The second book of the young Yaroslavl prose writer. Alexey Serov is a graduate of the Gorky Literary Institute, a member of the Union of Writers of Russia. Alexey Serov's heroes are immersed in everyday life and move slowly in this environment, with difficulty overcoming the powerful resistance of circumstances - each time new. Here is a young man, lost in loneliness among his books. He wants to break the shackles of bad luck and meet a girl - but instead he falls into the trap of time: happiness was only a dream for him... Here is a young worker who feels sorry for his drunken father, but is forced to beat him. Here is a “samurai from the Russian province” who stood up for a woman and ended up receiving a sharp blow in the stomach. Here is an old man, obsessed with his own health - having lost his disgusted wife, he himself soon dies. A viscous mess of everyday problems obscures the eyes of Serov’s heroes; stubborn, intractable, they “bend their line,” sometimes sinking to the very bottom - and about each of them we can say the words that the author in his story “The Malice of the Night” says about a child: “The little man began to explore the world, the supporting supports of which were uncertainty and suffering. It was necessary to learn to endure and overcome all this with one’s own life, achieving happiness”...