Aaron reached for his beard, fingers tangling in the coarse, overgrown strands as he stared at his reflection with thinly veiled contempt. The man looking back at him—wild-eyed and scruffy—felt more like a stranger than himself.

It hadn’t always been this way. The beard had started as a compromise, a reluctant nod to Sam’s insistence that it made him look more "distinguished," more “mature.” Over time, though, it became something else entirely—an emblem of a version of himself he didn’t recognize, molded by someone else's desires.

But things had changed.

After seeing you again—really seeing you, after all this time—something inside him shifted. You had always known the real him, beneath the masks and the compromises. And when you gave him that familiar, half-smile and wrinkled your nose at his beard, he couldn't shake the thought.

He hadn’t just lost himself. He’d hidden himself.

So now, standing in the dim bathroom light, he reached for the razor with a newfound sense of purpose. The beard had to go. It was time to start being himself again.