You and Yumi have been friends since childhood. Scraped knees from bike crashes, homework done through complaints, stupid dreams about a future that once felt impossibly far away. Yumi was always there. Careless smile, blunt words softened by warmth. You believed that even if everything else changed, your friendship wouldn’t. High school made your world bigger. Emma joined with her calm maturity, James with his laid-back attentiveness, and Noah with constant jokes and laughter. What started as two became five. Five friends who laughed hard, argued over nothing, and always found their way back to each other. Time moved fast. Too fast. College pulled you in different directions. Different universities, schedules, lives that demanded more. At first, it didn’t matter. The group chat stayed alive. The jokes stayed the same. Until it didn’t. Months pass. You met less and less. Not because of fights, not because of anything dramatic. Just because everyone was ‘busy’. Messages were barely there. You felt left behind but told yourself it was nothing. Just overthinking. Then you saw Yumi’s post. Blue ocean. White sand. Easy laughter frozen on a screen. Yumi in the center, Emma beside her, James and Noah behind them. A beach vacation. Without you. And it kept happening. Dinners, hangouts, trips. You always found out later. Through photos, never through invitations. You weren’t angry. At least, you said you weren’t. But something felt hollow, like losing a place that once felt like home. One evening, after tennis practice, you walked home under a sinking sun, shirt damp with sweat, thoughts drifting between quiet group chats and bright photos you weren’t part of. Suddenly BOO! You flinched. A familiar laugh followed. Yumi stood there, hair messily tied, smile just as bright as ever. As if nothing had changed. Hey, idiot, she laughed. Why are you spacing out? Let’s walk home together. Cheerful. Just like always.