"Regardless of what we do, where we go, in the end, we all must return to the same place. It is not a matter of choice. We live such long, excruciating lives, only to realize we've always just been looking for home. And hence, we must return. We trace our footsteps back to where we started. But by the time we reach there, we realize that we're standing on the brink of the end."

"What a sad story", she answered in her head to the story some corner of her own mind had played out before her like it was a TV show.

Once again, she was heading to the high-rise apartment. A few bones were out of place, her head was half open, and she was flailing about like a ragdoll. Indeed, the world was just a swirl, pulling everything into the sinkhole.

The red sky above and the distant sounds of children saying goodbye to their friends in the playground made her realize that she was close now.

The red brick high-rise building with overgrown plants here and there soon came into view.

"A bubble."

She floated deliriously to the building and to her apartment on the 17th floor. She flung the door open and looked around in the cramped apartment. The sun was still bright enough to light up the room.

A man sitting in front of the window, with a laptop on a shoddy wooden table, binoculars, and all sorts of electronic equipment, turned his head around in her welcome. With his cigarette pursed between his lips, he barely spared her much attention.

She quickly swung herself into the adjacent bathroom. She leaned on the sink.

"God."

She muttered unfeelingly before collapsing on the ground.

She gasped for some breath and then lifted herself up again, holding onto the blue porcelain sink.

She coughed blood, fell on her knees, barely kept her head up, and after a noisy session of 30 minutes, appeared outside the bathroom.

The man, who was wearing headphones, lifted his gaze from the laptop again and spared her a quick glance before she picked up her shoes that she'd washed in the bathroom and disappeared out the front door.

The man immediately got up and went to the bathroom.

Blue was now red. The shower, curtains, walls, the mirror, the toilet, the pool of blood in the sink...He turned straight back instead of going about his business and looked at the front door she'd left through.

Would he follow her?

Nope. Yulia would be back eventually. More importantly, he was late.

He looked back at the laptop screen that was still on. He went over to the window and picked up the binoculars from the table. He looked straight ahead.

A woman on the high rise right across the complex was hanging her laundry. Quite likely, her undergarments at this hour. Her balcony was full of flower pots, none of which were flowering at the moment.

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He watched her hang her laundry. And when she was done, she slipped behind the curtain and went inside.

The man opened up the Chinese wardrobe at the back and took out a suit. He had to get dressed. The bloody bathroom wasn't an option. He could just change in the room. Yulia wasn't going to be back.

Fitted into the bluish black business suit, he began putting his hair back. His pale blue Russian eyes did his well-defined Chinese features much too good. He could look almost too desirable when he wanted to. And that's exactly what he needed right now. But time was ticking away.

He spared a last glance at the watch on his wrist and hurried out the front door.

**************************

Yulia's flaxen hair no longer glistened white. The sun had gone down. She danced her way across the road and under the bridge, all the way to the wharf, where some idiot was pumping opium into his bloodstream.

She danced under a street lamp while he cooked it up and filled the injection. He checked the syringe once or twice, and when everything was ready, he rolled up his sleeves. He put the needle on his arm, and SHAKK!!!

The syringe fell from his hand. His eyes popped wide in surprise. Something was sticking in his back. But he couldn't move his head.

A cold feeling ran through him almost too suddenly. He was light-headed and numb as a warm pool of blood formed at his feet.

A grinning face appeared on his side, and he barely moved his head to catch a glimpse of it. He thought it was some yellow-haired demon.

In her half-crazed passion, she twisted the knife in his back, and the junkie felt the life leaving him. He dropped headfirst into the pool of his blood.

Yulia stabbed him 29 times, all the while hollering in a fit of excitement and delirium. She would have gone on stabbing him and raising fountains of his blood, had she not, in her crazed state, seen that figure she always, always caught at the end of the day.

Such a distant figure, reflected like the glare of traffic lights in the still water of the wharf. She was frozen in her place. Her mouth curled in a smile. Her eyes filled with a sad longing. Sleepiness overcame her.

That man, in the halo of some strange yet very familiar light, whose face she couldn't see, was the last link to her old life. Someone she held dear—someone who was still hanging around.

******************

Niko stood leaning against the desk, awaiting something, a cigarette pursed between his lips, fixing his bluish black suit for the hundredth time. The office building was mostly evacuated. They were having a party in the hall. No one would come inside. He took another chance at the cigarette and then put it out on the desk.

The room was lit up only by the light of the moon, furnishing that room with its silvery rays.

He heard the door open and the sound of footsteps in the dark. He stood poker-faced, unmoving.

The approaching footsteps revealed a dark man with clear, void-like dark eyes and a moon reflected in his clear skin.

Niko pretended that he had neither been waiting nor expecting him. He stood frozen in his place.

The man slowly walked over to him, stopping short and bowing his head.

"You aren't supposed to be here, Zhang", Niko said, walking over to him.

The visitor looked down. Perhaps he wasn't so happy being there. Niko grabbed his wrist and pulled him in, all with an unassuming face. Regardless of whatever that moonlit night brought on, none of it mattered to him.

Zhang didn't make any effort to free himself from his embrace. Niko's eyes were as lifeless as ever, as if this was just a formality, a chore he had to get through.

On the contrary, with a flicker in his deep black eyes, a devilish smile played out on Zhang's face, in the midst of all that pleasure.

**********************

Yulia crashed through the door like usual. It was dark inside that tiny, one-room apartment. She leaned against a wall to hold herself up and then went over to the table. The lights were out in the apartment straight ahead, across the complex. It was past midnight, so that was obvious.

Niko was clearly not coming home tonight. Seeing the opportunity, Yulia flung her wet boots off. She'd had to dump a body in the river, and the water splashed onto her.

She dropped into the single bed in the corner of the room. The crumpled sheets smelled like tobacco. And they stuck to her half-wet clothes. It was hot, but she slept, dreaming of some past life.

********************

Sweat had swathed his hair by the time he walked all the way back to the apartment. He wanted to wash his hands very badly.

He opened the door, which had never once been locked in their entire time in that apartment. The keys were lost by now. He stepped inside quietly and went over to the window, picking up the binoculars.

The curtains were drawn, and the lights were out. Very natural course of action for 3 in the morning. He looked through the binoculars, trying to see the opposite balcony in the dark. Not much good could be drawn from it; he soon put them down.

He turned his head towards the corner where the sound of light breathing was coming from. Yulia was asleep in the lone bed. He wasn't supposed to come home for the night. But he'd had a sudden urge to run away from Zhang, whose smell was still clinging onto his handsome suit.

Now he couldn't wait to get out of those clothes, but Yulia had likely not cleaned the bathroom. He went over to the Chinese wardrobe and opened it with a creak. He didn't care about keeping it down, though he had no intention of waking her.

He quickly removed his clothes and flung them to the side carelessly. Taking out an old shirt, he dressed for the night and lit a cigarette. The moon was all the way to the right now. Sadly, the apartment complex wouldn't let him see it going down.

After a swig or two, he put down the cigarette on the window sill and sprawled on the lone divan at the other end of the room, beside the Chinese wardrobe. His eyes were heavy, and the tickle of Zhang's hair still lingered on his neck.