A few months have passed since the missing student incident, and most of the parents of the missing students have already accepted the fact that their children wouldn't come home. Then some of the families couldn't handle the loss and it had disastrous effects on them. Some parents had committed s*icide. Other parents blamed one another and were divorced, while the others simply drowned their sorrows in varying levels of depravity.
Elena's parents were in a much better state than the others since Erste was there to comfort them. Elena's parents had continued their life like normal hoping for the day their daughter would return to them. There was also Erste who also did not give up on the search like the police, but this time his way of searching was not self-destructive.
Not sure about the word if it's okay to write or not, so I just added a * just in case. Still, I'm pretty sure most of you would understand what the word is.