“Hey, aren’t you going to pay attention to me?”

Xiao Yi lowered his hand with his vape in tow and glanced behind him. V had woken up just a few minutes ago, and after getting dressed in clothes left behind by Xiao Qiu, he went to the balcony to find the house owner.

On the other hand, the house owner was curled up in a comforter and leaned back on the chair with his legs underneath him as if he were a cat getting ready for a nap. Alas, both the boys knew that wasn’t true, he’d spent the entire morning out on the balcony, looking at the world while smoking.

V sighed and grabbed a blanket from the couch inside before joining him, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. “Can I stay a few days?”

It was obvious to anyone looking that V had gone through hell in the past few weeks, his skin was pale, his eyes heavy and he looked as if he were ready to take another blow at any time.

“Yeah.” Xiao Yi agreed. How could he not? If he let V walk out of here today, it’d be like he was kicking an abandoned kitten out on the street, even though said abandoned kitten owned a company and some properties.

After V got the answer he wanted, he simply pulled one of the chairs next to Xiao Yi, set an ashtray on the table next to him, and wrapped himself in the blanket while taking a long puff. “How’d we end up like this?”

Xiao Yi raised his eyebrow.

“You know what I mean. Look at you, what have you done for the past four years?” Xiao Yi’s hand paused while V continued. “You’ve been laying in place like a fish stolen from the sea mid-nap. Meanwhile, I built a company, but my wife is trying to snatch it from me.”

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

The other person hummed in agreement, adding fire to the flame as he added. “We have nothing but money.”

“That’s right!” V stood on the chair, hugging his blanket close to him with one hand and raising his cigarette. “We have nothing going for us, but we’re not poor!”

“Hey, nothing going for us?”

“Well…”

“Shut up.”

V obediently sat back down, but this time he was turned to Xiao Yi. “You met with them?”

He didn’t need to explain more, Xiao Yi nodded his head.

“What are you going to do?”

What could he do? He looked at his phone again, for what must have been the hundredth time since being dropped off, and was unsurprisingly met with an empty screen. He shrugged and tried to play off his disappointment. “I think they just needed closure, I don’t think they’ll come to take me away again.”

They said they wanted things to go back to normal, but how could it? They may have been childhood friends, but that didn’t necessarily mean they would still be able to be friends in the future.

He glanced toward V, who looked as if he was about to say something and said. “People change.”

A bitter smile spread over V’s face. “That’s true, we all grow, I can only greet my old friends on their birthdays or special occasions…” He turned to light up his cigarette again. “But, did you get closure too?”

Closure…

He was able to have a conversation with them and set the record straight, and, although he felt guilty for what he heard from them and felt like he still deserved to be punished, he also knew it was time to let things go. The only thing is… He did still wish it could go back to what it was before, just like they did.

However, he could only shake his head with a small smile. “Yeah.”

He felt as though the chains holding him back were starting to crumble apart, piece by piece, falling to the abyss.

It was just about time to start living like a human again.