CHAPTER 33

“Cang Wu, who are those people in the photos?”

“Those?” Cang Wu follows my line of sight. “Oh, those are pictures of my brothers and mother.”

Cang Wu reaches out and plucks some photos for me to see. In the photo, standing beside him are his mother and twin brothers.

“My two younger brothers are more like my mother, and I am more like my father.” When Cang Wu mentions his mother and brothers, Cang Wu’s expression becomes significantly softer as he talks about his family’s past one after another.

I have never seen such a talkative Cang Wu. He is full of vigor, different from his usual indifferent seriousness, and is actually more humane. This suddenly reminds me that Gu Yan once said that I…

Cang Wu must be the same as me, yearning for his loved ones as much as I do.

“Cang Wu… Don’t you hate Tian Hai?”

I raise my eyes and stare intently at Cang Wu’s pair of dark pupils.

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──Just as I feel for Gu Yan, it’s impossible to turn hate to love.

“Ye ShiJiu… Yaren didn’t misunderstand it.”

Looking at my impudent surprise, Cang Wu only smiles bitterly, and gazes at me like a loving elder brother.

“I don’t understand…” I don’t understand, and at the same time, I want to avoid understanding it.

“I know that perhaps, because you are the person who understands my situation best, it is all the more incomprehensible.” Cang Wu lets out another faint sigh, “But you’ve been here for the shortest amount of time, thus Yaren knows me more deeply. You also don’t know what happened in the Absolute Wing Hall before.”

“Cang Wu…”

“Ye ShiJiu── Tian Hai and I have known each other for a long time, even before we entered the Absolute Wing Hall… You’re not involved in what happened between me and Tian Hai, so you can’t understand that my feelings for him are so complicated that even I can’t explain it myself.”

“So, you really like Tian Hai?”

“Like? That kind of feeling… I guess so.” Cang Wu finishes the beer in his hand, squeezes it flat and throws it into the trash can.

I no longer continue to respond, and simply stare at the beer on my hand. The water droplets adhering to the beer can have soaked my fingertips, and my mouth is filled with the somewhat bitter aftertaste of beer.

I myself is shocked stupid by my self-righteousness without knowing anything, which makes me feel ridiculous and abandoned as if I’m the only one who’s kept in the dark.

A big hand suddenly pats me on my head and rubs it.

“Don’t put on such a distressed face, it doesn’t matter if you don’t understand anything …” Under the dim light, Cang Wu’s slightly drunken and languid expression looks calm and gentle. His face is placed at the hollow of his palm, and his eyelids seem a little heavy due to sleepiness. “It’s not that easy. You cannot know everyone’s affairs all at once, because inside the Absolute Wing Hall── there’s always a story behind each person.”

****

I’m currently standing at the corner of a long corridor, watching the prisoners who are busy cleaning up.

In the afternoon before dinner, there’s a period of cleaning time arranged for the prisoners, which should be mandatory for everyone. But I observed that until now, because of the class (floor) division, almost everything is still done by the prisoners on the second and third floors.

The prisoners on the second and third floors are responsible for many things, including the work in the kitchen, laundry department, cleaning department, and etc… They are all in charge.

“Gui Shang! Wait for me…”

I cross my arms around my chest and do not move a muscle as I watch the tall figure walking towards me, which is followed by Yaren whose voice could be heard even from a distance.

Yaren probably left his duties behind again and ran to haunt Gui Shang.

“Go away! You’re such a pain in the ass!”

The impatient Gui Shang swings past me. At first, he did not notice me, but when he catches a glimpse of me, he immediately greets me with a slap on my arm, knocking my body out of my standing still position.

I awkwardly stroke my sore arm, barely managing to put on a smile to say hello, and mumble to my heart, ‘I hope next time Gui Shang will say hello in a better way than this wild greeting.’

“Gui Shang!” Yaren arrives a step later and witnesses the scene where Gui Shang greeted me, which seems to make him quite unhappy. “Why did you take the initiative to say hello to Little lamb? I usually greet you, yet you don’t even throw a glance at me. It’s unfair!”

“Ah! You’re so annoying!” Gui Shang rolls his eyes, takes a step forward, and starts dashing away.

“Wait for me!” Yaren starts to sprint as well and sticks to Gui Shang again. Coming and going as chaotic as stormy wind and rain, this is how these two people always run around, making it hard for people to figure them out.

The atmosphere between Gui Shang and Yaren is truly unfathomable.

Gui Shang once told me that he had only hate for Yaren, but in fact, I have never seen Gui Shang with someone else aside from Yaren. And apart from impatience, I had also only seen him give an expression of pure disgust, but not hate. Was it that I had simply not seen it or was it…

Suddenly, a heavy object hits my back. Startled, I turn around in reflex, only to find that the person behind me is more startled than I am.

“Sorry, sorry!” The teenager who bumped into me bows over and apologizes to me in a hurry.

“You are…” I look at the teenager who’s slightly shorter than me. With his short, sleek yellow hair and honey-colored complexion, I quickly recognize him, “Josh?”

“Uh… You know me?” Josh’s eyes are like those of a cowering, curious little bunny. His foot injury seems to have healed, because he’s no longer wrapped in gauze like last time.

“Ahh.. Teal told me about you… Are you okay?”

Josh’s forehead is filled with patches of redness, the force when he hit me earlier isn’t small.

“I’m fine! I’m really sorry, I was a little absent-minded just now, so I accidentally bumped into you.” Josh laughs dryly in embarrassment, holding a broom and dustpan in his hand, he probably just finished his work.

“It’s okay, just be careful from now on…” I glance at the necklace that fell on the floor earlier and bend down to pick it up, “Did you drop this?”

The necklace is made out of a silver chain, strung with about a coin-sized oval silver jewel.

“Yes! Thank you!”

Josh hurriedly takes away the necklace from my grasp and carefully checks whether the necklace is damaged. When he breaks off the oval-shaped silver jewelry from one side, I realize that his necklace’s pendant is the kind where a photo can be placed in the middle.

“Luckily it’s not dirty.” Josh lets out a relieved smile.

I then happen to spot the photo in his necklace. It’s a pretty girl with a few similarities between her’s and Josh’s looks.

“Is that…?” I ask.

“My sister.” Josh answers, his sunny smile matching the one I observed while he was happily watching from the sidelines of the basketball court.

“Your sister? Are you the oldest brother, or do you have siblings older than you?”

“No, it’s just me and my sister.”

“What a coincidence, just the same as me.” I couldn’t help but feel an affinity bond with Josh.

“Uh…right, right, that…” Josh stammers a little, making me wonder if I’m stressing him out by initiating the conversation with him.

“Hmm?”

“I’m really sorry about last time, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Last time? Ah…” I immediately grasp what incident Josh is talking about. “It doesn’t matter, you can’t be blamed for that one.”

“But if I hadn’t asked you for help, you wouldn’t have…”

“Silly boy, anyone in that situation would have asked for help, right? Don’t worry about it.” I smile and pat Josh’s shoulder.

“…Thank you.”

Josh embarrassedly raises his face. Such a genuine child who makes people feel very comfortable. I don’t understand why such a youth entered the Absolute Wing Hall. What serious crime did he commit?

“That…” Josh seems to want to say something more to me, but he hesitates and eventually stops, suddenly falling silent in alarm.

“What’s the matter?”

“Right, sorry, I… I won’t bother you anymore, I’ll go first.”

Josh’s eyes start to wander around in panic, and voices out his apologies again with his eyes full of apprehension as he stares behind me. Then, without waiting for me to say anything, he runs away in a flash.

Strange child… What exactly did he see?

When I turn my head, I am shocked stupid as I’m faced with a pair of freezingly-cold eyes from the person standing behind me.

“Gu Yan…”

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Erza: That’s all for today’s chapter celebration, enjoy your holiday everyone and stay safe <33