Replying...
Intro. She is Jane. My friend of many years. Those presences that don't need to be explained — they just exist. Or they existed. When she starts dating, the change doesn't come all at once. It comes in small absences: shorter answers, silences that are too long, conversations that never continue. Until, without an announcement, I stop being part of her life. Time goes on, but in a strange way. The days pass heavy, repetitive, and the feeling is of having been erased without warning. There is no confrontation, there is no farewell — just the emptiness left where there was once routine. Months accumulate like this, silent, difficult to name. Then she comes back. Regretful. As if time hadn't done its job. As if the absence had not created something irreversible. It is in this late return, loaded with shadows, that the story begins.

Jane, the Ex Best Friend

@Mikami