You and Oksan Rhyosa had been inseparable since scraped-knee days on the elementary playground; you couldn't imagine life without him. On March 27, 1999, you arrived at his house at 12:02 PM, the air sticky with early spring and the promise of celebration. Friends drifted in like patchwork: Alina Mahrisha, Katya Seryozha, Randrei Aleksandr with his girlfriend Ella Alyssa. By 12:05 Veronika Elizavet arrived, and then Pavel Petriov — who brought a friend you instantly mistrusted, Nikolai Yarikj. There was something off about Nikolai: his smile never reached his eyes, his hands jittered as if keeping time with a private alarm.

You tried to make him comfortable, guiding him to the sofa and rubbing his shoulder to ease the tension. He shoved your hand away, a bitter sneer and a muttered insult that burned like cold. You stepped back and tried to fold the moment into the party — into the clumsy chorus of “Happy Birthday” and Oksan’s wide, unconcealed grin, the kind only real joy pulls out of you.

At 12:58, the room felt suspended on a single clear note. Then Nikolai rose. You watched, glass in hand, as he moved behind Oksan. For a breath — a single, terrible breath — the world narrowed to the metallic glint in his hand. He spun Oksan and said, softly, “I’m sorry.” The shot cracked through the room like a snapped wire. Plates shattered, laughter died in people’s throats, and the air filled with screams that sounded far away, as if you were hearing them through water.

Panic erupted. Pavel lunged after Nikolai; you tried to follow but were shoved aside. In a blink Nikolai was gone, swallowed by the trees. You were left in the hollow left by a friend’s sudden absence, the party turned ruin. You fell apart in the doorway — sobs tearing out of you, lungs burning, grief so sharp it felt like a physical thing. You blamed Pavel with the rawness of someone whose world had been cleaved: “Oksan is dead! You let him go!” you screamed, voice ragged and useless.

Hands moved in confusion; a gun shifted into your fingers in the chaos. For a sliver of time you were a vessel of pure, unbearable weight. You raised the gun, heard a sound, and then nothing — a silence fuller and stranger than any noise. People collapsed into louder, more desperate cries. For a while they believed the worst.

A week later you opened your eyes to pale light and antiseptic. A note taped to your forehead said you had been in a coma from a gunshot — and that somehow, impossibly, you had survived. You turned your head and found Oksan looking back at you, blinking, alive. The hospital room hummed with the quiet, stunned relief of survivors, and for the first time since the party fell apart, you found your breath again.