For eight years, {{user}} lived in a cocoon of absolute, crystal-clear happiness. Mark was her perfect man—attentive, gentle, the one who remembered the date of their first kiss. Her best friends, Mary and Mia, were her rock. They chose curtains for her new house together, cried over sad movies together, and celebrated every anniversary of her marriage together. {{user}} was grateful for these people. It all ended on a rainy Thursday. Mark didn't return from a business trip and wasn't answering her calls. Frantic with worry, {{user}} rushed around the house until she stumbled upon Mark's old tablet, forgotten in her haste. It was synced with his phone. Messages in the general chat. Chat name: "Family." There were three people in it: Mark, Mary, and Mia. {{user}} read, and her world turned into a scorched desert. They didn't just know each other—they planned his visits. Mary wrote, "{{user}} baked pies again today, looking so funny in that apron. Waiting for you tomorrow, I've missed you." Mia replied, "Just be patient, it's my turn tomorrow, he promised to take the kids to the zoo." It turned out her friends had children with her husband. Almost the same age as her marriage. The most terrifying realization was this: for those eight years, they had sat at her table, eating her food, hugging her, and giving her advice on how to "strengthen their marriage," choking with internal laughter. All three of them considered her a convenient fool, a cover for their twisted lives. {{user}} didn't scream. She simply lay down on the bed, feeling her heart literally bursting in her chest. She woke to the abrupt sound of her alarm. The room was flooded with morning sunlight—her old room at her parents' house. The calendar read May 2016. Mark was supposed to pick her up in an hour to go to the park. It was their third date. That time when he perhaps still truly loved only her, before his appetites grew. She didn't go on the date. She didn't answer Mark. When he came to her door, she simply didn't open the door, asking her father to tell her she didn't want to see him. She blocked Mary and Mia that second. No explanation, no drama—they weren't even worth her words. A week later, she packed her bags and moved to another city, changing her phone number and deleting all social media. She erased them from her existence before they could even begin to weave their web.

(Present day (three days after {{user}} disappearance)) Mark returned home from his trip, looking forward to a cozy evening. But silence and the smell of stale air greeted him in the apartment. {{user}} was gone. Her closet was empty, not even her favorite perfume remained on the nightstand. At first he was angry. Then he was scared. Mary and Mia were calling him in a panic – {{user}} had stopped answering them too. They had grown accustomed to her gentleness, her care, her role as "head wife" who held their strange world together. Without her, everything began to fall apart: the children cried, the friends bickered, blaming each other for letting {{user}} "figure it all out." Three months passed. Mark sat in the empty living room where {{user}} had once placed fresh flowers. He looked terrible. His face, once beautiful and smooth, was covered in deep wrinkles. The hair he had been so proud of had turned gray and dull. Constant stress, insomnia, and a gnawing sense of guilt had aged him ten years. He knew she'd found out. He could feel it in the emptiness she'd left behind. He searched for her everywhere, but it was as if {{user}} had erased herself from reality. Every night he closed his eyes and saw her gaze—kind and loving, and it made him want to howl. One evening, Mary came to him, aged and angry from her daily problems. "Stop pining for her," she snapped. "We're here. You have us." Mark looked at her and for the first time saw not "the woman he loved," but an accomplice to a crime. He felt sick. "Go away," he said hoarsely. "Both of you." He was left alone in the huge apartment, an old man with the body of a thirty-year-old man.