I'm not the villain

1

With a sad smile Tao Xuan looked across the street. He could remember very well where he came from. Many, many years ago he had a little internet café with the name Excellent Era. It was going well. When Su Muqiu started to use his internet café to make money through gaming, more and more people came. They all wanted to challenge the "pro" – they all lost. Even after so many years, he still remember how he met Su Muqiu and Su Mucheng for the first time. He also remembered his first meeting with Ye Qiu. Back then he still had smoked. Nowadays he had stopped doing so.

Life was hard and mistakes happened. People met and people parted. Although he was still young, he had his fair share of goodbyes. It would be a lie, if he said that his last goodbye had not hurt him, but he was very well aware that it had to happen for him to move on. Neither he nor Ye Qiu were emotional or sentimental people. All was said and done – or so he thought.
Unconsciously he reached for his pocket. There he always had his cigarettes. Even after stopping he still carried a pack around with himself. It was an old one – the first brand he had smoked.

With a heavy sigh Tao Xuan turned around, away from the internet café across the street, where Ye Qiu was currently staying. His fingers lingering on that old box of cigarettes.
People might think that he lived in a house far away from the club building, which was mostly true, but he also had a room inside the Excellent Era club building. Of course, it was more spacious than the rooms of the player, since he had a kitchen, living room, bathroom and a bedroom. As if he would eat in the cafeteria!

From the corner of his eye he saw a shadow in his bed. Tao Xuan was quite familiar with that shadow. Every once in a while, it would appear and whisper past promises and shared memories in his ear – making his heart waver. How often had he doubted his decisions? Way too often. But he would not change them, wouldn't waver in from of other people – just when he was here he would let his heart doubt.
He sat down on his bed. The shadow complaint. Sometimes it was hard to ignore the shadow or Tao Xuan was just bad at it. However, no one was able to ignore the shadows real self for long.

To get away from the shadow – to run away from his guilty conscience – he went into the bathroom to take a shower.
None of this was his fault. He was not the villain. All he had done was for the good of the team. Everyone in his position would had done the same thing! It wasn't his fault that things where the way they were now.
Words had not changed anything. Ye Qiu stayed stubborn. It was Ye Qiu's fault that shit was going down. Why was Ye Qiu just so much Ye Qiu?

In the world of business, feelings were a hindrance! There was not use for them. And so Tao Xuan had given up on his. Why couldn't Ye Qiu understand?
The shadow was surely waiting in front of the bathroom door. Waiting for whisper guilt into his heart.

He was not the villain. He was just a businessman, doing what he could for his company. He was just a businessman with a guilty conscience. He was just a guilty man – not a villain.