They say hindsight's 20/20. From where Chris sat on the bathroom floor, nothing was clear. Not the murky water standing in the sink, not the near-empty bottle of soju next to his knee. Not this uncontrollable constricting of his chest that he hadn't felt in months—years. He hadn't slept in several days, avoiding dreams that left him waking in a cold sweat. Stupid things that made no sense but invited a dark cloud to follow him around the remainder of the day. 

"Stress," he slurred at the empty room. "It's just stress." Comeback was officially in the works. Exciting, but some songs still needed final touches. He was thinking too hard, was all. A workaholic. A perfectionist.

The soju bottle mocked him. When had he ever responded to comeback stress in this way? He'd gone for walks, gone to the gym, gone to the studio. Why wouldn't this overwhelming sense of not fitting in his own skin go away?

His next breath caught in his throat. Closing his eyes, he shook his head to fight off the demon plaguing him. "I can do this," he whispered to himself. "It'll go away. I just need to distract myself." If there were ghosts in this apartment, they surely thought him a fool.

Someone had once joked that there was a ghost there that liked to steal socks and UNO cards. 

His eyes shot open. No. No. No. Not her. He couldn't handle this hopelessness on top of the absolute mess of all that.

Panic rose higher in his chest like a cresting wave in the ocean. Holding his breath, he counted to ten. When he opened his exhaled, he grabbed his phone off the sink. He unlocked the screen and opened contacts.

"I don't think she's good for you, mate," Felix's words from months ago bled into the forefront of his thoughts. "You can't keep going on like this, with all this fighting. It's not healthy." 

He was looking out for him like a good friend should, but he'd argued that Felix was wrong back then. All of them were. No one knew her as Chris did. It was difficult enough to find time to spend it with her, much less have the kids and her altogether at once. They had