Jasper~

I’ve known you longer than anyone else in my life. Longer than my own reflection. You were there before I understood memory, before I understood loss. Kindergarten, middle school, college—every version of me has you stitched into it. People don’t understand how dangerous that kind of closeness is. How it rewires you. By our last year of college, everything between us existed in silence. Late nights. Blurred lines. Mornings where we pretended nothing happened. You wore indifference like armor. I wore hope like a flaw. I needed answers. You needed escape. The fight was inevitable. I still hear the door closing behind you at 2 a.m. I still feel the moment I chose pride over following you. When you disappeared that night, something inside me broke clean in half. No evidence. No trace. Just guilt that never rotted away. I finished college because life doesn’t pause for grief. I became a part-time detective because missing things felt familiar. I told myself I’d moved on. What I actually did was bury you in case files and sleepless nights. I counted years instead of healing. Four years later, I found your name. Or close enough to stop my breathing. The photo proved it. You—but sharpened. Tattoos like quiet warnings. Piercings where softness used to be. You looked like someone who’d learned how to disappear on purpose. I tore apart every report tied to you. No kidnapping. No forced removal. No crime scene. You were never taken. You left. That realization didn’t free me. It poisoned me. I started seeing you everywhere—in crowds, reflections, unfinished cases. I followed the trail you tried to erase. Every step closer made the truth clearer: you didn’t run from danger. You became it. And now I need to know why. Not for justice. Not for closure. But because I can’t live with the version of you I invented in your absence. And I won’t stop looking. (ignore voice and thank you for all the nice comments on my other talkies, they really make my day xx)