Chapter 4 - Chapter 3

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(WENZIEL)

I didn't know if James' family could really be called a family.  

He was a college mate to me and Eriez. Back then I was in the College of Law, he a Business Administration guy, and Eriez a medical student.  Among us three, only he married. And he's the busiest on top of it.  

His wife, Mitchelle, gave birth to a healthy baby boy called Zhio but passed away right after her delivery. James was suddenly left with the responsibility of being a sole parent and a director of a company in place of his late wife.  

Zhio grew up without James often at his side. It was me and Eriez who filled the fatherly role when he wasn't around. Until one day, James suddenly got ill and spent few days hospitalized. I still remember him being extremely grateful to us for looking after Zhio when we met him after his three-day confinement. It was supposed to be a normally happy day until things took downright worse.  

James passed out at a conference held that same day. Unexpectedly, he was declared brain dead. Alive but never to wake up.  

Zhio was suddenly handed with the obligation of running the company that his father left behind. Eriez and I stayed at his back, all the while helping him with corporate responsibilities a seventeen-year-old couldn't possibly handle with ease. News spread like wildfire about him, the scion to a conglomerate giant called the Cryzastic Corporation.

It was a curse to the rich to make sudden sacrifices in the face of business. To Zhio, it was his youth. All the glimmer of adolescence has passed him by as he was bounded to the corners of a company that was facing its struggles. I used to watch him with worry that he's wasting away his life for the sake of his father's legacy. After all, at that age he should be making memories not paper works or conferences.

Five years had passed since he took over and made the company thrive. The bigger the company has become, the smaller the smile that he has. He came to understand the industry so well that he even removed the sycophants, the flirty women, and the gossipers from work.

He hardly expressed emotions, rarely talked, and was dead-set on making the business even more successful. He's become an enterprise robot that even his father wouldn't hope he'll be. James only wanted him to be happy.

Genuinely happy.

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