Curate, connect, and discover
"I have... realized," Shen Qingqiu said, "that you technically indirectly killed dozens of teenagers. At the Immortal Alliance Conference." He glanced at his friend from the corner of his eye. The office had been quiet before then, though Shen Qingqiu's thoughts had been heavy with contemplation.
Shang Qinghua lifted his head from his paperwork to look at the other, eyes half-lidded and slightly dull. "It's so kind of Shen-shixiong to have realized this. It only took a few months after the Conference had already ended."
"...don't you feel guilty?"
"What is there to feel guilt about?" Shang Qinghua said nothing else, and when Shen Qingqiu did nothing but frown back at him, he went back to signing various forms. In the silence that followed, he sighed and continued, "Listen, I'm not a necessarily a good person. I'm selfish, and I want to live. If I have to choose between myself and random characters that I don't know, then I'll always choose myself."
Shen Qingqiu stared at him, before looking down at his lap, where one of his friend's written works lay in a scroll. Most of the other's writings that he had gotten to read were far better than the trash his web novel had devolved into, more comparable in quality to the early PIDW chapters. He was excited to read this one, but he hadn't opened it yet. "I wasn't saying it to condemn you. After all, I want to live, too." He shifted. "So, I guess I'm not a good person, either."
The An Ding Peak Lord immediately shook his head. "No, unlike me, you are a good person--"
"If I were a better person, I would've taken the point deduction and allowed myself to die at the edge of that Endless Abyss than do what I did."
Silence permeated the room. Shang Qinghua kept his eyes on his forms, though his hands remained still, while Shen Qingqiu continued to stare down at the scroll in his lap.
Finally, Shang Qinghua let out a dry laugh and put down his paperwork to pinch at the bridge of his nose. "Shen-shixiong, you sometimes irritate me, you know?" His voice was light, but there was something else in it, a barely noticeable tremor that made Shen Qingqiu look up. "You say these things, but you're sitting here, agonizing over the choices you've made to keep yourself alive. What does that say about you?"
What does it say about me, that I don't do the same? Shen Qingqiu sighed, fingers tightening around the edge of the scroll. "It says that I still have to live with it, the choice that I made."
"Then why are we even having this conversation? We both made our choices, and guilt or not, we're both still here, aren't we? Why think about it any further?"
Shen Qingqiu studied his friend, eyes tracing the exhausted droop of his eyes, the way tension clung to his slumped shoulders, despite his upright position. He had spent weeks turning it over in his head, wondering how his friend could stand the stain of blood on his hands, even if it meant that he got to live. But hadn't Shen Qingqiu done the exact same thing?
"Because it bothers you," Shen Qingqiu finally said. "Even if you say it doesn't."
Shang Qinghua scoffed and picked his brush back up, the black ink having already smeared all over his latest form. It would need to be discarded. "Don't make me laugh. I'm not some sort of anti-hero. I just know better than to waste time brooding over something I can't change. If it ever starts bothering me too much, I just tell myself that they were all meant to die, anyway."
"That's a bit cold, shidi."
"Don't try to pretend that you don't do the same mental gymnastics. You're just not as good at it as I am."
Shen Qingqiu couldn't argue with that. Sometimes, the world felt too real, and then not real enough. Shen Qingqiu would hear someone laugh, or taste a brilliantly seasoned dish, and everything felt too much and it all exploded before it turned dim. He would no longer be quite inside his body, and he would notice for the first time, again and again, how nothing was ever quite real.
It was a story. That's all it was. It was all just a story.
Shang Qinghua watched him for a moment, then sighed. "Shen-shixiong, if you ever figure out how to balance staying alive with being a good person, let me know."
"Oh?" Shen Qingqiu finally unrolled the scroll he had been holding for some time now. "And what would that accomplish?"
"Maybe then I’d consider feeling guilty."