Friendship does not break like glass. It does not shatter in a single moment of anger. More often, it fades. Quietly. Slowly. Like a fire that burns bright one evening and then, without anyone noticing, becomes nothing more than smoke and ash.
Shino Taketsu did not lose his companions in one day. He lost them across many days — little by little, until he realized that the warmth he once carried beside him was gone.
---
The first signs were small.
A friend who once waited for him after class stopped waiting.
Another who always shared stories at lunch began telling them to someone else.
A third still greeted him, but the laughter in his voice had weakened, as if he were speaking to a stranger.
Shino noticed. He always noticed. His silence made him more observant than most. But he did not reach out. He did not chase them. Something inside him whispered: Do not stop them. This is the price.
And so, he let them drift.
---
There was one evening he remembered clearly. They had gathered at a small café, the kind of place where wooden tables were scratched with initials, where cheap lights gave off a warm glow. His companions laughed, voices overlapping in messy, careless joy. Once, he would have laughed with them. Once, his presence would have been part of that easy current.
But that evening, he sat apart. He listened, but he did not join. The words forming on his tongue never left his mouth. He smiled politely when they looked his way, but his heart stayed still, his mind elsewhere.
And they noticed.
The laughter softened around him. Jokes that once included him now passed by, like rivers flowing around a stone. They did not push him away; they simply moved without him.
When the evening ended, he walked home alone, realizing with a strange calm that he had already left long before he stood up from that table.
---
Friendship requires warmth. Shino had chosen winter.
It was not betrayal. He had not turned against them. He had not spoken cruelty or cut ties with words. But his silence, his growing distance, his discipline that froze even his own heart — it built a wall no one could climb.
At first, some tried. One reached out and said, "You're too quiet these days. What's wrong?"
He answered, "Nothing."
Another asked, "Do you ever feel like you're drifting away from us?"
He smiled faintly and replied, "Maybe."
And that was all. They waited for more, but no more came. After a while, they stopped asking.
---
Loneliness settled like snow — slowly, invisibly, until it covered everything.
He walked corridors where once voices had called his name and found only silence. He passed groups laughing together and felt no bitterness, only distance. They had their fire. He had his frost. They could not walk his path, and he could not return to theirs.
Still, a part of him remembered.
The nights when they had spoken of dreams. The afternoons of careless jokes. The sense of belonging that once felt unshakable. Now those memories were no longer living flames. They were ashes, faint and gray, scattered inside him.
He carried them, but they no longer gave warmth.
---
There were moments when he wondered if he had done wrong. Should he have spoken more? Should he have reached back when their hands reached for him? But the answer came swiftly, like cold air through an open window: No. This is the cost of the road you have chosen.
Mastery does not walk with many. It walks alone.
And so, he accepted the fading of companionship not as a tragedy, but as an inevitability. Just as leaves must fall when autumn comes, so too must friendships fade when the path diverges.
---
One evening, as he walked home under the pale streetlights, he thought of them again. He imagined their laughter without him, their stories shared with others, their bonds carrying on while his footsteps echoed alone.
He did not feel envy. He did not feel hatred. He felt respect.
They had given him warmth when he needed it. They had stood with him in seasons where laughter still belonged. And now, when their time had ended, he would not curse them for leaving. He would simply carry the ashes, as one carries the memory of a fire that once kept them alive.
Ashes do not burn, but they remind you that once, something did.
---
By the time Shino reached his door, the truth had settled deep in him:
Companionship was a season. And his had ended.
Ahead of him stretched silence, solitude, and the heavy weight of mastery. Behind him lay voices, laughter, and the warmth he had willingly left behind.
He bowed his head slightly, as if in farewell — not to a person, but to a time of his life.
Then he stepped inside, closing the door on the echoes of friendship.
Ashes fell silent within him.
And he walked forward.