Through the receding waters

Cross Paths

It has been a while since the disappearance of Hong'er, Cale was restless (although he didn't want to admit that he was worried) and the child did not come back.

Although he had known that Hong'er is easily bullied and harmed by others, he could not force a child to stay with him if they did not want to.

He had never known why he had even taken in a child that would only bring trouble to him, maybe because of the resemblance of that child to the others.... Roan, On, Hong. Suffering from the moment of their birth because of who they are and what they were born as.

Maybe it was because of his own similarity, the weak and pitiful he who was weak and couldn't do anything back then. If only he could make others' lives better so that they don't suffer the same fate as he did... not being able to protect the people he loved, Choi Jung Soo and Lee Soo Hyuk. If he can become the light to someone's life... at least he could do that much.

If he could see others living a better life than he did... then he would feel relieved.

...

Who was he kidding?

A light to someone's life? Is he playing the 'hero' now? He is not a hero at all, he is a villain, doing anything and using anybody so that he could live. In the first place, the only reason that he had saved all those people... Choi Han, Raon, Lock... it was all for his own benefit.

When had they become so close?

How would they react if they found out for what he truly is, a selfish bastard that was too afraid to die, see how much of a coward he truly was.

The only reason he had come this far was because these people that were only a tool for him to live had crawled into his heart in some way, the only reason why he went through that much pain and suffering... even risked dying.

Those people became what he held close in his heart and had made him want to protect them, abandoning his own slacker life unknowingly.

Although he hadn't really grasped or felt for what 'family' truly is, maybe what he was feeling now, their relationship with him, is something similar.

<.........................>

It was heard that a seemingly outrageous situation had occurred in Xian Le Kingdom, not that Cale could have cared less.

It was that a young child had fallen off one of the banisters during the Shang Yuan festival, in which the crown prince of Xian Le had saved, therefore disrupting the parade. This festival, which Cale learned later on, was done in order to protect the kingdom from disaster by pleasing the gods.

How badly would that child suffer from the wrath of the crown prince's younger cousin, Xiao Jing...

Cale decided against going to check who that young child was, since he wasn't even sure that the child could be Hong'er.

Maybe someday, they will cross paths again... like the others did.

Surely...