Life is never really nice (and neither is the author)

7-hello again

Zhongli's P.o.V.

It wasn't like me to wait for someone to call me with so much expectation. In the past, if I had needed to talk with someone, I would have called first.
Too bad that *woman*, to not express resentment any further, decided to keep me from the pleasure of actually possessing the other's number.
I wouldn't be exaggerating if I said this was eating me alive.

It's not that I expected that kid to care enough to at least initiate a polite conversation, but his ways intrigued me so much I couldn't wait to see him again.
But of course, Ningguang couldn't give me his number, nor the times of his work shifts.
Waiting was my only option.

Now, I know what people would say. I *didn't* have a crush on him, and I definitely wouldn't have wanted to find myself in that kind of situation again with him, or anyone else.

Thankfully, my thoughts were interrupted by a dark brown haired girl with two very long ponytails at the sides of her head that too often hit me, in a very annoying way.
My boss.

"Heyya Zhongli!" She exclaimed cheerfully.

"Good morning, miss Hu, may I ask you why today you seem happier than usual?" I tried to speak politely.
It's not like I hated her, but sometimes she was too much.

"New hypothetical clients!"

"Oh-"

Now this may seem normal.
The more clients, the more money, it only makes sense to be happy.
Too bad she was the director of a funeral parlor.

I don't remember how I started working there at all, nor the exact content of our contract, but the pay was pretty good.
There was no reason for me to leave this job.

"I have met them yesterday. Do you know how high the probabilities to die hiking are? The answer is: high enough for a good business. So I talked with the manager of the association-" I wasn't listening anymore to her babbling about hikers that would have brought us a fortune.

My job was just to fill in papers and organize the celebration parts of the funerals.
Listening to her was optional, and she wasn't really into my kind of feedback, so it was a win-win situation if I just kept doing my job properly.

After a few hours of work, I went to the nearest pizzeria, probably the only place that sold food in a few kilometers ray, to buy some take-away.
The Wangsheng Funeral Parlor was, sadly, way out of town, on some hill with a weird ominous atmosphere, which meant that I had to take the train twice or more every day.

I usually brought one or two books with me, so I could go ahead with my reading. I tended to love studies on history events or archeology, and I wished I could write something myself and publish it, however, I must admit both my writing skills and my confidence in them weren't that great.

Still, a dream is a dream.
It's weird thinking about it, because other usually saw me as an ambitious person, who also managed to get everything sooner or later, when in reality I like my life as it is, and I have no idea what to do about my only dream.

Dream is a peculiar word.
I wish my "sleep" dreams were about my "hopes for the future" dreams.
It's quite useless, now, to specify that they were most definitely not.
I usually dreamt about Guizhong, an old......fr- no, acquaintance of mine.
She happened to be shot when we were around sixteen years old, I'd love to say I had already healed, even if just partially, but that wasn't true.

We used to live in a dangerous city, where there was no respect for laws or lives, I had some friends there, and my family, which, when I became a teenager, was just me, my sister and her significant married other, and their daughter.
We weren't really unhappy, our life was just normal, since we had grown up there.
But sometimes people happened to go crazy, take some weapons, kill or injure many people and just get away with it.
That's excactly what happened that day, but for the first and only time, we saw it front row.

What had scared me the most, though, wasn't the expression on Guizhong's face while expiring, nor the blood that spilled everywhere, it was my reaction as I heard her emit her last breath.
I did regret it after a few years, but then and there I just lost my mind. Completely.

No one ever found out where I could have found that knife, or the strenght to sbat that guy into his heart.
They looked at me with fear, disgust perhaps, while I was carving that asshole's chest.

I wasn't the most sensible kid, but people thought I was precious and child-like.
They could have never expected me me to look like such a sense-less serial killer because of a loss.

I got sent into another city, and with me, my sister and niece.
We managed to start our lives all over again, my sister, with fear that I would have gone crazy again, me, with a sense of guilt that was killing me, and little Ningguang, mostly confused about everything, yet she still wanted us to feel like a real family.

It didn't happen.
In a few years, her mother died, so I had to pay for the both of us, maybe that was when I started working at the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor.
I did my best to stay as far from her as possible. In the end, I was scared of myself too, and I feared hurting her physically more than the sibling-like relationship we shard.

To this day, we still hadn't cleared anything about our past, pretending to have met each other much later, and to know nothing about each other's past.

When, actually, hers was shady too.

<aaaaaah. I did my best to finish this fast! It's not really one of my favourite chapters, but hopefully I'll manage to bring back my favourite character (this story-wise, in game my favourite is Ayaka) as I have a few new interesting ideas for them.
If you have any ideas or requests, please comment. I can't promise I'll use them, but if they are about something I still hadn't chosen, I probably will.
Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed this chapter more than I enjoyed writing it (it took me way too long)>