After all these years, Calvin can still vividly recall the feeling of tweezers wiping the skin on his back with a wet cotton ball of alcohol - he always told himself that it was just a logical conjecture, and in fact, when Dr. Holden finally decided to get the huge wings off of him, his back was already swollen entirely, and he had fallen into a coma from a high fever before the operation began due to the inflammation and infection of Yan Zòng. There was no way he could have remembered the operation, even if the operation he had imagined had been in his nightmares for countless nights, and the wet, cold cotton balls of alcohol were even more frightening than the operation and the pain itself.

"Are you okay?"

The bartender looked at Calvin, who was pale, and asked, his expression slightly unnatural.

In normal times, Calvin might have been able to detect the well-concealed stiffness on his face, but the tiredness and headaches accumulated over this period of time had caused Calvin to lose some of his observation.

"I'm okay. ”

Calvin said that a regular customer asked him for a glass of whiskey, and Calvin sloppily nodded to the man with a blurred face under the light, then reached for the bottle.

The bartender took the bottle before him, poured the amber liquid into the small glass, ignored the old customer's disgruntled muttering, placed the glass on the bar, and then, staring at Calvin's face, spoke again: "Well, I personally think...... You really should go to the lounge and take a break. ”

He repeated.

Calvin's brow furrowed slightly, and he reluctantly tugged at the corners of his mouth.

"I don't need to. ”

"I think you should go. ”

The bartender said, thin beads of sweat pouring down his forehead.

Calvin's movements froze for a moment, his gaze resting on the bartender's cold sweat for a moment, and then he slowly straightened up.

"Oh, is it? ”

Calvin's voice didn't wave, and the faint fragility he had leaked out of the bartender before disappeared from his voice. An invisible, cold, hard shell tightly sealed his whole person.

The bartender smiled at him.

"Sorry...... Calvin, but ......"

"Is that him?"

Calvin interrupted the bartender's defense.

The bartender's face fell, and he spread his hand toward Calvin.

"You see, I told him a long time ago that I can't hide it from you - hey, listen, it's mine, but you also know his temper, I really can't ......help it"

The bartender's voice grew smaller and smaller in Calvin's silence, and he deeply regretted that he really shouldn't have acceded to the man's plea—he thought that Calvin would throw a tantrum at him and beat him, but he didn't expect that Calvin just kept his face blank, so cold, and looked at him as if he were a strange guest.

“…… I really think you two should have a good talk. ”

The bartender's last words were as faint as melting on the tip of his tongue.

Calvin folded his hands over his chest and raised an eyebrow.

"He's in the break room now?"

He asked.

The bartender jerked his head up and looked at Calvin in shock.

"Uh, yes, I think he's already here...... Well, he doesn't look good, which is why I think you really should talk about it. ”

"That's what he told you to say?"

Calvin asked indifferently.

The bartender shook his head repeatedly: "For God's sake, no- I mean really, I ......"

"Okay. ”

Calvin sighed.

He walked over the bartender's shoulder towards the staff area behind the bar.

"You will be on the night shift for me for the next two days. ”

He said to the bartender.

Evening shifts at places like the Cross Bar weren't a good job, of course—but Calvin could clearly feel the bartender's relaxation at the sound of his words.

In the shadows, Calvin smiled a self-deprecating smile at himself.

He remembered the words that Dr. Holden had always emphasized to him-

"Be fierce, Calvin, you have to be fierce with yourself...... The same is true for everyone else. ”

In the last moments of that cold ward, the life-support system blocked the old man's wrinkled mouth and nose, and he stretched his wizened hand out from under the pale green sheets. Calvin put his hand in his palm, and he saw the tears left in Dr. Holden's cloudy eyes, yes, the old man who had been suffering from illness for too long had lost his sight, but his eyes were still full of concern for Calvin,

"Be brave, my child, be brave......"

These were Holden's last words to Calvin.

Calvin knew that until Dr. Holden died, he still hadn't been the one who could reassure him.

In the staff passage of the Cross Bar, Calvin stopped abruptly, took a deep breath, and suppressed the sourness that had welled up in his eyes. When he took another step, the aura on his body became more cold and sharp.

Then, he went to the break room, pressed his hand on the doorknob, and quietly pushed open the lime-green plywood door.

Many people think of the staff lounge of a cheap bar as a junkyard dump, where there are always tons of nasty things going on, but it's actually a slightly shabby clean space. On the wall facing the door is an employee code that reads, "No drug injections in the staff break room," "No non-employee entry," and "No soiling of the bed." On the ceiling was a bright white fluorescent lamp, and the cool light shone brightly on the room's one-man wide cot, the sofa that had lost its elasticity and collapsed, and several wooden boxes.

Isa, a little girl with ginger hair, sits on a box of monster-brand energy drinks, taping notes to her homework.

Next to her, an emaciated man was sleeping on the couch wrapped in an old squirrel-colored trench coat. One of his hands drooped from the couch chair, a burned-out cigarette between his fingers.

It was a handsome man, perhaps in his early thirties, with short black hair and deep Greek features - but, as the bartender had said, he really looked "not very good."

His face was blue, his face was full of stubble, his hair was greasy, and he had a heavy dark blue under his eyes from overexhaustion, and his lips were already carved with two lines of sorrow.

To be honest, perhaps even the wanderers outside the bar, wrapped in tattered blankets and keeping warm by discarded paint cans, were healthier than him.

Calvin approached the man.

Isha made a silencing gesture to Calvin.

"He slept for half an hour. ”

She whispered to Calvin.

Calvin patted Isa's hair.

"Shall you stand outside the door for a while? Shut your ears and don't come in until I call you in—and of course, don't leave the door. ”

Isha winked at Calvin.

"Hmm, I think someone is going to be unlucky?"

Calvin didn't answer her.