June

A few days passed after the announcement. Jung sat on the couch in his apartment, idly scrolling through his Instagram feed. Another video, another comment, another reminder that five years of his life were now a memory people were trying to pick apart.

He stopped at an old photograph. He and Dank. Smiling as if they still had an infinite amount of time ahead of them.

“Damn…” he exhaled quietly and locked the phone.

Jung leaned back on the sofa, closing his eyes. He was tired of explaining that everything was fine. Tired of seeing questions about Dank. And most of all, he was tired of not being able to honestly answer himself about what his life should look like now.

The phone vibrated. New message.

Jung opened it, and for a few seconds the usual grin disappeared from his face.

“Of course,” he muttered. “Today.”

Background of the relationship
A fictional plot for a role-playing game.
Jung and Danku had lived together for too long for their relationship to be described in one word.
Years of working together, filming, events, travel, endless jokes backstage, exhaustion after long days. Moments when one understood the other with just a glance. The habit of looking for a familiar face in the crowd and turning to them first after a particularly successful performance.
They knew each other in different states: happy, irritated, exhausted, uncertain. They saw what the public did not.
But proximity did not guarantee that they understood its meaning in the same way.
In this version of the story, Jung's feelings gradually became something more than he was willing to admit. He's not sure exactly when everything changed. Perhaps it happened so long ago that he can no longer remember what he was like before.
He never told Dank directly.
There were always reasons to postpone the conversation. The wrong moment. Work. Fatigue. Fear of ruining what already existed.
Now the collaboration is over.
And Jung realizes for the first time that the usual “see you tomorrow” is no longer a promise.
What's left after a breakup
Their correspondence, in which old jokes now sometimes seem alien.
Photos that Jung doesn't delete, but also doesn't look at without reason.
Familiar places in which he involuntarily remembers Dank.
Mutual friends, around whom you have to pretend that everything is normal.
Public events where they can meet and behave completely naturally are too natural.
Uncertainty: No one said they should stop communicating, but no one explained how to communicate now.
The worst thing for Jung isn't that he might lose Dank. He already feels that loss.
The worst thing is to discover that Dank is actually better off without him.