One day in Seoul 🇰🇷

🇰🇷: 25

The morning felt unusually quiet. It was as if the house itself was holding its breath. I was in the kitchen, mindlessly making coffee, trying to shake off the remnants of last night's anger. Paul, John, Hugo-every one of them was still gnawing at the back of my mind. But as I walked into the living room, my focus shifted entirely to Nathan.

He was lying on the couch, staring at the ceiling, looking pale and worn out. There was something off about him, something that had been eating away at him ever since we left Katarina's hospital. His eyes, usually full of life and sarcasm, seemed distant.

I sat down in the armchair across from him, coffee in hand. "You alright?" I asked, breaking the silence.

Nathan sighed, his gaze still fixed on the ceiling. "Not really, man."

"What's going on?" I pressed. He'd been acting strange ever since we left the hospital, and I wasn't about to let it slide any longer. Nathan wasn't the type to just lay around looking defeated like this.

"Memories," he muttered, his voice barely above a whisper. "They keep flashing in my head, especially since we went to the hospital."

I leaned forward, suddenly more alert. "What kind of memories?"

Nathan turned his head slightly to look at me, his expression clouded with confusion. "I don't know exactly... it's still unclear. But they're from when I was a kid. It's like something's trying to break through, but I can't make sense of it yet."

My gut tightened. "What do you mean?"

He sat up slowly, wincing as if the weight of the memories was physically painful. "When I was young, my parents told me I'd been in an accident. I don't remember anything from before that day. I just woke up in a hospital, and the only thing I knew was the people sitting beside my bed, who told me they were my parents."

I stared at him, my coffee forgotten in my hand. Nathan had never told me about this before. An accident? A loss of memory? This was huge.

"Your whole childhood?" I asked, trying to process what he was saying.

He nodded. "Yeah. It's like there's this huge chunk of my life that's just... gone. I've tried to ignore it for years, but now it's like the memories are trying to come back. I don't know why, but something about being in that hospital triggered it."

A heavy silence fell between us. I didn't know what to say. Nathan's carefree attitude, his jokes, his laid-back demeanor-it was all a front, hiding something much deeper. And now that his past was trying to catch up with him, he didn't know how to handle it.

"You need to seek help," I finally said, breaking the silence. "Someone like Katarina. She's a psychiatrist, she might be able to help you figure out what's going on."

Nathan shook his head immediately, the tension in his body rising. "I can't go back to that hospital. It's too painful. I don't know what it is, but being there-it's like a punch in the gut every time."

I frowned, thinking it over. He wasn't wrong. The hospital clearly triggered something in him, and asking him to go back there would only make things worse. But if anyone could help him, it was Katarina.

"What if she come here?" I suggested. "A private consultation, away from the hospital. If it's not too much for her, I can ask her."

Nathan looked hesitant. "I don't want to bother her, Francis. She's got her own problems to deal with. And this... this is just my mess."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "You're not bothering anyone. And this isn't just your mess, Nathan. If these memories are coming back, there's a reason for it. You need to get help before it starts eating you alive."