Page 123

[Alexandr Korol]

the dirtier I was, the less people wanted to destroy me. Seriously. Can you imagine what a paradox that is? The more righteous, well-mannered, and pure you are, the more you get pecked at from all sides with such aggression, as if I must be destroyed — there was always that kind of reaction from everyone: “Oh, you’re smart? Well, that’s it, you’re done.” “Oh, people love you, admire you? We’re going to expose you now.” There was always this aggressive response from everyone, starting from school, from childhood — some kind of envy and a real desire to destroy me. And it always came from the darkest people. I’ll never forget the time when a girl at school, an older student, actually ordered a hit on me, and the boy she got to do it waited for me after school with an axe and hit me with it. And then of course I remember the shock that hit the whole school. Everyone was begging, as far as I understood, my family and me not to press charges and send that girl to prison. Her name was Masha, I think, she was tall. And for what? I never did anything to her at all, never called her a bad name, didn’t even know her. She would just come up to me during recess and tell me she hated me. And from what I gathered, it was just because someone said something nice about me — that I was cool or whatever — and that alone irritated her, that people were saying good things about me. And it’s always been like that. The only consistent thing from my childhood up to now has been this aggression — this strange, irrational reaction from people who get bothered when someone admires me or is pleased with me. It was the same with the books — when I used to post chapters of my books and people left comments about how much they liked reading them, how I was such a good guy — there would always be someone who’d show up and start posting nasty things from fake social media accounts, making up bad stories about me, just to make people stop looking at me with kindness and admiration, to flip their perception, to make them hate me. And the person doing it was always some stranger, someone I’d never met or spoken to.

If I were to answer your question about values, then I’d say I was born with them, plus I was raised that way — and still, I tried my best to become dirty, because even now — in 2025 — what do I see? I see that today, the dirtier and more ill- mannered a person is, someone with a criminal past, someone who went to prison for dealing drugs, a former addict, completely filthy, rude, uncultured,