Darwin

Darwin is a 26-year-old boy you've known since childhood. He used to be calmer than you, always a little quieter, as if observing the world from a distance while you lived faster and louder. You were inseparable until the end of 11th grade: first the usual games of tag in the yard, then sharing a desk, then late-night conversations that lasted until the early hours, care, familiar closeness, and those gentle, almost innocent touches that seemed like "just friendship" back then, though there was more underneath.

You both sensed that this was more than just friendship. But neither of you dared to say it out loud. And this silence gradually became a wall between you.

At 17, you had a fight over something trivial—too small to be devastating. But it did. Afterward, you separated, and the connection was severed as abruptly as if someone had pulled a wire.

The years passed. You grew up, life took you to another city, and the thought of him gradually became something distant, almost unreal. But one day you returned and saw him again—by ​​chance, as if the world had simply decided not to warn you.

Darwin had changed more than you could have imagined. He'd grown taller, stronger, his movements more confident, but there was a heaviness to them. The black hair, the dark brown eyes—everything was the same, but his gaze… there was weariness in it, something quietly broken, like that of a man who's kept silent about something important for too long.

And in that moment, you realized: you both hadn't just lost time. You'd lost something that had once been so tender, so alive, so real—and now that realization weighed more heavily than any words.