Timeline of Errors

Part 18 - The lake, once again

"...you know, I could see her doing that," I said, "and I haven't known her for that long,"

"Oh, you'd hate living with her," he said, rolling his eyes, "she's always been like that. Anyway, I set my boundaries and told her off. If in the future, she starts making unreasonable demands on you too, I'm not afraid to tell her off,"

"...dealing with people isn't always easy," I said, "you've gotten a lot better in it. Doesn't mean you have to continue dealing with stuffs just because,"

"Thank you," he said gruffly and gestured to me.

"...sounds like going home hasn't always been a pleasant experience for you-" I said before catching myself, "sorry, that was nosy of me-"

"The older I've gotten, the more I accepted it and learned to just deal with it," he replied, "I've never grown to love it. But life's never been easy for most people anyway. I'm free now, but it's not like my life's exactly problem-free either. So whatever it is, I just learn to deal with it and try to get things done and over with,"

"That's a good mindset to have," I commented.

"It gets overwhelming, but I'm also tired of avoiding things and feeling like nothing's moving forward," he said, "so when you said you just wanted to move forward and find closure, I..."

I heard a soft sigh right next to me. I turned to him. What first met my gaze was a pair of protruding chestnut eyes looking back at me, followed by a long pointed nose and a pair of burgundy lips.

"Val, I'm sorry," he said, "you shouldn't have gone through these in the first place. I let that psycho stepped on so many people's dignity - Azul's, yours, and myself. And yet..."

"All we could do is look ahead and do our best," I said, "I appreciate your help and the fact that you never ran away from it,"

"...right. Thank you... for everything," he said.

"Don't worry about it. It's kind of a part of my job anyway," I answered.

"Say, what is it like working in the association?" He asked, "you enjoy it?"

"It's an office job. I do some project management, some admin work, occasionally some hustling, sometimes act as their PR rep," I said, shrugging my shoulders, "also to 'represent the younger generation' though they don't actually care that much about my opinion. But like, it's whatever. Just do what they want and you won't have a horrible time,"

"Out of interest, why an office job?" He asked, "I thought you were aiming for the league,"

I paused for a while, looking at the dark starry skies as I gathered my thoughts into the most coherent sentence I could make at the time.

"I don't know. Perhaps I was just running away," I said, "there was a part of me wishing I could just be happy and live like everyone else. I don't even know why I thought that. There isn't really a typical 'happy life' - everyone has their own shit to deal with. And with everything else going on... I feel extremely irresponsible just thinking about it,"

A cold silence fell as the two of us kept our gaze to the water, refraining from saying anything more. Like a veil was draped around our bodies as we kept to ourselves.

"Once this is all over, you won't have to worry about it anymore," he suddenly said, "you can try out different stuffs, find things that you like, perhaps even explore the world. One day, all of these will end," 

"Do you truly believe that?" I asked.

"If it's not happening on its own, then we got to work for it, that's all," he said.