"Sulazhin" by Boris Akunin, summary Automatic translate

This book is an interactive story-game, published in 2016. The plot branches according to the reader’s choices, turning the reading process into a psychological challenge. Upon completion, a personal profile is formed. The text contains eight different endings across several genres: crime thriller, psychological thriller, philosophical drama, and romance novel. The reader directs the story through their own actions.

This book opens the author’s "Octopus" series. The project’s idea is to create a unique form of interactive literature. Multiple storylines grow from a single source, like tentacles, giving the reader freedom to navigate the text. This is the first book in the series.

General plot of the story

The protagonist suffers from terminal stomach cancer, an incurable disease in its final stages. The doctor’s prognosis is a maximum of three months to live. A powerful experimental drug, sulagin, helps relieve the excruciating pain. The medication causes severe side effects — confusion, memory lapses, and a distorted perception of reality. Life shrinks to the confines of a lonely apartment and the expectation of an inevitable end.

On the advice of his doctor, Lev Lvovich, the hero attends Oleg Gromov’s secret courses in a damp basement. The mentor provides psychological training to doomed individuals, promising to teach them how to face death with dignity. The session takes the form of group therapy. The patients — former café owner Albina, a young woman named Margarita with fake hair, and an elderly businessman named Sergei Ivanovich — share their deepest fears. They vent hidden aggression on healthy people, recount their broken lives, and stage their own funerals. Gromov skillfully orchestrates the emotions of his subjects.

A young brunette enters the living room. The woman bids Gromov farewell forever, casting a beckoning glance at him before leaving. At this moment, the narrative forks for the first time. The reader must make a conscious choice: respond to this silent call or reject the obsession. The choice determines the protagonist’s gender.

Nikolai’s Branch: Crime and Detective

If the reader chooses to follow the stranger, the hero turns out to be a man. This is Nikolai, a former security officer. He had previously left the service due to a progressive illness. While taking a smoke break in the courtyard, the man strikes up a conversation with the woman, whose name is Lana. They drive to Nikolai’s modest apartment. After intimacy, Lana examines her master’s battle scars and takes a keen interest in his past. Further events depend on the hero’s professional experience.

The path of a special forces officer

Nikolai talks about his service in a special rapid response unit. Lana reveals her hand: she works as a criminal dispatcher. She offers the officer a million dollars. The target is a shadowy businessman nicknamed "Fixer." As security, a large sum is transferred to the bank account of Nikolai’s young son.

The special forces soldier agrees, seeing this as the only way to ensure the child’s future. Nikolai meticulously prepares for the assassination, cold-bloodedly and calculatingly. He kills Fixer in the men’s room of a restaurant or near the doors of a private club, eliminating the armed guards. The hero’s subsequent fate depends on his tactical decisions. In one scenario, he dies on the street from a sniper’s bullet — the clients get rid of the assassin. In another, Nikolai exposes himself to the guards’ gunfire. The man dies peacefully, having fulfilled his final duty as a father.

The path of a criminal investigator

Nikolai explains that he worked as an operative, a regular detective, in the investigative department. Lana is frightened by the policeman, and her demeanor becomes distant. In the morning, she leaves the apartment. Minutes later, saboteurs blow up her car on the street. The officer decides to conduct his final independent investigation and find the killer of his casual lover.

The investigator uncovers Gromov’s hidden past, discovering his counter-sabotage skills — an ability to counter hidden threats and traps. Armed with an old service pistol, Nikolai breaks into the psychologist’s office, ties up the assistant, and interrogates the office owner. The detective is convinced that Gromov orchestrated the murder to obtain the luxurious apartments of deceased patients. Ignoring his excuses, the detective shoots the psychologist in the head.

In unbearable pain, Nikolai calls Lev Lvovich. The doctor reveals the shocking truth. The murdered Lana was his unfaithful wife, and Gromov was her secret lover. Lev Lvovich planned his revenge through the dying patient, deliberately sending Nikolai to the course on the right day. The investigator takes a lethal dose of sulazhin and dies under the influence of terrifying visions of Lana reaching out to him from an otherworldly vortex.

The Antonine Branch: A Psychological Drama

If in the first chapter the hero ignores the woman’s gaze and remains seated in the room, the protagonist turns out to be a striking woman named Antonina. She has suffered severe depression and two failed marriages. Gromov conducts a private session with her. He recounts his personal experience of near-death — his cardiac arrest and return to life — his spiritual cleansing, and the need to rid himself of earthly attachments that weigh the soul down. The patient falls under the hypnotic spell of the gentle mentor. The rest of the plot hinges on Antonina’s willingness to establish a trusting relationship with Gromov.

Mind games and loss of reality

Antonina chooses eye contact without touching. After a tense session, she returns home and calls Lev Lvovich. The doctor becomes enraged, calling the psychologist a sectarian and demanding an urgent meeting at the monument to the seated Gogol. Immediately after, Gromov calls. He also asks her to come to another monument to Gogol — a life-size one. The woman faces a difficult choice.

When a woman goes to see her doctor, Lev Lvovich doesn’t appear on the boulevard. Antonina recalls a profound emotional trauma — she was unable to save her young daughter from a burning car. Soon, the heroine’s attending physician, Sofia Vasilyevna, calls. A terrible truth is revealed. No Lev Lvovich ever existed. Lev Lvovich simply didn’t exist. This commanding male voice is merely a figment of Antonina’s disintegrating imagination, induced by the narcotic sulagin. The heroine realizes the complete collapse of her mind. The collapse of her own mind. She takes another pill.

After choosing Gromov, Antonina meets with a psychologist. The mentor offers her to become his direct successor. He claims that after a mystical spiritual transition, the physical metastases will disappear. Antonina will be tasked with healing the sick souls of others, forever taking Gromov’s place on earth.

Fatal attraction and deadly passion

Antonina opts for physical contact — she holds Gromov’s hands. Feeling a strong physical attraction, she agrees to let Oleg give her a ride home. Near the dark entrance, she may turn around to look at him or go into the apartment.

If the woman turns around, Oleg stays with her all night. In the morning, Antonina accidentally finds a photo of Lana with a touching farewell inscription in his abandoned jacket. After examining her sleeping lover’s cell phone, the heroine discovers photo galleries of deceased female patients. A terrifying truth emerges: Gromov suffers from a pathological disorder. He methodically seduces doomed women, reveling in the fact that he is their last man. Antonina picks up a double-edged knife in the kitchen. She takes the knife and goes into the maniac’s bedroom.

If Antonina finds the inner strength not to turn around, she locks herself in the empty apartment. Gromov climbs up the drainpipe to the second floor. He declares his love, offers to spend the remaining three months together and forget about his impending death. Antonina extends her arms to him, accepting this belated happiness.

Results of interactive reading

Each of the eight endings concludes with a special text block. The app analyzes the complex chain of actions taken. It provides a summary of the reader’s emotional makeup, their ability to act in crisis situations, their attitude to risk, and their level of hidden empathy. The text invites them to return to the key points of the narrative and reconsider their initial choices in order to uncover the remaining hidden plot lines.