Every day, he came to the room with the baby and fruit. When Lars came inside, he lit a scented candle, put it on the bedside table, and put her favourite sweets in a saucer. She was tied to the bunk and there was no way she could eat them. It was part of some inalienable personal ritual for the man, carried out for the health of his wife. He knew how dear Theodore was to Inessa and how she felt about him, so Lars had hoped to the last moment to awaken in her new strength to fight the incurable disease by bringing a child with him. However, these attempts, as well as many others, proved futile. In May 743, Inessa died of the Hyena disease, making Lars a single father. Although, in fact, he had been such a long time ago, and now, it was only officially registered in the city registry.
The year is 744. It's been exactly one year since Inessa's death. Theodore was three years old. The family business had gone under. Lars practically stopped coming to his restaurant. More and more often he went to the bar to forget himself with a few beers or something stronger. The grief-stricken father of a young child tried to cope with the loss of his wife through alcohol, sinking deeper and deeper into an abyss of misery and frustration. Caring for the boy continued to be a mere formality without any feelings of love and care. Lars couldn't wait until the month of August to dump the burden in the Children's Educational Centre (or CEC for short) far away from himself.
This was the name given to all existing educational centres for children aged three to six. There were many such urban and rural institutions in the world. The main task of which was to identify talents in the kids. On the basis of appropriate recommendations from the teachers, parents would send their children to schools where they would be trained for their future professions. Lars was not the kind of parent who cared about the welfare of his child. He never dreamed of finding out what talent lay in his son. For him, the CEC was just a place where he could send his child for a long period of time. The classes were held on weekdays, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. If it had been up to Lars, he would have left Theodore there forever and would not have regretted it.
The month of August has arrived. Crowds of parents and their children rushed to the gates of the CEC to celebrate the first school day. As the population of the village was small, there was only one CEC. This only added to the excitement of the enthusiastic parents who were genuinely proud that their children were entering a new phase of life. Where they had yet to learn about such concepts as ‘independence’, ‘self-discipline’, ‘responsibility’, and so on. And also to learn a lot of new things.
The Education Centre was a three-storey rectangular building with several classrooms connected by spacious corridors. There was a canteen on the top floor, and common toilets on each floor. Depending on the specific profile, the classrooms were equipped with everything necessary for classes. For example, there was a study of architecture and construction, where there was a large number of children's constructors of various shapes and colours, which were intended for children of different ages. For three-year-old children – bigger, for six-year-old children – smaller.
