Part II

Staring at the empty shelves with sunken eyes, Xin felt a sudden pain in his heart. He blinked many times, rubbed his eyes, hoping it was all a dream, a fabrication of his imagination, but he had to accept it was real. Everything happening was in the present. All the beer bottles in the bar were gone. Not a single trace of any left. Not in the store, not anywhere. They were all stolen while he stayed overnight at a hospital, leaving the bar in the hands of people who left without paying, and those who took from the shelves without thinking twice.

His mind plummet downward into less and less light, and darkness beyond measure. What was he going to do now? Where would he start from? How would he recover from so much loss? 

It was too much. All of it. The darkness grew darker; the agony grew sharper; all of it seemed to only grow in strength, and he wondered if things could ever get better again.