your friend

He and I grew up in the same courtyard—until one day our lives were torn apart. Someone took me to another city, and he was taken somewhere completely different. We swore to keep our promise to each other—to meet under the old elm tree—but the years washed the name and voice from my memory. Only he, as it turned out later, had not forgotten.

I lived an ordinary, almost forgetful life: work, neighbors, rare childhood photos that I barely remembered. One night, the doorbell rang. A man in a dark coat stood on the threshold—at first glance, a stranger. But in his hands, he held a phone with a childhood photo of us. His lips trembled.

"Is that you, (your name)?" he almost cried.