What waits for us after the sunset?

Chapter 8

"What is that?" Oksana rounded her eyes, taking a close look at colourful papers in her teacher's hands.

"Tickets. Today is weekend and I honestly hate wasting time doing nothing. Relaxing on the sofa, devouring kilograms of chips and staring constantly at the TV is a clear example of an imbecile. Pardon me for this language." Mikhail timidly scratched the back of his head and smiled. "I dislike staying at home with nothing to do and keeping you locked up here alone is even worse. These are the tickets to the Butterfly Garden, nearby the Ostapovo metro. Were you ever there before by any chance?"

Oksana shook her head and stared at tickets again. The teacher understood her silent interest and stretched out his hand over the table, welcoming her to take the tickets. The girl glanced at his palm with a mistrust but did not even try to touch the tickets. Mikhail Victorovich stood a bit more with no movement, it took him few seconds to understand why is his student was acting this way, so he put the glossy paper in front of her.

"What should we do there?" Oksana weakly dragged the tickets and began to examine them.

The cloud of bright butterflies of all the possible colours and sizes she could even think of, were encircling the words like kaleidoscopes. One butterfly caught the attention of the young lady, and so she beheld it longer than the other ones. It's blue, like soft petals of the cornflower, wings with ragged edges and tiny white blemishes, that looked like frost clearly stood out of all others.

"Well..." Mikhail was dumbfounded for a moment because of such a question, but still smiled friendly and looked at the girl with a good – natured bewilderment. "There we will have to... enjoy. You will get some new knowledge and I'll try to share with you all interesting facts I know myself. Today I have a lot of stuff planned for our entertainment program."

Oksana had to tear her eyes away from a butterfly with cornflower wings.

"What does he mean by "enjoy"? For example, right now I would enjoy lying on the bed and talk to you about this man, whom you are living with for three days already. Do you think this is normal?" The voice in her head, which had the name Cahir, clearly resented. "You don't care about this at all? Yes, I understand, you don't have to listen to the opinion of good old uncle Cahir, but think yourself. Where does this little-known teacher ask you to go out somewhere with him? Please, you are not a stupid girl..."

"Shut up, alright? You are the part of me, but the most stupid and coward part!" She thought in reply with hate, that was completely uncharacteristic of her.

The teacher sat and with restful anxiety watched over the continuing storm of emotions that reflected on the girl's face.

"Oksana, is everything okay?"

"Huh? Yes, I was just thinking about it." Oksana bit her lower lip, which made it red a bit, "Sorry".

Mikhail Viktorovich rose abruptly from his chair and walked around the table, meticulously staring at her from head to foot.

"This will not work. You can't go out, wearing something like that. Why didn't you even take a single thing from my daughter's closet?" The man's voice sounded offended. "Everything there is perfectly clean and was worn for a few times only if you are worried about the hygiene and all."

"No, it's just ..." Oksana blushed, with her face looking like a scarlet tomato, and, without hesitation, wrapped her arms around her shoulders, just covering her old, full ragged full of holes t-shirt.

"If you don't have the real reasons why you want to refuse me in this, then I don't want to hear any excuses." Mikhail began hastily rearranging dirty dishes from the table into the sink. "We, honestly, are a bit late already, so go get your clothes changed right now!"