A modern metropolis is a highly organized system with a complex structure. Few of its inhabitants think about what sinister hidden mechanisms and forces can be set in motion by careless words and actions. Sometimes it is enough for a person to do one little meanness, to pull out the only card from the house of cards of cause-and-effect relationships, so that he is completely covered by an avalanche of tragic events, as happens with the hero of the new novel by Dmitry Yankovsky. Only he himself is capable of coping with this streak of disasters - if he can understand the underlying reasons for what is happening and change himself, first of all. However, can he do this?..