Zhao Jingchen and I were sitting outside the hospital on the stairs when Ling Bingchen and Chief arrived.
"Why are you both sitting here?" Chief asked.
"Lobby's full. There were a lot of emergencies today." Zhao Jingchen replied, keeping his phone in his pocket and taking the bag of food that Chief was carrying. Ling Bingchen handed the one in his hand to me with the car keys before sitting down beside Zhao Jingchen. I opened the bag half heartedly not as enthusiastic about eating anymore.
Not even the sight of meat lover's pizza, which was my favorite, could uplift my mood anymore. Chief started distributing our drinks. Thank god they remembered to get me a coke.
"Oh," Chief uttered when she looked down at my bag, "Senior, your ketchup is in this bag."
Ling Bingchen looked up from his slice of pizza which had a layer of cheese on top unlike mine. I could only look at it longingly. "I don't need it."
Chief furrowed her eyebrows but didn't say anything, returning the sachets in my bag which I quickly swiped up. However much I put, I can never have enough ketchup. Good thing no one wants it. I happily drizzled the ketchup all over my pizza and took a slice, biting a huge bite.
"How long is it going to take them?" Chief asked her mouth full of pizza.
"No clue. The line is too long. They only let one person accompany him."
"It's already 4am. I can't believe I'm having dinner right now." Chief shook her head.
"Why what were you doing last night?" Zhao Jingchen asked.
"My mom was making sweet and sour pork yesterday but she came home late so I didn't eat first and I waited. Who would have thought the pork wasn't going to end up in my stomach anyway?" I snorted. Chief's mother was a workaholic. She wasn't present most times but that had not soured their relationship. Chief especially loved her mom's cooking so she really looked forward to it whenever her mom promised to cook.
"No one else is going to take it away from you. Go home and eat it." I said. Chief just gave me the stink eye as if saying, 'What shit do you understand?'. I shrugged in reply choosing to focus on my pizza instead.
"Mr. Zhao, you're in our college too right?" Chief suddenly shifted her attention to Zhao Jingchen.
"Hmm, yes. I'm pursuing my doctorate in Chemistry right now."
"You also run the club that Hacker signed into right?" Zhao Jingchen looked at her lost. " Ju Linping. His nickname is Hacker."
"Oh. Yeah, I'm a major shareholder, though we have a separate management team that takes care of the functioning. Why?"
"So can Hacker continue to attend college with us even after this?" Chief's question made even me stop eating and look up at him. Though I understood Hacker and respected his decisions, I really didn't want him to separate from us.
"It depends."
"On what?" I asked. He turned to me, looking at me as if contemplating what he wants to say.
"On if he will have the time to. Or if he will even want to."
I took a deep breath, an almost staggered one.
That's right. Even if we are good friends, it doesn't mean that Hacker will stay for us. Nor does he have to or, if I'm being completely honest, he should.
I looked up at Chief and she looked back.
~
The sun was already rising when Hacker finally came out. He smiled like everything was fine, asking where we should go for breakfast. He walked happily towards the car bypassing us 4 that remained seated on the stairs.
"Stop right now before I cut your legs off." Zhao Jingchen suddenly said, crossing his hands on his chest. Hacker's whole body stiffened before he turned around.
"Captain, I-"
"I don't fucking care what happened to you, what went wrong or whatever but how dare you make 3 women roam around alone at midnight and then act like nothing is wrong? Are you even a man?" Zhao Jingchen's voice was hard, his face dark.
"My parents-"
"Again, I don't care. It's nothing new. When you were signing your contract in front of me, you told me that your parents don't support your dream but you don't care. So why did you, for the same people who you said don't care, abandon your friends? How are you any different from your parents?"
Hacker stayed silent looking at the ground. Looking at him like this made me feel guilty. He shouldn't be dealing with all this and being made to hear all this right now. I opened my mouth to stop Zhao Jingchen but Ling Bingchen caught my hand, shaking his head at me.
"Do you know they were crying on phone from worry, barely being able to breathe properly, while talking to me? And what were you doing? Sitting and stuffing your mouth with warm food and getting drunk out of your mind. One didn't have her dinner and ran about on an empty stomach. One isn't even dressed properly; she's run out in her pajamas. And one had a panic attack and almost ended up passing out from worry. How dare you run away without a giving them an explanation?"
Zhao Jingchen turned to us, "Let's go sit in the car."
He started walking towards the car, Lanyard and Chief following hesitantly. I wanted to stay but Ling Bingchen, who had not let go of my hand all this while, dragged me forward to go to.
"He wanted to break my hands." Hacker suddenly started speaking suddenly.
"He picked up his golf club and I thought he would just hit me a little as usual. But with every hit I deflected, I realized he was relentlessly aiming for my hands. I had to finally squat down and hide my hands with my head. That's how I got this wound. He smashed the club on my head."
We all looked at him. Dawn's sunrays hit his face, lighting him up. You would always associate night with sadness and day with healing but there was no solace in the light. It only made his vulnerability more clear.
"I always thought that they just didn't understand me and my career choice. It's a new field, not a lot of people do. And I understood their concerns; they want to make my life easier. They want me to easily have money and live a quiet fulfilling and luxurious life. But that's not true. From start to end, they fucking didn't care about me at all." His hollow laugh was loud but empty, like clanging vessels.
"He would fucking rather that I live a cripple than chase my own dreams."