Did he destroy them?
Xiao Yi felt like his entire world froze over. He may as well have been dropped into the North Pole.
Four years ago, they were barely adults. They had just taken their first steps into the adult world and had begun to grow into respectable young men.
Before the situation with the company happened, when they were still in the dorm, some of them had even begun dating for the first time.
They had all known that they would retire early, whether they had made millions or not, as the oldest player in the league was just above thirty years old and was already having a hard time catching up to the youngest players.
Hence, they had plans.
Tang An was considering going to culinary school so he had something to fall back on when he enviably had to retire from the esports world, Li Hao was going to learn more about his family business, Chen Qiang was going to go to school for business and Mu Yichen wanted to go to school for art.
Alas, the news only showed their accomplishments in the esports world, not their personal life, and Xiao Yi hadn't exactly been keeping up with that either.
He didn't know whether or not they went to school, whether their relationships worked out, where they lived, what they did in their free time and he had absolutely no idea of what they did or went through in the past four years.
'I… am selfish.'
Li Hao crossed his arms and agreed with Mu Yichen's sentiment. "Of course, we were destroyed! You were our best friend, our brother for over a decade, did you think we'd forget that with a few sentences?"
Xiao Yi's hand shook slightly.
Chen Qiang sighed. "We understand why you did it now, but put yourself in our shoes… You ruthlessly abandoned us and then ran away like nothing happened."
Xiao Yi lowered his eyes.
He did.
Everything that he had done, he had justified it as him protecting his friends and allowing them to flourish in the esports world, chase their dreams, and become shining stars without him.
He had, of course, known that they would be hurt, but he thought they would quickly turn that hurt into anger.
Chen Qiang had always been good at reading Xiao Yi, and that hadn't changed over the years. He responded to the words the other hadn't said. "We are still hurt, but some of us took to anger to vent our feelings. We never stopped being upset, though."
Tang An lowered his eyes. "I stopped enjoying cooking long ago. Every time I picked up an ingredient, I thought of the midnight snacks I'd make for you guys."
Xiao Yi bowed his head. "I'm sorry."
He couldn't think of anything else to say.
He had been naive and had hypnotized himself to believe that he was in the right, he would allow himself to be a villain for them and they would eventually get over everything.
Not only had they not gotten over anything, but he tore through their light like a bulldozer.
Moreover, his life?
He'd been in stasis for years, for what?
What had he done these four years?
Four years is long enough to have a child entering pre-school, to have gotten married, to have gotten a house.
He'd only been punishing himself, and in turn, punishing the people he loved the most.
What kind of idiot was he?
He was left with these thoughts for the entire night because after that conversation he was shown to a guest room and everyone aside from him went to sleep.
Of course, he could have gone home at any time, however, his door was broken and he had realized one very important feeling that he'd been pushing away for all this time.
He missed them.
It wasn't just an empty, fleeting feeling, he missed them to the bone and he had no idea how he would even begin to repair the damage that had been done to any of them.