#re.arrow

life before death

it started simply. xi-wang was adopted at the age of five into the yang family that owned yang pharmaceutical company. only his parents through contract, xi-wang was mostly raised by his older sister and brother. it was not too bad, at least not at first, his adoptive parents were anything but present, always busy, and out trying to grow their business. the siblings were all too young to understand what it meant when they saw their parents come home with ziploc bags filled with white powder, or sketchy pill bottles set aside to be sold and to be given at an other time with weird nicknames and aliases written on top of them.

as xi-wang grew older, he understood that his adoptive parents seemed to look at absent parenting rather reverently. his sister and brother had butlers grooming them to be the best they ever could be, reminding them to attend classes while giving them extra tutoring lessons, they never ran out of spending money, and could always get what they asked for if only they remembered to say a small ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ at the end of their sentences. xi-wang on the other had was met with a lot of contempt. not sharing the yang blood that ran through his siblings veins, he would always roll his eyes when his parents would mention such a thing after all the notion was so passé, he was seen as more-or-less as a servant, someone who lived to keep his siblings happy and safe, and had to take care of everything their parents could not do.

as the youngest, xi-wang could not help but find it to be a bit unfair, but was always quick to keep his mouth shut, not uttering any words of complaints and disappointments. after all, he was given a better life and did not have to worry about sleeping on the cold floor of the orphanage, glad he even had a bed and covers to keep him warm. though he was not treated fairly or the same as his siblings, he was quite content with the privilege of being allowed to simply live.

as he grew older, he knew it was not enough. ignoring the fact that he was being treated unfairly, and not given the same rights made his skin itch and made him want to run away. it wasn’t fair that he couldn’t go hang out with his friends, and it wasn’t fair that he wasn’t allowed to just relax and play video games with his siblings- but he always had to do something more, something of out-most importance that weighed more than his own personal happiness.

he was introduced to the drug ring his parents had kept hidden for so long as his siblings were shown the ropes of the pharmaceutical company. the deal was simple, xi-wang had to overlook the creation and distribution of drugs and study in pharmaceutical science while his older sister and brother made sure the empire their parents created would not drown and sink.

truly a pawn in his own home, if it even were one to begin with, the only thing that kept him going was the soft smiles and encouragements his siblings would give him. it was rather tiring pretending to be alright and going through the motions, living a life he had not even wanted. xi-wang was not sure if he even wanted to live this life any longer.

his sadness and desperation getting the best of him, he succumbed to the perfect distraction, alcohol. no, he wouldn’t take the very drugs he helped make, it would be unsightly, and he couldn’t help the guilt that ate away at him every time he would glance at the list of the next people he had to meet up so they could get their fix- it was overwhelming, and the alcohol numbed the pain and made him forget.

going to a drug deal drunk was not the best decision xi-wang had ever made, and it resulted in his body falling onto the ground and bleeding out to death. lovely.

life after death

being uploaded into the afterlife really was not something xi-wang expected. really, he was ready for a nice eternal nap, but he was not getting that. instead, he was faced with a world that looked so much like the one he had previously lived in, but still very different. the main glaring difference was that he was alone. it was quite odd to live a second life without having to take care of anyone but himself, and he was not sure if he could even handle that type of responsibility. go figure.

it was odd to have so many opportunities come to him and to have the option to pick and decide what he wanted to do. for many days xi-wang felt helpless and overwhelmed, it was funny to feel so crippled by freedom, when he had felt so incapacitated from the freedom he had lost, that was taken by his adoptive family. people say that distance makes the heart grow fonder, but for xi-wang, it only had deepened his ire.

staying willingly so deeply in negative and corrosive thoughts never did anything good to one’s mental health. when he had finally grasped his actual situation, and finally understood the meaning behind it all, xi-wang finally managed to get out of his apartment to explore the world. it was beautiful.

comparing this life to his past life was fruitless. he liked compartmentalizing his experiences, putting them neatly in boxes, writing ‘before i was adopted’, ‘when i was adopted’ and ‘after i died’, and never touching the first two unless necessary. some would claim it to be rather unhealthy, but the stark contrast of his previous and current life was a reminder that this was real, and he would never go back to the life he had lived before. it was a change. a good one, and maybe he could be happy this time.

he made a list of everything he had missed out on from movies, to tv shows, books, and even different experiences such as going to a movie theater, adopting a pet, studying something he actually liked, getting a normal job, playing at an arcade, kind of like a bucket list, but less morbid, and more ironic, and he made it his goal to scratch out everything on the list to create more positive experiences and make up for everything he had missed out on.