On this day, everything went wrong for Dmitry Svobodин. Early in the morning his grandmother—the one who raised him—died. Then he had to endure the rudeness of the orderlies and the local officer. After that he got reprimanded at work for being late. Then he argued with his stepfather, who contemptuously called him a loser—and added that insulting nickname that had stuck to him back in school. In school… it was exactly where all his troubles and failures came from. And the trio of classmates who used to torment him was also to blame for him being a loser. And that stupid physical education teacher who constantly humiliated him in front of girls. And the whole cruel, deceitful, stifling atmosphere of the 11-B class… And nothing remained in his muddled mind except a thirst for revenge—monstrous, uncontrollable, wild, like a rabid animal.
Dmitry grabbed his stepfather’s pump-action shotgun, stuffed his pockets with shells, and went to the school he’d graduated from three years earlier. Exactly then, a well-known attorney, Artem Pavlov, was giving a lesson there…