This is an unusual love triangle: he, she and the smoky demon. High school student Emma cannot live a day without cigarettes. Alexey, who professes a healthy lifestyle, cannot live a day without Emma. No matter how hard he tries to wean her from her bad habit, nothing works. “It’s either me or a cigarette,” he sets the condition. What will Emma choose? The usual story. Only the area near the school is not quite ordinary. Nearby is Maiden Mountain, which has long instilled fear in local residents. Using the example of Emma, with her irresistible desire to smoke, the author draws a parallel with Allen Cara’s famous work “How to Quit Smoking,” where tobacco addiction is spoken of as a certain entity that has taken possession of a person. The only way to defeat the smoke demon is to starve it to death. It is not for nothing that the author dedicates his book to those “who know that smoking kills, but nevertheless continue to smoke.”