Candlelight Back Home · 烛光回老家

Candlelight goes back home to his little village, meeting a more-than-friend along the way. Incidents happen and the once-friendly villagers are turned against each other.

Candlelight, disillusioned and worn-down from his SPF job, decided to quit and go back to being a farmer. He moved from Area 1 back to the nameless village near Area 29 in which he was born.

On the train, he met Curly, an extremely nervous and jumpy guy who was on the bunk below him. They chatted with each other. He found out that Curly was going to the same village to find his relatives; and that he had suffered a heartbreaking breakup that he would rather not talk about.

When they got home, he met his childhood friend Mooncake, who was also a cop and faring way better than him. Curly also met his distant relative, Helsinki. Candlelight found that the other villagers had long ago sold every removable furniture at his house, including the pot of wine in the basement, and divided the spoils which had again long ago been spent.

So for the time being, they stayed in Helsinki's.

Candlelight noticed that a couple families he used to know had similar things happen to their houses — run-down and sold empty. He wondered why. The curt answers Thyme gave him was that the old members had died and the young ones were away in eastern Westavia.

A couple days later, Thyme got a call from the police, saying that Ember was due to be released from reeducation soon. Not because he actually changed his mind or anything, but because he was the last person in the camp and they couldn't afford it running anymore. They asked him whether Thyme could find Ember's relatives to go get him.

What a coincidence, his son had just come back!

So apparently, Ember and the band of terrorists he ran away with got caught. The other members were either sentenced to jail or executed, but as Ember didn't directly participate in the attack on the Area 29 market, he was only sentenced to reeducation. Candlelight never knew this, but he knew he would absolutely refuse to meet Ember again. It took nearly the entire village — the same people who stood by and watched as Ember slowly forced Muscat to her death — to convince him to at least go get him home from the camp.