Wizard of Oz || Zuo Hang✓

Thirty-One

'Oh Zuo you're home...' his mother announced when she saw him walk in through the door. He didn't reply, but instead he walked past her and covered his eyes with the sleeve of his sweater. 'Zuo?' his mother repeated.

Zuo raced up the stairs and got into his room, slamming the door hard behind him.

His mother was surprised, but she knew something had happened to Zuo while at school. He wasn't the type to cry, unless it was something really stressful. Still more, she decided to leave it alone and wait till he came downstairs to ask him what was wrong with him.

But when she heard his cries getting louder, she realized she needed to talk to him. She sighed to herself and walked up the stairs. She knocked lightly on the door, before deciding to open it and check on her son.

He was lying on his bed and crying his eyes out.

'Zuo,' his mother asked him and sat down the bed. 'What's wrong with you? What happened?'

Zuo didn't reply, but he tried to quiet down his sobbing. He had realized that it was his crying that had attracted his mother's attention.

'You're sad because you got a bad grade?' Her mother asked the first thing that came in her mind.

'No,' Zuo slightly chuckled amidst his tears.

'Then what is it?'

'I'm just...a really bad person. I didn't mean to hurt the person I love, but I did it anyway.' He explained.

'What?' she stroked his hair.

'I was just...trying to be there for the person I love. I didn't know that what I was doing would actually hurt her.' He explained.

'What did you do Zuo?'

'I lied to her...but I didn't intend to. I thought I was helping her out...I gave her my time and attention and I thought that was enough, but I guess not.' Zuo sighed. 'Now she's leaving and she's going to leave with the mindset that I'm a bad guy...but I really loved her.'

'Zuo that doesn't make you a bad person...we all make mistakes okay? And if you didn't have bad intentions, don't be so hard on yourself.' She patted his head. 'Okay?'

Zuo nodded, but he still wasn't feeling any better about it. He didn't want to think of the fact that now Yanni viewed him as a terrible person, and his time with her, even though it was just as chatbot, was over.

...

When Yanni walked into her home that afternoon as well, feeling drained and saddened from another day of school.

'Yanni, how could you?' Yanni's mother asked her immediately when she walked in through the door.

'What?' she asked with genuine surprise.

'You told your friends about what was going on in the house? You know everyone at the office was asking me.'

'Really? It's gone that far?' Yanni asked with a sad look. She had added another feeling on top of the others: guilt.

'Yes, because some of your classmates' parents work with me.' She shook her head in disappointment. 'I literally told you to not do this one thing, but you went ahead and did it anyway.'

Yanni wanted to say she didn't tell anyone, but even that explanation didn't make any sense. She had told someone, but she didn't know that she had actually told someone at that point in time. She had to nod her head and accept that it was her fault, even though she hadn't done it on purpose.

'You're lucky you're going to live with your father, I wouldn't have been able to stand you for one more second.' Yanni's mother relapsed onto the couch. She threw herself on the couch and put her feet on the table.

Yanni walked up the stairs sadly, getting ready to pack. She just couldn't stop thinking about what had happened, and whether she was really to blame for what happened. Had she somehow deserved what Zuo had done? She shook the thoughts away, not wanting to feel worse than she already did.