Nathan stepped off the train and into the busy subway station, his mind still racing from everything that had happened. The station was a sea of movement—people flowing in and out of the trains like clockwork. He barely noticed them as he hurried through the turnstiles, his eyes glued to his phone as he quickly searched for the address of the idol concert venue.
The screen loaded with a map, showing that the venue was only about ten minutes away by foot. Relief washed over him. He could make it in time—maybe he could still salvage this situation before it got even more out of hand. But just as he was about to put his phone back in his pocket and start moving, something caught his eye. His wallpaper.
It was a picture of him and his father, taken when Nathan was ten years old. In the photo, they were standing at the edge of a playground, both grinning widely. Bernard had his arm around Nathan's shoulders, his face full of pride. Nathan remembered that day. His father had taken him to the park after school, and they had spent hours just talking, playing, and laughing. Back then, things had felt almost normal. Almost.
The sight of that picture tugged at something deep inside him, pulling him back to a time when everything had started to change. He felt his breath catch in his throat, and before he knew it, he was slipping into another memory, another piece of the past that he had tried to bury but couldn't escape.
He was ten years old again. Sitting in his father's apartment—a different place now, smaller than the home they used to have before the divorce. Bernard was sitting on the couch, staring blankly at the television, but Nathan knew his father wasn't really watching it. He had been acting strange lately, and Nathan had started to notice it more and more. His dad would talk to people who weren't there, have conversations with empty spaces in the room. Sometimes, his father would pause mid-sentence, as if listening to someone else, then respond with a nod or a laugh, as though everything was perfectly normal.
Nathan remembered how unsettling it had been, how confused he had felt. He was too young to understand what was happening, but he knew something was wrong. This wasn't the father he had known before.
The change had come after the divorce. It had been three years since his parents had split up, and at first, Nathan had thought things would get better. He had hoped that once the arguments stopped, once the tension in the house was gone, maybe they could all move on. But instead, his father had started to unravel.
Nathan could still remember the day he overheard his parents talking about it. His mother had come over to drop Nathan off after picking him up from school that day, and Bernard had confronted her. Nathan had been in his room, but the walls in that small apartment were thin, and their voices had carried.
"I saw them, Christine," Bernard had said, his voice trembling with anger. "Fifty messages. Fifty. How could you do this? How could you bring them into our home?"
His mother's voice had been quiet, almost pleading. "Bernard, it wasn't… It wasn't like that. I was lonely. You were always working, always away at night…"
"That's no excuse!" Bernard had shouted. "I worked those nights for us! For you and Nathan! And you… you threw it all away."
Nathan hadn't understood everything at the time, but he had known that something terrible had happened. He had later learned that his father had caught his mother cheating. She had been seeing other men while Bernard was at work, men she had brought into their home. Bernard had found the messages, confronted her, and that had been the end of their marriage.
It was devastating—a thirty-year relationship, starting from when they were children themselves, shattered in an instant. They had met when they were just ten years old, started dating at sixteen, and gotten married at twenty-five. Nathan had been born when his mother was thirty-three. For seven years, they had been a family. And then, just like that, it was over.
Nathan had always wondered if that was what had pushed his father over the edge. Losing his wife, his childhood best friend, the person he had spent most of his life with—it had been too much for Bernard to bear. He had always been a strong man, working a night job to support his family, but the divorce had broken something inside him. That was when he had started talking to people who weren't there, having conversations with ghosts. And not long after, his psychologist had diagnosed him with schizophrenia.
Nathan had never been able to shake the feeling that his father's illness had been triggered by the divorce, by the overwhelming stress of losing everything he had built over three decades. Maybe it was his way of coping. His way of dealing with the crushing loneliness that came with working nights, raising a child on his own, and having no one left to talk to. His mind had created someone to fill the void, someone to keep him company when the silence became unbearable.
Despite his illness, Bernard made sure to take prescribed medication to try and regulate his condition which got worse with age, and he had done his best to raise Nathan. He had tried so hard to be a good father, even when the world seemed to be falling apart around him. Nathan could still remember the day his father had come to pick him up from school. Bernard had been having a bad day, talking to one of his invisible friends as they walked through the schoolyard. A group of middle school students had seen them, and the teasing had started almost immediately. They had called his father "weird," "crazy," and many other insults, too many for Nathan to keep track of. Nathan had tried to ignore them, but the words had stuck with him, and the bullying had followed him for months afterward.
Still, Bernard had never let it completely break him. He had kept going, day after day, working hard to provide for Nathan and give him the best life he could. And as Nathan grew older, he began to see just how much his father had sacrificed for him, how much he had endured, even as his mind continued to deteriorate.
Thinking about these moments triggered another memory, he couldn't help but recall a pivotal moment in his life—meeting Sarah. He was 20 years old it had been during his second year of college, a time when he had tried his best to blend into the background, to avoid drawing attention to himself. His father's schizophrenia and the resulting strange behavior had made Nathan desire living a more introverted lifestyle. It was a kind of defense mechanism he developed: stay quiet, stay out of the way, and people would leave him alone.
He had been sitting in the campus café, nursing a coffee, his nose buried in a textbook. His usual seat was in the back corner, where he could observe without being observed. Nathan wore a plain navy hoodie and faded jeans, blending in with the sea of students around him. The noise of conversation and laughter felt distant, as if he were separated from it all by an invisible wall.
That's when Sarah approached him.
He hadn't noticed her at first, not until she was standing right in front of his table. "Mind if I sit here?" she had asked, her voice breaking through his bubble of isolation.
Nathan looked up, startled. Sarah stood there with a casual smile, her backpack slung over one shoulder. She was dressed in what he later came to recognize as her usual attire during that time. A simple striped t-shirt tucked into a pair of dark jeans and white sneakers. Her brown hair was tied into a loose ponytail, and a few strands had slipped free, framing her face in a way that made her seem effortlessly put together.
Nathan hesitated, glancing around the café as if unsure if she was really talking to him. "Uh… sure," he had mumbled, looking back down at his textbook, hoping she wouldn't stay long.
But she did stay. Sarah slid into the seat across from him and set her coffee on the table. For a moment, neither of them spoke, and Nathan kept his eyes glued to the pages of his book, though he wasn't really reading anymore.
"So… what are you studying?" Sarah asked, her tone casual, as if they were already friends.
"Uh, just some psychology stuff," Nathan replied, still not looking up. He didn't want to make small talk. He didn't want to get too close to anyone. People who got too close always found out about his father eventually, and then things got complicated.
But Sarah didn't seem to notice his reluctance—or if she did, she didn't let it bother her. "Psychology? That's cool," she said. "I'm taking an intro class right now. It's interesting, but also kind of intense. Lots of theories to remember."
Nathan nodded, not sure what to say. He was used to conversations fizzling out after a few awkward exchanges. But Sarah didn't leave. She just sipped her coffee and seemed perfectly content to sit there with him.
After a few minutes of silence, Nathan finally looked up at her, curiosity getting the better of him. "Why are you sitting here?" he asked bluntly. "There are plenty of other tables."
Sarah smiled, and it wasn't the forced smile he often saw from people who didn't know what to say to him. It was genuine. "I don't know," she said with a shrug. "You seemed like someone worth talking to. And this seemed like a good spot for a conversation."
Nathan blinked, taken aback by her directness. "I'm… not really great at conversation."
"That's okay," Sarah replied easily. "I can do the talking. You just… be you."
Nathan didn't know how to respond to that. He was used to people either tiptoeing around him or prying into his life, trying to get details about his father's condition as if it were some kind of gossip. But Sarah didn't ask about any of that. She just started talking—about her classes, her favorite music, the café's terrible coffee, and how she kept coming back anyway because it was cheap.
And slowly, Nathan found himself relaxing. He didn't say much, but he didn't feel the need to. Sarah seemed comfortable filling the silence, and for the first time in a long time, Nathan didn't feel like he had to hide, but her accepting attitude inspired him to try being more outgoing with her.
It wasn't until weeks later that Nathan told her about his father's schizophrenia. He had expected her to react like everyone else—with awkwardness, discomfort, or even pity. But when he finally brought it up, she just nodded thoughtfully, as if he had mentioned something as mundane as the weather.
"That must be hard," she had said, her tone calm and understanding. "I mean, everyone's got something they're dealing with, right?"
Her words had floored him. He had spent so much of his life trying to keep people at a distance, afraid that they would judge him for his father's illness. But Sarah… she didn't judge. She didn't flinch. She just accepted it, accepted him.
And that was the moment Nathan felt he had found someone special.
"When I had gone off to college, things had gotten even harder, but I had met Sarah during my second year, and she had been the one person who hadn't been scared off when she found out about my father's condition." They had been together for six years now, and she had been a rock for him, always understanding, always supportive. Nathan didn't know what he would do without her.
And now, here he was, caring for his father the way his father had once cared for him. It wasn't easy—every day was a struggle, a balancing act between work, life, and trying to make sure his father was safe. But Nathan knew he couldn't give up on Bernard. Not after everything his father had been through, not after everything he had done for him.
That was why he wanted to stop this concert incident before it gets too out of hand. His father's legacy deserved better than that. Nathan had to find him.
Nathan blinked, snapping out of the flash from the past as he found himself standing still in the middle of the subway station. He realized that his hands were trembling, and when he looked down at his phone, he saw that his eyes were welling up with tears.
With a deep breath, he wiped his eyes and shook his head, trying to pull himself together. There was no time for this. He had to keep moving. He had to find his father before things got any worse.
Clutching his phone tightly, Nathan started to run. The sound of his footsteps reverberated through the station as he ran up the stairs, out into the city streets. The venue wasn't far now. He could make it.