I met Nathan when we were kids. He was small, quiet, always looking over his shoulder like the world had already beaten him down. And in many ways, it had.

His parents died on their wedding anniversary. Shot dead in their home while he hid in a closet, pressing a hand over his mouth to keep from screaming. The police never found the killer. Just a shadow on a security camera—blurred, faceless, gone.

Nathan was swallowed by the foster system after that.

He bounced from one house to another, each worse than the last. Some families were indifferent, others cruel. One foster father used to lock him in a basement for "talking back." Another took the government’s checks but never bought food, leaving Nathan to dig through trash cans behind grocery stores.

Poverty clung to him like a second skin. Hunger carved sharp edges into his face. He wore the same worn-out hoodie for three years because every cent he made went to survival. And when he wasn’t fighting to stay alive, he was fighting off people who wanted to see him suffer more.

The neighbors in his last foster home hated him. Said he was cursed. A bad omen. One old man spat at his feet whenever he passed. A woman accused him of stealing when he hadn’t even looked her way. A group of boys jumped him in an alley once, breaking his ribs just because they could.

He never fought back.

He should have.

I would have.

But Nathan? He just took it. Like he was punishing himself for something he had no control over.

Then, one night, the past came back.

A fire broke out in a run-down apartment complex on the south side of town. The kind of fire that swallowed everything in minutes. People ran, screaming, choking on smoke. The whole sky turned red.

Nathan was there.

I don’t know how he recognized the man through the flames. Maybe it was instinct. Maybe it was fate. But when he saw him—the murderer who had stolen everything from him—Nathan didn’t turn away.

The man was trapped on the top floor. Flames licking at his heels. The same faceless shadow that had left Nathan an orphan was now gasping for breath, helpless, begging for mercy.

And Nathan?

He went in.

I screamed at him not to. I told him to let the fire finish what it started. But Nathan… he wasn’t built like that.

He found the man in a corner, coughing, burning, terrified. And instead of watching him suffer, instead of taking the revenge he had every right to claim—Nathan carried him out.

Or tried to.

By the time they reached the stairwell, the ceiling caved in. Firefighters pulled out one body, then another.

Nathan’s murderer survived. He walked away with burns and bruises but alive.

Nathan didn’t.

The boy who lost everything. The boy who should have hated. The boy who deserved justice, peace, love—he was the one who didn’t make it.

And the world kept turning like it hadn’t just lost the best person I’d ever known.