The focus of the narrative switches to Andrew, describing his life after he returned to Moscow following what he believed to be his and Pablo's last conversation. What Pablo said and how he said it was not just painful to Andrew. It was a real trauma. No one else could have hurt him this deeply because no one else knew how much his dreams about emigration meant to him. He was authentic with Pablo trusting him with his vulnerable hopes about staring over and building a better future, and now that Pablo reduced these hopes to "dirty lust" he feels as betrayed and abused and abandoned as he has ever felt in his life. The previous year when Pablo left Moscow, he felt like he had to bury his dreams about being together, and now he feels like the grave of his love was vandalized. As the weeks roll in, he doesn't notice that he sinks into a paralyzing clinical depression, the condition he has never experienced despite living so many years in sadness. Now, his grief is inconsolable and bottomless, and it engulfs his soul and his body making him indifferent to everything. His sleep gradually shrinks to two hours a night. His appetite goes away completely. His ability to experience joy and please from anything disappears. Worse, with time his memory and concentration are increasingly impaired. The condition makes it more and more difficult for him to function at the outpatient clinic, and a few months later it gets so bad that he has to quit it and becomes unemployed. Realizing that he no longer has a purpose to earn and amass money, as small as it was, he hopes to find a relief from the horrors of his trauma in spending all days long with his daughter. But it does not work. Instead, he is yet more appalled to see that his mental illness robbed him of all feelings, including his love for the kid, which he believed to be unconditional, indestructible, and inalienable. Benumbed and isolated from Nathalie and Sofia who see his condition but feel unable to help him, Andrew sinks increasingly deeper in the murky hole of his bottomless grief as months go by.
One August morning, grey-clouded and gloomy and sizzling hot, he sees a call to his mobile phone from an unknown Spanish number. When he picks up, he hears Pablo mother's voice. Andrew is stupefied as she gives him a brief account of what happened to Pablo since their fight in February and says that her son has gone missing for a few days. Through her sobs, she asks Andrew if he has heard from Pablo in these days. She and her husband still cannot make sense of why their friendship ended so abruptly, and she hoped Pablo could contact him. She vividly describes the utter despair that Pablo was in when she last saw him and his words that sounded like suicidal thoughts. Andrew says that he's never heard anything from Pablo since February, but he immediately understands the overwhelming despair and guilt Pablo feels after such outcome of his marriage. Unlike Pablo's parents, he knows the story behind it. His thoughts go racing as he tells Doña Juana that he will come to Barcelona on the first flight he can catch. He lived these months believing that his love for Pablo was dead among his other feelings, but now he feels like he must not allow Pablo to commit the irreversible. He wants Pablo to be alive. He wants Pablo to be happy because he still believes that Pablo deserves happiness. Because, after all, he still loves Pablo. His mental condition is terrible, and after hanging up he musters enormous effort to concentrate on what exactly he should do next. He flips through the pages of his passport and finds out that his Spanish visa is luckily still valid. He tells a clumsy lie to his wife and mother-in-law as he feverishly packs his luggage. Worried about Andrew's sanity, they try to stop him, but he leaves for the airport anyway.
Arriving in Barcelona, Andrew goes to Escappo the first thing. It is that spot in the wilderness of Montjuic where he and Pablo had their heartbreaking conversations. He knows that this place has meant a lot to Pablo for years and he frequently comes here to reflect on his life. He hopes to find a clue about Pablo's whereabouts there. In fact, he finds a paper note written by Pablo one day before and addressed to him. It's a suicide note. Andrew is mortified as Pablo says goodbye to him and asks his pardon, telling about his intention to off himself. Andrew realizes that the words Pablo said to his parents were not just desperate figures of speech. He meant them.
Now, understanding that his presentiment became reality, Andrew is completely lost. In the note, Pablo gave no clue how he was going to off himself and where he was going to do that. If he jumped off the mountain slope right here, his body would have already been found. As Andrew sits there in the paralysis of his mental agony, Doña Juana calls him and says that Pablo was spotted a few hours ago by Daniel, one of his high school friends who is aware of him having gone missing. Pablo was finishing to refuel his Mercedes-Benz at a gas station, and started off with a jerk as soon as Daniel approached him on his bike. Daniel tried and failed to catch up with him and watched Pablo barrel onto a highway leading away from the city.
Filing a police statement remains legally impossible because too few days have passed since Pablo's disappearance and undesirable due to his public status and imminent scandal at the club, so his mother urgently finds a private detective. Andrew keeps silence about the note he found, but both parents and he realize the very real threat of Pablo's suicide. His father and Andrew decide to comb neighboring countryside by car. Even though it looks like a desperate enterprise with all-but-zero chance of success, they can't just sit around and wait. Andrew picks up a rental car, and they exit the city in different directions, scanning for Pablo's readily noticeable luxury sedan through the towns and along the highways, stopping at gas stations and roadside shops, showing the photos of Pablo and his car, looking for any trace. During the first day of their quest, they find none. Andrew's excruciating symptoms of depression aggravate as he is overwhelmed by powerlessness, understanding that finding Pablo is practically impossible. He stays overnight in a motel, and the next morning Doña Juana calls him and tells him she got a speeding ticket in their mailbox, from a highway camera that caught Pablo's car the day before, in the area close to Andrew's current location. Andrew immediately rushes to continue his search and in an hour stumbles upon the first trace — showing Pablo's photo in another motel, he finds out that Pablo bought a meal and slept there. The host's description of Pablo's appearance and behavior makes Andrew think that Pablo is still acutely distressed and contemplating suicide. Andrew rushes away, desperately praying to God for being able to find Pablo before it is too late. As he speeds through countryside and watches the empty land burnt out by scorching sun, it dawns upon him that the nightmare ending in Pablo's suicide, the one that chased him for years, now has become reality. Andrew floors the gas squeezing the shit out of his rented car's engine. He chooses roads and turns by pure intuition, deepening into the backwoods of the country, but his chase bears no fruit until a miracle happens. When he is speeding down another empty country road, he spots a little girl standing alone aside on the roadside in distance. As he pulls closer, he sees that she wears the white lace dress, so familiar from his haunting nightmare. He rolls down the window, and the girl asks him to give her a ride home, which is a few miles away. Before Andrew is able to utter a word, she unlocks the door and hops in the car. Following the lines of his nightmare, she says she knows where to find who he's looking for. Andrew wonders if he's gone crazy or dead in a car crash, but he has no other option but to believe her. Giving him directions to her home, she guides him to a town near which he finally sees Pablo's white Mercedes-Benz sedan amidst an empty motel parking lot.
Andrew charges into the motel and makes straight to Pablo's room, bumping against the locked door and silence inside. It doesn't take him long to batter the door down, and inside he sees Pablo lying on the floor after what he believes to be an narcotic drug overdose. Pablo's pulse and breath are present though weak. In a split second, he realizes that the drug hasn't been fully absorbed and induces Pablo's vomiting reflex before calling the ambulance. Watching his loved one's pulse and breath and ready start CPR at any moment, Andrew realizes that his nightmare came true almost fully except the ending. After torments and desperation, despite shattered hope and lost faith, he nevertheless outrun Pablo's death by the narrow margin.
He phones Don Alberto and they meet in a general country hospital where Pablo is brought in. Fortunately, a few hours later both he and the father are informed that Pablo's life is out of danger. Shortly after, the footballer regains consciousness. Due to privacy concerns, Don Alberto insists that his son be discharged, assuring the doctors that he can safely transport Pablo to a private clinic in Barcelona where his admission is already arranged by his wife. Pablo is crushed by guilt and shame and still groggy from the drug when he sees Andrew and learns that he was the one who saved him. He does not say a word to Andrew as they drive back to Barcelona.
Even though the overwhelming stress is behind and his loved one is safe after the salvation that only he knows has happened by virtue of a miracle, Andrew's own mental affliction is not any relieved. The symptoms of his depression are unrelenting in the days when Pablo recovers. His sleep is impaired. He does not have a ghost of appetite. He avoids to visit Pablo at the clinic. He avoids to speak with his parents. He avoids to go out anywhere, and even when he forces himself to do so, the city of his dreams, which once felt so vibrant and beautiful, now feels as grey and gloomy as Moscow. Unlike Pablo's parents, he is aware that the aftermath of their doomed love and Pablo's sense of guilt — not the dope scandal in his career — was the main reason behind his suicidal intent. He realizes that he and Pablo will inevitably have to talk and confront the truth, but he can't find any words to say, nor does he see any solution.
In order to have a face-to-face conversation impossible at home with Pablo's parents around, Andrew forces himself to come to the clinic and see Pablo in the morning of his scheduled discharge day. He sees that unlike himself, Pablo isn't stuck and paralyzed. Instead, Pablo is repentant but active, willing to fix the mistakes he made and mend the harm he inflicted. He says that Andrew having saved him made him finally accept that God approves of their relationship and that their love is a blessing rather than a sin. He regrets that it took him causing so much misery to Andrew and himself to realize that. He says he is ready to start a new life together. He encourages Andrew to move over to Spain and start his medical career there, expressing his willingness to pay all the costs Andrew's emigration and prep education implies. He admits that he has already accumulated enough wealth for both of them and his parents to live for decades in full material security without having to work. Yes, now he is ready to come out to his parents, and proceed with their relationship regardless of how they react. He says that he will not be afraid to acknowledge it publicly either, and he will not regret if he gets blocked out of professional sports because of sexual orientation. Just as Andrew is ready to start from scratch, so is he. He says that his assets will allow him to start a private business, and he is ready to assume it as his new occupation. All in all, Pablo finally makes the long expected proposal to Andrew — the proposal of making his better future happen.
But alas, it is already too late. Taking a long pause to find the right words after Pablo's speech, Andrew reveals to him that he is mentally ill, so, in his perception, there's no longer a way he can accept the proposal. Now, every part of that better future he once dreamt of is nothing more than dust and ashes because he lost the most precious thing — his health. He believes that his mental and intellectual functions are permanently damaged, so even if he moves over he will not be able to build a successful career in Spain. He says that he can no longer love Pablo's back since he lost the ability to feel love as well as all other feelings. Because of his illness, he lost the ability to feel joy and happiness, so it's all pointless. Now, after his rescue mission in Pablo's life has been accomplished, he believes that the reason why they met has been honored, so it's time for him to go away and for Pablo for erase him and their love for his heart. Whether Pablo meets a man or a woman, he says he wants him to be happy and he believes himself to no longer be able to give Pablo the happiness he deserves. It turns out that he is going to come back to work at the academic hospital where he got previously sacked because vacations opened there after the surgeons on the take moved to another institution. Andrew's new position will be even lower than his former one was, and he hopes that he will be able to function there despite his mental impairment. He is willing to settle for corruption and poverty. He believes his debilitating illness to be a God-sent punishment for his ambition to have a better life.
Pablo is in shock when Andrew finishes his delusional soliloquy. He realizes that Andrew is actually clinically sick, and the severity of his condition is obvious from his way of thinking. Unlike Andrew, he is sane enough to understand that the root cause behind Andrew's depression is not a "God-sent punishment" but the trauma he inflicted on him with his betrayal. Seeing the real nature of his disease, Pablo reasonably argues that it can be cured only if Andrew accepts his invitation, relocates to Spain for good and starts a new life from scratch by his side. Pablo understands why Andrew's dreams and feelings now feel burnt out and ruined, but he knows that they can rise from the ashes. He is sure that his love and care will have enough healing power to mend Andrew's broken mind, perhaps with support of psychoactive drugs and therapy; at the same time coming back to Russia and settling for misery of his life there is what will perpetuate Andrew's clinical depression and actually doom him to lifelong suffering.
Despite the clear logic in Pablo's arguments, Andrew has no more courage and no more faith. He no longer believes in himself. He no longer believes in his own worth and goodness. He no longer believes that he can belong anywhere and with anyone. He no longer believes that he deserves a better future, even if it is actually possible. Depression tore down the fabric of his soul, as he believes, beyond repair. As Pablo keeps trying to disprove his delusions confronting him with reality, Andrew's cell phone rings. His hitherto deflated and emotionless face is distorted by horror when Sofia tells him that Nathalie and Ann got into a major traffic accident and survived but are severely injured. Appalled and unable to say anything sensible to Pablo, he hurriedly leaves him and flies back to Moscow. Their conversation is interrupted before Pablo finds the moment to tell Andrew about the vision he watched on the peak of drug intoxication, his brain struggling between life and death. He found himself crawling on the dirt ground, powerless to stand up, his entire body aching, seeing tunnel walls around him and a bright light in distance. As he struggled to move, he saw a figure walking towards him from that distance. When the figure approached, he discerned a little girl wearing a white lace frock. She sat down next to Pablo, rested a hand on his shoulder, whispered into his ear, "Papi, your time is not yet come. You have to go back."