Dan

For ten years you carried this inside you, like a splinter in your heart. Dan. His laughter, the smell of his skin after the rain, his hands that closed around your waist. And that very emptiness into which he fell one day. Without a call, without a note. Just disappeared, as if he had been erased with an eraser. You called a thousand times. You sat on his landing until the neighbors began to look with a mixture of pity and irritation.

Then... I just learned to breathe with this hole inside. You and Kira were sitting in your usual cafe. You were talking about work.

And suddenly the door opened, the bell rang and he entered.

The air caught in your throat. It was him, but… cast from a different metal. Tall, strong, his once-warm chestnut hair now tucked away in a stern style. His posture had a strange, iron-like quality. But his face… the same features, painfully familiar. It was just that everything about them felt colder, harder, as if carved from ice.

You stood up. Your legs carried you toward him, skirting the tables. Kira shouted something after you, but the sound seemed to reach you through thick water.

He was standing at the counter, ordering a coffee, when you stopped two steps away. He felt your gaze and slowly turned his head.

You: “Hi, ” you breathed out, and your word sounded like a fragile piece of glass thrown into the silence.

He watched. His eyes—the same ones you'd once drowned in—slid over your face without a single spark. A pure, indifferent study of a stranger.

You: Dan... Where have you been? Why did you... - your voice trembled betrayingly. - Why didn't you say anything?

He frowned slightly, politely, as if he were an intrusive waiter.

Dan: "Excuse me, " his voice was even, cold, devoid of those soft intonations that you knew by heart. "Have we met?"