It was one of those early evenings when the night was sharp, similar to those nights from the earlier years when he would walk home alone, and it would only just be his thoughts speaking to him.
A black Rolls-Royce pulled to the front entrance, and a man in a black suit walked out, opening the car door for Lan Yuning. Gu Xiao, who was watching from afar, gaped at this scene and examined the car from back to front.
He knew he was wealthy, but he was even treated like royalty, leaving Gu Xiao no choice but to swallow the pain and watch this beautiful car only exist from far away.
The closest he had been to a luxurious car was when he nearly got run over by one after blanking out in the middle of the road.
"Student President," Gu Xiao called and waved, "See you tomorrow!"
Lan Yuning stared at him with the same indifferent gaze, and silence lingered in the air. In the end, he responded with a word, but his voice was too quiet for the other to hear, so he just assumed he sighed from annoyance like always.
His phone vibrated for the third time, so he pulled it out to see who was annoying him this time—one text from his sister and two texts from Zhang Yongyin, who was requesting assistance to carry him in a game—and when he pulled his phone out, a folded paper slipped out of his pocket, and he picked it up.
The bold characters of 'Careers Form' spread across the top edge.
The Home Rat:
- [Take the back door] 19:20
A sweet, crisp fragrance travelled to his nose as the sizzling barbeque from down the street, and the aromas of hotpot from the other side joined, making his walk to the bus station enjoyable.
With the accompanying sounds and scents, walking down the empty street, callus-filled palms from holding the mop, the cycle of the seasons continued to repeat.
Soon, all noise drowned out, withering away with the ashes of the dried leaves and fallen flowers.
He dropped his eyes in complete exhaustion, but not once did the faint light in his eyes that he had constructed so carefully leave him.
Once again, he survived another day.
After taking the late bus, he finally arrived home when the pale crescent moon loomed in the night sky.
His house was near the end of the street, almost devoid of any people or cars driving down.
He entered through the damaged back door with chips and cracks, and with each subtle movement, the door would screech and creak. Instantly, an insufferable stench of alcohol and cigarettes travelled to his nose, painfully stinging his nerves.
Their father rested on the floor in front of the couch, with alcohol bottles scattered over the dirtied wooden ground and table.
Cuts and bruises covered their father's skin. Still, the accumulated bitterness in Gu Xiao's heart was too repulsive that his eyes shifted away from their father but the number of alcohol bottles lying around.
Clenching on his career's form, the words of Mr. Shen flashed past his mind, and a solemn scoff escaped his lips.
"I may need to call your father."
He walked into his room quietly so their father wouldn't wake up, and Gu Heiyu, his younger sister, was doing her homework on the single table.
Since the only computer was in his room, Gu Heiyu always had to go to his room to do her schoolwork.
Nothing special laid in his room. There were a few chips on the leg of his chair and table, though they were relatively unnoticeable unless one solely focused on the state of the furniture.
There wasn't much on his shelf besides old figurines and books that had barely been touched.
Their father rarely came home since, most of the time, he would pass out in front of their home from drunkenness, or be running away from strange men, so he never had a set room.
"Your money," Gu Heiyu mumbled.
"What about my money?"
She turned around and pointed her chin towards the small money container he had been saving for years.
Every cash or coin he ever received from their relatives, sometimes from their father, and even when he helped the neighbourhood, would go into this jar.
He wanted at least to have some money saved for his university fees, and if there was some extra, he could use some for himself. He was sure the money he saved passed at least half of the jar, yet it was empty.
With a sinking heart, this intense emotion of denial oppressed his heart. His sister bit her lips, and their eyes swallowed in this dark timbre, leaving only a cluster of thoughts to pollute his head.
"When I came home, it was all gone."
He trudged out of his room, and the suffocating stench of the drinks tortured his heart. Their father continued gulping down the alcohol even though his face was so swollen that even his eyelids no longer had the power to lift themselves.
Upon closer inspection, glass shards and cracked bottles littered the floor, as if his hands had no energy to carry all these drinks home, so they fell and shattered.
He wanted to say something to his father. He truly wanted to just pour out the words that he bottled up at this man sitting in their home with a crumpled shirt filled with crumbs and alcohol stains. But there was nothing he could do.
Gu Xiao should've expected this. If one expected nothing from others, they would never be disappointed. It was intriguing how these expectations were raised the most by those who constantly disappointed them.
Some people gradually became numb to this disappointment because they grew too tired. For those who didn't fit into the standards of the set criteria of what it meant to be a human, in the end, they were simply cast away.
"I will need to call your father."
Gu Xiao couldn't say anything to his father, since it would all be meaningless. There was nothing to say in the end.
His mind was in such a complete state of blankness that neither Gu Xiao nor that drunk man would even understand the words coming out of their mouths, nor would that man even remember anything, so he had no choice but to swallow these jarring emotions and simply walk back into their humid bedroom.
Gu Heiyu watched her brother slump down on his bed, unmoving. Her lips separated, the words hanging at the tip of her tongue. However, nothing escaped. The money wasn't the sole reason for his dejection, but something else that was incommunicable to others.
This disappointment was something that couldn't be described or put into words; if one was to try, none of the sentences would make sense. It was the effort he exhausted at the expense of his estrangement.
"The money that auntie gave us recently is still here, but I don't know why dad suddenly started drinking again. He was clean for a whole two months."
Gu Xiao stayed still with his pillow swallowing his face. The careers form that Mr. Shen made him fill out so carefully laid crumpled within his palms.
The question on the form that asked, 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' to which Gu Xiao gathered every courage and thought to write in the most sluggish handwriting, 'A psychiatrist.'
Yet, those words that Gu Xiao poured into the careers form were once again engulfed by the chirps of the seagulls from the faraway shore.