I'll try not to make this story hard to comprehend, but life is not something that can be explained 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 become 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 a complete 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 this last 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 of land.
Airports were just like bus stops to me, with planes being the buses.
Planes belonged to different airlines, as so do the pilots and stewardesses.
Airport staffs were like employees from public transport companies except that you don't see them at every station.
As the name implies, a flight guarantor is anyone who ensures that the landed planes can make the next flight as scheduled.
My job was to provide food and other necessary supplies that passengers could take down the plane.
Things like food, drinks, magazines, newspapers, vomit bag, utensils, blankets, 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 to compare 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 'black people' before randomly choosing a photograph and claiming him as Ah Fei.
Ah Fei used to be our leader's secretary but upon the latter'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 planes.
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 claim not to understand my stories as they are neither pleasing nor lengthy. He said that they lacked 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 to compile into a good story.
Ah Fu joined some time later. He's older than all of us but he looked decently young. When I first started becoming a staff trainer of sorts, I complimented him for being serious at work. I was shocked to find out later on that he was seven years older than me. Ah Fu has fewer stories to share but each one was a classic. 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 played 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 account details and patiently wait for downloads and updates, you'll be able to get hold of the latest 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 my last story, I confessed my secret to her and to my surprise, she gladly accepted 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 the computer, thinking hard.
I tried coming 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 me company 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 place.
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 accommodation.
For a university graduate like me, I had no idea how difficult moving house was.
The four of us eventually settled in a small village 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 be coming 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 be coming your way, dear readers.