Ming Ye stood by the window of his hotel room, the curtains drawn halfway to let in the dim, early morning light. Between his fingers, a cigarette burned slowly, the faint glow at its tip pulsing each time he took a drag. The smoke curled upward in thin, lazy spirals, dissolving into the stillness of the room.
He had started smoking at fifteen, three years ago now. Lu Qian had been the one to introduce him to it, grinning like it was some rite of passage. Ming Ye had known even then that Lu Qian was a terrible influence, but the thought hadn't bothered him in the slightest. He had continued the friendship anyway, because Lu Qian was genuinely the least boring person he had encountered at that point, and stability had not been something he was interested in at fifteen.
