LITMIR.BIZ

      ***

      It was quiet and cold inside, but quite clean, as if someone had tidied up the place. Closer to the window there was a wooden table, next to it there was a refrigerator, and on it was a microwave. We were surprised that there was electricity in the house. It looks like someone has been here, albeit rarely.

      We had little information; we ourselves didn’t know why we had come specifically, because there was no one here. We may have acted on a whim, because we didn’t have any other options yet.

      “It’s cold,” Delilah said, shivering from the cold.

      It really wasn’t much warmer here than outside.

      – Maybe we should go down to the basement? – I suggested.

      – Is he here? – Delilah was surprised. – Well, there must be something? – I said, meaning that the size of the house is too small and such houses usually have some kind of continuation below.

      We searched around the house and indeed found a small door on the floor leading to the basement. I was afraid to let Delilah there. I pulled the wooden door open and looked into the dark space below, illuminating it with the light from my phone flashlight. Delilah sighed, and through her sigh I could sense that she was very tense.

      “There’s probably nothing there,” I suggested. – It is very small, but there is a wooden staircase. I don’t know how reliable it is.

      – Maybe we should go down? – Delilah suggested to me.

      I was afraid that the ladder would not support my weight, or Delilah’s weight either, so I abandoned this idea.

      “We’d better inform the police,” I told her, “and they’ll check everything themselves.”

      We were about to leave, but for some reason Delilah hesitated. Finally, she decided to look around again.

      “Wait,” I heard her say muffledly as she approached the second part of the house, divided by a closet. – This can’t be! – she exclaimed.

      I immediately approached her. Delilah was sitting on a wooden bed, which was covered with an old blue checkered blanket without a duvet cover, and she had two notebooks in her hands.

      – These are notes from Lily Kolyuka! – Delilah exclaimed.

      I looked around the room.

      – Where were they? – I asked.

      “Right here, on the bed, under the covers,” she said excitedly.

      And indeed, everything looked as if no one was hiding these notebooks. They just lay there, as if Lilya herself had put them there in order to reread them for bedtime or write something down in them.

      We never understood whether these were diaries or drafts, because everything was mixed in there, but sometimes there were dates. The last one was December 23, 2023, that is, two months before her disappearance, which means she was here quite recently. Now we had such valuable information in our hands that still had to be studied and deciphered.

      One notebook was caged, on a spring, there were ninety-six sheets, but some of them were torn out. The cover was dark red with a huge lime green car that was blurry because it was going at high speed.Most likely, Lilya bought the first notebook she came across that suited her in size, because the cover was quite standard, except for the color of the car, which was exactly the same as on the screensaver of the show “Fifteen Shoes”, where she participated. And the second notebook was half the size, with a green cover.

      They were all covered in her uneven handwriting. Very often her name was written in the notebook. Probably to relieve tension, she wrote her name. But I was more attracted to the first page, where next to her stage name – Lilya Kolyuki – there was another one – Lilya Manylova, that is, her real name, where the first four letters of her surname were underlined with two lines, as if she wanted to cling to the money she had she wasn’t there.

      “She probably wanted to write a monologue and joke on this topic, but didn’t come up with anything,” suggested Delilah, looking at this entry in her diary.

      “Maybe,” I said quietly.

      Delilah and I hovered over her diary, forgetting about time.

      Lilya Kolyuki, apparently, wanted to write a text for a stand-up performance, but it was difficult to make out her notes, because she wrote it for herself, and not for us. Her handwriting was uneven, but sometimes it became almost perfect, as if she tried and wrote at the table in silence, alone, when no one bothers her and there is nowhere to rush. Sometimes the entries were interrupted, crossed out, even painted over; in some places we saw ordinary girlish drawings in the form of patterns, hearts and emoticons drawn with a blue pen.

      – Why did she take such a pseudonym – Kolyuki? – I asked Delilah. – I know that the kalyuka is an ancient musical instrument. Do you think she meant it?

      “I don’t know,” Delilah shrugged. “Maybe she wanted to emphasize her “prickliness” with them. Or the fact that her “thorns” in good hands can become music for the soul, huh? – Delilah looked at me very naively.

      “You’re digging too deep,” I smiled. “We’re unlikely to be able to get into her head.” It is quite possible that she did this without any idea, but simply thought the name was “cool” or funny or memorable. In general, in her pseudonym – Kolyuki – I hear a consonance with the surname Pataki or Swarovski. Perhaps she just wanted originality, to be different from everyone else.