Sima refuses to believe it. The same mouth that once sang lullabies to him now spits at the district military commissar. She takes a leave from work, pawns her mother’s gold earrings, and boards a rattling train east.

The screen cuts to black.

Part 1 ends with Sima at a frozen lake near the base, holding a single boot she found buried in the snow. A local old woman whispers: “Some boys run from war before war finds them. But the mothers never run.”

The film cuts between harsh, handheld realism (snow, rusted barracks, indifferent officers) and tender flashbacks: Alyosha as a boy, catching dragonflies in a jar; Sima teaching him to peel potatoes; the last New Year’s Eve before he was drafted — a dance to an old cassette tape, his laugh like cracked ice.

Sima looks into the camera — breaking the fourth wall — and says, “This is not an ending.”