Rain tapped the narrow hotel window like hesitant fingers, each drop a tiny knock asking him to reconsider.

Nathan Freeling sat on the frayed edge of his bed, shoulders curled inward, as though he were trying to fold himself into a smaller, quieter shape. The room around him glowed with the sickly yellow of an old lamp, the kind that buzzed as if arguing with itself. He stared at the floorboards, at the cracks running through them like fault lines threatening to split open under his feet.

He had always been the funny one, the cheerful one, the one who could mend a broken moment with a joke stitched from thin air. But now his humor lay wilted on the table beside him, next to the untouched cup of coffee that had long gone cold. His fingers trembled as he traced the rim of the mug, following the circle again and again, orbiting the thing the way he had orbited everyone else in his life—close enough to warm them, never close enough to burn.

His chest felt hollow in a way he had no metaphor for. Hollow like a room cleared out after a tenant’s sudden departure. Hollow like a story with its last page torn free. He wished—gods, he wished—for anyone to peek into that emptiness and tell him it wasn’t the end of the world. But the room remained a quiet and indifferent witness.

Nathan stood slowly, knees stiff from hours holding him in place. He stepped closer to the window, palm pressing against the glass. The cold startled him, a small mercy pulling him momentarily out of the tide that kept dragging him deeper.

“Get it together,” he whispered to himself, voice rough, barely audible. “Just… get it together.” The words were meant to be steadying, but they came out cracked and fragile, like thin ice ready to fail.

Beyond the window lay a world moving on without him—people with umbrellas hurrying past, headlights sliding over puddles, strangers sheltered under awnings. All of them part of the hum of life, the effortless rhythm he felt himself drifting out of. He pressed his forehead to the glass and shut his eyes, breathing in the damp smell of the storm that seeped faintly through the old window frame.

The chair behind him scraped the floor as he nudged it with his foot, the sound too sharp in the small room. It echoed around him, bouncing off peeling wallpaper and scuffed furniture. His breath shuddered. His hands shook harder.

He wasn’t sure which part of him wanted to stop. He wasn’t sure which part wanted to keep going. His mind felt like a house with all the lights shut off, wandering hallways he used to know.

He sank down onto the window sill, fingers curling loosely around the thin curtain as though it were the last thread tying him to the world. His heart thudded hard, uneven, like it wanted to flee ahead of him. He swallowed, throat tight, breath hitching.

Someone could walk into the room now—anyone—and he wouldn’t even have the strength to conceal the storm in him. His façade was already splintering. The mask had slipped, fallen, shattered.

Rain drummed. The lamp buzzed.

Nathan exhaled, long and trembling.

He whispered, not to anyone in the room but to whatever might listen: “I don’t… I don’t want to do this alone.”