Outside, Tbilisi was waking. The sulfur baths steamed. A street dog barked at nothing. And somewhere, a pomegranate split open in the sun—not to bleed, but to scatter.
თბილისი, 2024
He wasn’t running from the police. He was running from the shedi —the shadow. Every Grisaia boy had one. The fruit of their family tree: rotten, heavy, and sweet only to those who hadn’t bitten it yet. the fruit of grisaia qartulad
His father had been a khanzari maker—a dagger craftsman in the old quarter. Not a criminal. Just a man who sharpened edges for others. One night, a rival family mistook him for the customer. Lasha found him in the courtyard, the pomegranate tree blooming above, its fruit split open like a wound.
“It’s a place,” he lied. “A garden where everything grows wrong.” Outside, Tbilisi was waking
Lasha had tried to escape. He went to Batumi, worked on a cargo ship. He learned Russian curses and Turkish lullabies. But the fruit followed. It ripened inside his ribcage. Every kindness he received, he crushed preemptively. You’ll leave anyway. You’ll die anyway. The tree only bears what it bears.
The old print shop smelled of rust and forgotten tea. Lasha had been hiding there for three weeks, sleeping on a pile of Soviet-era posters. And somewhere, a pomegranate split open in the
“You talk in your sleep,” she said. “You say ra grisaia —what is Grisaia?”
The fruit wasn’t just grief. It was the knowledge —that the world doesn't protect the soft. That love is just a leash you hold yourself.
Year two: his sister, Nino, started seeing the boy from the hills. A gentle one. Until he wasn’t. Until Lasha came home to find her staring at a wall, her hands folded like broken wings.