He's unhappy here, but he was unhappy back home too. They're different kinds of unhappy, maybe, but rooted in the same ground: loneliness. Despite the friends he spoke of, there was only one he felt he could actually talk to. That was Simon, whom he'd lost because of the sharp wedge of his duty dividing them. I hope you have a nice Christmas. And despite the friends he's made here, he can't shake the feeling that he's fundamentally on his own. His problems are a burden nobody else can carry; his feelings are alien.

Realizing that it's a strange thing to claim, Wilhelm tries to explain:

"My mom basically has my whole life planned out for me. If I go off-script even a little bit, she freaks out. I have to meet her expectations. I have to do it, because there's nobody else. Because Erik..."

It's still hard to say. That his brother is dead. Slowly, he gathers a breath and lets it go. The bit of grass he's been twisting and untwisting from his fingers falls back to the earth. Against his chest presses the weight that often comes chained to thoughts of the future, even now, with all his mother's expectations worlds away.

"Here at least I have some choice about what I do."

But that's overwhelming in its own way. Once, deep in an evening at the pub, he'd giddily proclaimed to Rhy that he could be anybody, anything. So far, he hasn't made much of that.