Ogstin exited the building slowly, unhurriedly, as if trying to prove to everyone, including himself, that he couldn’t care less about what was happening around him. If he was interested in anything, it was only himself. But he spent all his interest on himself, which could arise in his head covered with short hair.
Ogstin took two steps in the direction opposite the swings, which groaned under the weight of some overgrown kid, blowing smoke rings and flicking ashes onto a bag lying nearby.
Thus, in his unparalleled self-awareness, Ogstin found himself in the courtyard of a tall, modern building and headed towards the road, where various modes of transportation and vehicles noisily rushed by. Ogstin didn’t like streets. They served him solely as landmarks for quiet alleys, squares, and forest parks, of which there were not many in the city. And those that existed left much to be desired in terms of density and cleanliness. But even in them, Ogstin found secluded corners and hid there. Occasionally, very rarely, he thought about the meaning of life and his own grandeur. From time to time, he encountered those taller than him, but he never allowed himself to look at such individuals as equals, let alone as superior. He felt with the seventh hair in his right ear that it was trivial and that “higher is not the one who is taller, but the one who is higher” (this brilliant thought belonged to Ogstin himself and was forever imprinted in his memory).
He probably would have written memoirs if he could write. He barely managed to learn to read. For example, the words “Grocery” and “Department Store” he learned with difficulty, but he remembered them for a long time.
Ogstin walked along one of the peripheral arteries of the big city, glumly glancing at the colorful signs and cheerful faces.
“Vanity,” he thought, “vanity of vanities,” and once again indulged in the blissful joy of his own uniqueness and his own happiness. Turning into some gray alley, breaking the thin nighttime ice on the puddles, he followed a familiar path. Now he would turn left towards the crooked lamppost, walk along the broken fence, near which nettles grew in the summer, and now—impenetrable mud, but he would stoically endure all inconveniences and delve into the cemetery woods.
This was one of his favorite places. It was always calm, quiet, and almost windless here. The gloomy tombstones silently told their stories, and the century-old oaks and aspens silently listened, once again bowing their bare branches and swaying: “Yes, yes, we’ve seen, we know…”
The last rays of the white, pale sun would disappear into the damp gray clouds, and very quickly, unsurprisingly for a cold November day, night would begin to descend from who knows where. Ogstin weaved between the graves in search of his favorite bench, on which yellow and red leaves had long ceased to lie, and under which now lay a soft but damp brown mass.
When Ogstin spotted the bench, all thoughts would leave him. He would joyfully dash towards it, lie down on the wet bed of rotting leaves, and, licking his side, rest his head on his paws. His ears would drop over his eyes, hiding the twilight world from him. Eyes closed. He would dream of a distant world of dogs, where he was the king.
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