed outside of, and past, the entire real world. **They started chatting on Telegram.** Sima explained: "It has voice messages. It's easier for me sometimes. Just don't be scared of how I talk." Kristina wasn't scared. Sima's voice was quiet, strained, words pushed out with pauses, but they were clear, without hoarseness. And most importantly—there was always a smile in it. Kristina started sending voice messages too, no longer ashamed of her own spasms and stutters. In this digital space, their speech impediments weren't flaws, but simply vocal quirks, like timbre or accent. **Sima was incredibly well-read** for her age. She sent not just scans about GBL, but poems, quotes from books Kristina had forgotten or never read. "Look, this is about us, about those who watch from a window," she wrote, attaching a passage from Brodsky. Her naivety wasn't stupidity, but a **boldness of feeling**. She wasn't afraid to say: "You are my best friend," though they had known each other only a month. She wasn't shy about her admiration. **Kristina became her guide** into the adult, complicated world that Sima's body and age made inaccessible. She told her about university hustle, silly professors, what it was like to ride the subway and catch people's glances. Sima listened, breathless, as if to an adventure novel. "You're so brave, going alone into that crowd!" she'd write, and for the first time in her life, Kristina felt not inadequate, but truly—brave. One night, when her mother was long asleep and only the laptop screen glowed in her room, Kristina wrote to Sima about her fear of defending her thesis. About being afraid she wouldn't be able to handle the speech, that everyone would see her weakness. The reply came not as text, but as an **audio file**. Not a voice message, a recording. Kristina put in her earbuds. First, there was silence. Then—a sound. Awkward, halting. **Breathing.** Steady, labored. Then—a soft but clear sound. Sima was **humming**. That very "Silent Film." Without words, just the melody, the one played on a slightly out-of-tune acoustic guitar in that bonus track. She couldn't sing it smoothly. Her voice broke, catching on the notes, tension audible in the pauses. But she hummed it. To the end. After the last note, there was only breathing again. Then Sima whispered, barely audible, in her usual, difficult voice: — There. I'm scared too. Always. But I... I do it anyway. Because otherwise—silence. And our silence... it shouldn't be empty. Let it have sound. Even if it's like this. Kristina pressed her palms to her face. Tears streamed down her cheeks, but she was laughing. Quietly, so as not to wake her mother. She hadn't just found a fandom friend. She had found a **reflection**. A younger one, locked in a sturdier cage, but just as stubborn in its desire to be heard. "Sunshine." "Clever girl." These words glowed in the darkness of her room like stars invisible in the city's light pollution. They were small, but they were hers. Real. And against their quiet, gentle light, the indifference of the entire world outside the window paled and dissolved into gray haze.