Kirill couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment when everything started to feel off. It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t sudden. It came slowly, like a chill creeping under the door. He had married because, well, it was time. His mother had reminded him constantly: “You’re nearly thirty. All your friends have families. I want grandchildren.” So he gave in. Out of fatigue more than desire.

His wife, Elena, wasn’t a bad person. She didn’t yell. She didn’t complain. She simply faded. Most mornings, she slept late on the couch, wrapped in a blanket like a forgotten memory. Kirill would quietly leave a bit of food for her before heading to work. No kiss. No conversation. Just routine. Quiet and cold.

And then Larisa appeared.

She wasn’t hired for anything special—just to help with the garden his mother had abandoned. Larisa was ordinary in every sense of the word. Not beautiful. Not brilliant. But there was something in her simplicity that was disarming. She listened more than she spoke. She smiled with her eyes. She moved with calm.

Kirill found himself drawn to her presence. He made excuses to talk to her, to step outside. She told him about weather patterns, about how plants feel rain before it falls, about the quiet of growing things. In her presence, the world seemed slower. Softer.

Inside the house, everything felt harder. Louder, even in silence.

One evening, Kirill stood in front of his home and realized: he didn’t want to go inside. He stared at the window. The lights were on, but there was no warmth behind them. No welcome.

And so, he ran.

No words, no explanation. Just footsteps on pavement. Maybe he was running to Larisa. Maybe from himself. He didn’t know. But when he returned the next morning, something had changed.

The city felt hollow.

The markets were empty. The balconies were grey. The air carried no scent of baked bread or summer fruit. Faces looked sunken, as if life had quietly slipped out of them overnight. It was as though the harvest had left — not just the crops, but everything that made living feel alive.

But then he noticed something strange: in his own backyard, the garden Larisa tended was thriving.

Tomatoes hung heavy on their vines. Herbs bloomed with fragrance. Green leaves danced in the breeze like they had never known drought. Life — real, vibrant, stubborn life — had remained there.

Elena was gone. Perhaps she had left for her mother’s house. Perhaps she, too, had long understood what he had only now come to see.

Larisa stood near the garden bed. She didn’t speak. She didn’t smile. She simply held out an apple. Red. Smooth. Whole.

Kirill took it in his hand and sat down, overwhelmed by a stillness he hadn’t felt in years. He held the apple like a secret the earth had kept just for him. And then he wept.

Not for the marriage. Not for Elena. But for every minute he had spent in a life that didn’t feed him.

That day, he understood: the harvest had never truly left. It had simply moved — not to the city, but to wherever it was nurtured. To where someone was listening. To where the soil was touched with care.

Love, like a garden, doesn’t flourish out of obligation. It grows where it’s wanted.

And sometimes, all it takes to bring it back… is to finally stop running.