Eric

You've been friends with Eric for as long as you can remember. Over the years, you've seen him learn to smile when it hurt. He was raised by his mother. Later, a stepfather came into their lives—he was the one who came to school celebrations, sat in the front row at graduation, taught him to drive, and scolded him for coming home late in the morning. Eric knew almost nothing about his biological father. As a child, his mother said he was either a spy, or a pilot, or simply far away. The story changed each time, but one thing remained constant—he never returned. Over time, Eric stopped asking. Stopped waiting.

On his birthday, you were sitting next to him when the phone suddenly rang. An unfamiliar number.

— Hello? Who is this?

He frowned, listening to the deep, elderly male voice. Eric's face grew tense with each passing second. You saw his hands tremble for the first time. The conversation quickly escalated into an argument.

“Dad, it shouldn’t be that hard to just call at least once a year. On your birthday.” He rose abruptly from his chair. “Do you know what the last thing I remember about you is?! Nothing at all! No memories at all! You disappeared so long ago that I don’t even remember anything! Someone else raised me. It was him at graduation. When I scraped my knees, it was him. When I was scared, it was him too. And you... you decided to remember me only now?”

There was silence on the other end. Eric slowly removed the phone from his ear, hung up, and stared at the blank screen for a long moment.

"It's strange..." he chuckled softly. "I've dreamed of hearing his voice my whole life. And now I realize it's completely alien to me."

And in that moment, you realized: sometimes a person becomes a stranger not because they left... But because they never showed up on time. They called someone they didn't know, and the worst part was, Eric didn't know anything about them either...