<h4>Chapter 202: Seven Friends: Let It Be</h4>


    I’ll try not to make this story hard toprehend, but life is not something that can be exined with just words.


    I remember a saying that goes: It takes three years to learn something good, but just three days to learn something bad.


    But how can a thoroughly evil person be good?


    My answer? Seven friends.


    They walked in front of me, falling into the depths of the unfathomable abyss on my behalf in order to put me back on the right path and to make me cherish everything that I have.


    If not for these seven friends, I might’ve turned out to be aplete bad egg.


    ...


    Whitey, Fourth Brother, and Brother Si were the three individuals whom I’d like to coin my lucky charms, as I’ve shared previously. In thisst piece of ‘Seven Friends’, though, I will focus on myself.


    After graduation, I started working at the airport.


    I was an aircraft officer in charge of guaranteeing scheduled flights. It sounds grand but it really was just only in name.


    A general knowledge that I’ve learned ever since working in the airport was how independent it was, just like a big plot ofnd.


    Airports were just like bus stops to me, with nes being the buses.


    nes belonged to different airlines, as so do the pilots and stewardesses.


    Airport staffs were like employees from public transportpanies except that you don’t see them at every station.


    As the name implies, a flight guarantor is anyone who ensures that thended nes can make the next flight as scheduled.


    My job was to provide food and other necessary supplies that passengers could take down the ne.


    Things like food, drinks, magazines, newspapers, vomit bag, utensils, nkets, pillows, and etc.


    Of course, we do not merely provide goods for the passengers but also for the pilots and stewardesses.


    It was said that airports in other countries would even provide the stewardesses with sanitary towels.


    I’ve been working as an aircraft officer for three years now and I’m about to talk about the three other individuals, namely my colleagues Ah Fu, Ah Fei, and Ah Liang.


    Ah Fei was a good man. It was even appropriate topare his character to Zhang Fei, a fearsome fighter in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.


    Zhang Fei was an unforgettable person with tan skin.


    Whenever anyone asks how Ah Fei looks, we would simply activate Baidu image search and key in the term ‘ck people’ before randomly choosing a photograph and iming him as Ah Fei.


    Ah Fei used to be our leader’s secretary but upon thetter’s resignation, he became our captain.


    Reporting flight activities was his main job as the captain, so he’s in charge of sending us to receive nes.


    I remembered the time when I fell off from a carriage. It was about five in the morning and he drove over just to pick me up and send me to the hospital. I was lucky that it wasn’t a serious injury.


    It might sound like a dull story to you but it serves as a potential brief to a book.


    When I first started writing stories, I often interviewed Ah Fei since he was a bookworm. He would always smile and im not to understand my stories as they are neither pleasing nor lengthy. He said that theycked sequence and decent plots. He had also correctly predicted that gaining some fans wouldn’t guarantee profits, but I never changed.


    Ah Liang wasn’t a kind person at all, though he wasn’t thoroughly a ‘bad’ person either. He was, in my opinion, the most knowledgeable of the four of us. He seemed to know everything, especially math. He was able to answer any question pertaining to numbers almost instantaneously. His story could be written into a book but he wasn’t keen on it since he’s failed a lot in life. Before he started working as an aircraft officer, he ran his own restaurant in Guangzhou. In spite of that, he’s definitely one of the most pitiful bosses around.


    He would always tell us how he would buy a 12-inch sandwich from Subway if he doesn’t feel like eating instant noodles. He would cut the sandwich first into two then into three sections each. In that way, he was able to settle two days worth of breakfast, lunch, and dinner for just over 20 yuan.


    At times, he would also briefly mention the people and things he witnessed in the restaurant.


    Even then, those bits of information were enough for me topile into a good story.


    Ah Fu joined some timeter. He’s older than all of us but he looked decently young. When I first started bing a staff trainer of sorts, Iplimented him for being serious at work. I was shocked to find outter on that he was seven years older than me. Ah Fu has fewer stories to share but each one was a ssic. It’s a pity that this story was about me, but I’d definitely share his story if there’s a chance in the future.


    Just like that, the three of them became my friends, colleagues, and dorm mates.


    The four of us have been living each day happily and that’s how Short, Light, Free came about after we moved into our new apartment.


    I felt extremely lucky for having three loving colleagues. It’s because of them that I’ve been able to focus all my energy on writing.


    I’m about to share my story in detail.


    Three years ago, when I first entered the airport, I worked on alternate days.


    I had to work a 16-hour to 24-hour shift each time.


    I got up at 4:30 in the morning and would only leave work at five in the afternoon if I’m lucky.


    If not, I would have to stay until five the next morning.


    We had a 24-hour worth of workload dumped on us.


    The rest day that we get was really just for us catch up on our rest and sleep.


    Out of the 24 hours, then, only 10 to 14 hours were truly left for us.


    Initially, it really wasn’t tiring at all since we could look forward to resting the next day.


    Plus, things became much easier when it was about time to knock off. Knowing that the happenings of the next day would be none of our business was like finishing school on a Friday. We could look forward to the beautiful and free weekend.


    You might think that the most unbearable part was the night before our next shift, right?


    No. It’s actually the morning of the rest day.


    Knowing that the next shift would begin the next morning, I would want to spend my rest day carefreely. As such, I yed so many games and quickly got addicted within half a year.


    Whitey brought me to the gaming cafe and Brother Si informed me that held-held controller games were about to be eliminated.


    Online gaming was the new thing that people would patronize because it was more convenient and speedy.


    As long as you remember your ount details and patiently wait for downloads and updates, you’ll be able to get hold of thetest games.


    If I get sick of the old games, I would simply switch to a new one. This was exactly how I spent my rest days.


    One day, amidst my absolutely boring life, I found her.


    An adorable gamer girl that was very much different from us.


    She enjoyed literature. Real literature.


    I would observe her as she stays up to read her books and even pen down her reflections after.


    She made me think about my story-writing past.


    Stories which I had thought were good.


    After some time, I got close to her.


    Do you guys remember ‘I’m Not Bad’? That was my very first story. It was also the first story I shared with her.


    We made a pact. I was to tell her a bedtime story every night.


    This went on for a whole month, which kinda set the tone for Short, Light, Free.


    That night, after sharing myst story, I confessed my secret to her and to my surprise, she dly epted it.


    She mentioned that she couldn’t find anything about my stories online, to which I replied, “Because they’re my stories.”


    “Why haven’t you tried sharing these stories online?” she asked.


    I pondered over her words for the whole of that night. I actually felt happy that she had asked that question.


    Why shouldn’t I share them with everyone?


    I sat in front of theputer, thinking hard.


    I trieding up with a pen name to no avail.


    Let it be.


    Right. Let it be. No matter what happens, even if the people don’t appreciate my work, I’d just let it be.


    I typed that in and pressed confirm. Thinking back now, I have no idea how I carried out such a decisive action.


    ‘Let it be’ became my pen name.


    My next question: What do I write?


    Fairytale? Maybe.


    Science fiction? A bit.


    Short pieces? Indeed.


    Scattered? Yeah, all kinds.


    So what exactly is it?


    I found a term after some search: Light stories/reads.


    My stories were simple, a mixture and unrestricted.


    Short, Light, Free...


    I started working on it, adding one story after another into the collection.


    I gave up many things for this.


    Do you remember what I said about my rest days?


    No more games. At times, I would even get a bottle of white wine and Red Bull to keep mepany as I wrote through the night.


    I spent my days like that for half a year.


    I was in the third year of my job, which was also the first year into my book when the government decided to double the airport’s runway from 1.5km to 3km.


    I’ve been to bigger airports, where I had to walk a whole 10 minutes just to exit the ce.


    It was something our airport was aiming to achieve.


    The space that they needed for the expansion was exactly where our dorm was situated.


    It was something the airport wouldn’t hesitate to tear down.


    We were left with no choice but to seek another amodation.


    For a university graduate like me, I had no idea how difficult moving house was.


    The four of us eventually settled in a small vige near the airport.


    Our house consisted of four rooms, a living area, and two bathrooms.


    It was in there that I’ve written most of my stories.


    Recently, however, I’ve left the airport and returned to the city. All for love.


    Short, Light, Free will being to an end, but I will be starting a new book.


    It would fill up the holes left from some old stories.


    It would also be stripped off of some of my bad writing habits.


    I hope to improve and hope that my readers will like the changes that I’ll be attempting.


    Perhaps 63 is a number I can’t escape since I’m choosing to announce the end of my book 630,000 words in.


    I will also be closing this book with the 63rd story.


    New stories, writing styles and structures, and unique features will being your way, dear readers.