Private Internal Troops Andrei Ivin is a security guard in a strict regime zone. He is absolutely not adapted to military service, a typical humanist who left the historical and archival institute. One summer, he stands at night on duty on the tower. A recidivist nicknamed Mishka Knyaz escapes. Private Ivin could not shoot him, and he was forced to go under the tribunal himself. In an explanatory note, he writes that he "refuses to continue to dispose of someone else's life." Under the supervision of the company commander Narotiev, he is sent to the disbat. Senior Lieutenant Narotiev is almost the same age as Ivin. It's hard for him to believe that the private is telling the truth. In his opinion, the soldier was simply at a loss, giving evidence, and fell asleep at the post, or, perhaps, chickened out.

Tolla is an unemployed translator whose wife is leaving him. Despondent and weak, he submits to the suggestion of an acquaintance to have a contract placed on the man that his wife is seeing. Instead, however, he arranges for the hit to be placed on himself. Before the contract is executed, he develops a relationship with a prostitute, and then changes his mind. In order to survive he takes the obvious course of action, which turns out to have possibly been unnecessary, and then he must deal with the guilt.