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Su found himself struggling to fall asleep as he twisted and turned in his bed. It’s been a couple of weeks since he moved into his new apartment and started his job. It was rare to have a silent night like this since he was regularly having the night shift at the hospital. However, the silence of tonight was killing him. He couldn’t stop thinking about the new patients he got that had the Honkai disease. The Honkai disease was inevitable as more places near him became invaded by the Honkai. It was even more impossible to continue the facade of lying to his patients that “it would soon go away” and “you’ll be better soon” when he knew any second they would die. He loved his job, he loved being a doctor but watching his patients die after one another.. It reminded him of how his mother shortly died months after he was born.
He blocked out most of his childhood memories because of his mother’s death. He remembered how miserable she looked whenever she held him in her arms. She looked exhausted and her hands felt cold whenever she tended to him. From what he can recall from an observant curious small infant’s point of view, his parents fairly got along just with arguments here and there. Few months later, she died in her sleep and his father never spoke of her after that. He just assumed that his mother ffered postpartum from what he remembered and a disease that he still doesn’t know anything about to this day. He would later live with his grandmother because his father couldn’t take care of him properly and he was deeply heartbroken. She was strict and a bit tough on him but deep down he knew she loved him and often spoiled him especially on Lunar New Year. His father would sometimes check up on him through calls and visits but he sounded and looked disappointed every time. He spoke in a stern voice. Even as a child, he knew his father was disappointed because he looked a lot more like his mother than him. It wasn’t his fault he knew but inside he felt guilty anyways.
When he started middle school, his father took him back home. He didn’t keep contact with his friends from the school he went to in his grandmother’s town. He didn’t really have that much anyways because all he did during break time was read under a nearby tree in the school’s courtyard and other kids engaged in sports or chatter. His father would let him call his grandmother and visit for Lunar New Year’s but over the years they just grew distant. In his final year of middle school,nearing his entrance exams for high school, his grandmother grew sick. She called his father to request to come visit her one more time before she died. His father declined, fearing that wouldn’t be able to do his entrance exams. Him overhearing this conversation as he was studying in his room, decided to visit her after his exams were over. However when he visited her after his exams, it was already too late. He was an hour too late. When he came home, his father lectured him but he didn’t care, he just went to hole himself up in his room.
He eventually got accepted to the high school he wanted to get into but felt alone and lost in this world. He lost his mother and now his grandmother. No one understood him. His father grew busy with his work, coming home late at night or when woke up for school. They were already financially stable but he knew that his father avoided him on purpose by becoming a workaholic.
Su spent his high school days studying and reading up on things ch as philosophy and anthropology. He was curious in learning more knowledge of world but also medicine. He wanted to save people like his mother and grandmother. His classmates thought he was a boring person so they didn’t bother to engage with him except one — Kevin Kaslana. Kevin was a transfer student that transferred mid year of his first year from an European country that he didn’t even bother to remember. His Chinese was so bad even his tones were off. Sometimes his writing in Hànzì would be so terrible that their teachers couldn’t even read them. He would bother during their breaks and shared classes. Eventually they would become friends ( still doesn’t know how they became friends to this day, it just happened). would help him with his Chinese tones and Hànzì meanwhile Kevin would help him with his English.
As recalled these memories of the past, he just remembered something. He had a picture of Kevin in his basketball uniform when they were in high school in a photo frame somewhere in his moving boxes. He got up from his bed and went to his living room and looked through his boxes. He still had a lot to unpack and put away so it was hard to find it at first. After looking through his boxes, he finally found it. He took it back to his room and sat on his bed, looking at it. He remembered that it was a picture of Kevin after his first school basketball game. Su, himself, was never a sports person and he hated it when it was sports day at school. Kevin had convinced him to attend his first basketball game even though he explained to about the rules of the game, he didn’t get it.
Su recalled he was on the bleachers and across of him was Kevin’s crush and then later girlfriend — MEI with her two friends. Kevin noticed the both of them and waved and smiled. MEI didnt notice him but he, did and waved back. The game shortly started after and to be honest it was awfully boring. Kevin’s team was losing and MEI and her friends left midway. After an hour or two, the game ended and his team lost by 5 points. Kevin came up to after the game and asked if he (Su) could take a picture of him. Su was confused, Kevin was quite the competitive person but he didn’t seem to be upset at all in the slightest. Su took a picture of him with his phone and later on the weekends, they went to a local store to print it out. When he offered to give it to Kevin, Kevin just shook his head and insisted saying “To cherish simple moments of him like this” or something of those lines. He was getting quite poetic and sappy with his words especially with MEI around and it annoyed Su a bit but he took the photo with him.
“Oh Kevin”, Su thought in present day as he hugged the picture against his chest. He missed him so terribly. He was declared dead almost nearly 5 years ago. “Perhaps this is how father felt when mother died”, he thought to himself. Sometimes at nights, he would cry and scream at the wall for no reason at all. He loved him so much as his best friend and also his crush. He never even got to tell Kevin his feelings but it didn’t really matter anyways since he was in love with MEI and only her. Su even had dreams of where him and Kevin were fighting near a huge tree. Kevin same but he looked more cold and distant and wore a different outfit with a big firey sword. When ‘Kevin’ attacked him in the dream, Su woke up with a cold sweat. He felt that dream was so real at times that he would caress the spot that ‘Kevin’ attacked him in the dream.
“Enough talking about bad dreams and my feelings” He thought. He looked at his clock, it was 2:15 am. He needed to go to bed. He then shifted himself comfortably back in his bed as he laid on his side as he continued to hug the photo of his best friend and started crying uncontrobally himself to bed.
Instead of dreaming that dream where Kevin was fighting him, he dreamt of the past instead. A scene from the past where they were carefree together.
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“Hey Su! Can I copy your notes? I forgot to take them last night”
“Sure Kev”
“Thanks! …
What does this word say? Never mind what does the rest of this section say?”
“Lemme look.. Hm.. I don’t know either actually”
“What do you mean you don’t know! It’s your notes haha!”
“I dont know, I was half asleep when I wrote them okay? Hey stop punching me! I seriously don’t know and that hurtss”