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[Alexandr Korol]

dad, grandma, grandpa, all my relatives — everyone was very well-mannered, proper, and that was normal. And actually, all my childhood friends who were from Petersburg were also good, polite, and cultured. Sure, each had their own different values, but there were shared values too. I’ll put it differently. It’s not even about values, really. You see, imagine me in third or fifth grade, hanging out at a classmate’s house, and suddenly a movie is on. There’s a scene where a woman comes out of the shower naked, and they immediately hit pause and start staring at her — and to me, it felt shameful. But again, I hadn’t even talked about things like that with my parents, so it’s not like they specifically raised me that way — but somehow, I felt it was shameful. And there were other moments like that too — like when a boy had a ball and the other kids would always snatch it from him or throw it into a tree or a trash can. They did that sort of thing, and again, it made me uncomfortable. And again, nobody gave me a lecture beforehand saying, “You shouldn’t act like that.” I just felt it. You see, it’s something internal — it’s not knowledge in the usual sense. Nobody ever gave me lectures about how to behave with people or out in public. Sure, sometimes I might’ve put my fork down loudly in a café, and my parents would say, “Don’t make noise, we’re in a public place.” But when it came to things like behaving modestly and properly in a tram, on the metro, at someone’s house, or in a restaurant — I just got it. And when others didn’t, I always thought of them as sort of rude or uncultured. And that kind of modest behavior, that attitude toward your loved ones and toward the people around you — that you shouldn’t disturb them, that even if you’re doing something at home, you should do it in a way that doesn’t bother the neighbors... And then there are people who don’t care at all about their neighbors and make noise in their rooms and then wonder why everyone hates them or why the police get called. So where did I get that from? I don’t know. But I’ll say this — I suffered because of it. That righteousness of mine, that kind of... You know, people even used to make fun of me at summer camp and called me a romantic. I’ll never forget how one girl told me I was a good guy but she didn’t want to date me because I was a romantic, and she liked bad boys, and I was just a pretty-faced romantic. And I thought, “How can that be? What’s wrong with people? Why is it like this?” And at one point, I even tried to mess myself up, to get dirty and learn how to be like everyone else, because I realized —