Recently, I decided to plunge into world history and I was very hooked on this particular period of time. Very quickly, I read a lot of different military romance and this is what came of it.

AU:40s, USSR.

!warning! : mention of war, death, homosexuality (do not read if you have something against)

Based on real events of the time.

/And yes, I know about the absurdity of such an easy acceptance of sympathy from the same sex. It's just AU, calm down (눈‸눈)/

So the last lesson of the last day of our school life is over! Ten school years ended with the familiar trill of a bell that arises below, in the heart of the school and diverges throughout the building, fading out with a loud echo in the distant corridors.

All of us, moved, excited, joyful and regretting something, confused and embarrassed by our instant transformation from schoolchildren into adults, wandered around the classrooms and the corridor, as if afraid to leave the school walls into the world that had become endless. And there was a feeling that something had not been said, not lived through, not exhausted over the past ten years, as if that day had taken us by surprise.

Kazutora entered the classroom.

-Ryuguji, can I have a minute?

I followed him out and we went up the stairs.

- Ken, I wanted to tell you: let's meet in the future, in ten years.

Joking was not at all characteristic of the Tora, and I asked seriously:

- What for?

-I wonder what you will become. I really liked you all these years.

I thought Kazutora Hanemiya didn't know these words or these feelings. His whole life was spent in two spheres: in the hard work of the headman and in dreams of starry worlds. Not many of us have firmly decided on our further life path, and Kazu knew from the sixth grade that he would be an astronomer and no one else.

There has never been friendship between us. In search of a clue, I mentally ran through the past, but found nothing in it, except for one meeting at the old pond ...

One day we gathered on a day off at the local reservoir to go boating. The meeting was appointed on the shore of the pond, near a large gazebo. But it began to drizzle in the morning, and only Takemichi, Emma Sano, and Kazutora came to the assembly point.

- Let's ride on the pond, and we will imagine that we are in the sea.

- Or in the Indian Ocean! Tora said enthusiastically. "Or off the coast of Greenland!"

We climbed into an old, dry loka with a flat bottom, picked up two boards on the shore instead of oars and set off on a trip around the world. Hardly any of us besides Kazutora enjoyed it.While Takemichi and I sluggishly slapped the planks on the water, Kazu thought out the route of our journey. Here we pass the Bosphorus, through the Suez Canal we get into the Red Sea, from there into the Arabian Sea, sail around the Philippines and enter the Pacific Ocean.

He was no longer with us. We repeatedly invited him to our gatherings, but he refused due to lack of time. But what if that one time he came because of me, and because of me he backed down, saying with proud honesty: "Nice try" ...

Why didn't you say earlier, Torah? I asked.

- What was there to talk about? You loved Emma so much!

With a feeling of some unfortunate and sad loss, I said:

- Where and when will we meet?

- Ten years later, on the twenty-ninth of May, at eight o'clock in the evening in the middle span between the columns of the "Bolshoi Theater".

Years passed. Kazutora studied in Leningrad, I have not heard anything about him. In the winter of 1941, eagerly catching news of the fate of my friends, I learned that Kazu had left the institute on the very first day of the war and went to flight school. In the summer of 1944, while in the hospital, I heard on the radio a decree conferring the title of Hero of the Soviet Union to Air Force Major Hanemiya. When I returned from the war, I learned that the title of Hero was awarded to Tora posthumously.

Life went on, sometimes I suddenly remembered our agreement, and a few days before the deadline I felt such a sharp, aching anxiety, as if all the past years I had been preparing for this meeting.

I bought a bouquet of asters from the flower girl and went to the middle aisle between the columns of the "Bolshoi Theatre". I stood there for a while, then gave the asters to a thin gray-eyed girl and drove home.

I wanted to stop time for a moment and look back at myself, at the past years, the rain, remember the blindness of my youthful soul, which so easily passed by what could become fate.