The automatic glass doors of Rothenberg Industries parted with a silent, pneumatic hiss.
Bai Qi stepped into the lobby, the morning sun casting a long, confident shadow before him. The building was largely empty, a cathedral of steel and glass holding its breath before the chaos of the workday began.
He felt unusually light. The lingering euphoria of the previous night—the dinner, the laughter, the uncanny resurrection of a dead memory in the form of Ming Su—acted like a potent drug. For the first time in days, the crushing weight on his chest had lifted, replaced by a tentative, fragile hope.
A receptionist, startled by his early arrival, hastily stood up.
"Good morning, Mr, Bai" she stammered, adjusting her glasses.
Bai Qi paused. Usually, he would glide past like a phantom, acknowledging no one. But today, the ghost of Qing Yue's smile was plastered over his own soul.
"Good morning," he replied.
The woman froze, her eyes widening in genuine shock as she watched his retreating back. The Ice Monarch had spoken.
Bai Qi entered the private elevator, pressing the button for the top floor. As the numbers climbed, his brow furrowed. The lightness in his chest snagged on a jagged thought.
Shu Yao.
He had forgotten. In the haze of wine and Ming Su's laughter, he had forgotten the punishment. Was the boy still there? A flicker of annoyance crossed his face—not at himself for the cruelty, but at Shu Yao for being a lingering shadow that refused to be exorcised.
Seventeen floors up, the silence was absolute.
Shu Yao placed the final file on the stack. It was done.
He looked at the clock. It was morning. He had survived the night, but as he attempted to stand, reality collected its toll.
"I... I need to get out of here," he whispered, his voice a dry husk. "Bai Qi... is in danger."
He pushed himself up.
His legs didn't just fail; they vanished.
Numbness, cold and absolute, had overtaken his lower limbs from hours of rigid stillness and starvation. His knees buckled instantly.
Thud.
Shu Yao hit the carpeted floor hard, the impact jarring his teeth. He lay there, breathing in the scent of dust and despair, his vision swimming with black spots.
"Move," he commanded his broken body. "Move."
He gritted his teeth, forcing his arms to do the work his legs refused. He dragged himself up, using the edge of the desk as a crutch. He stood, swaying like a reed in a gale, trembling violently.
He staggered to the threshold. The hallway stretched out before him, a terrifying expanse of grey. He couldn't use the elevator. The phobia, the pressure of the metal box—it was too much. He felt trapped, the walls closing in.
"I can do it," he gasped, sweat beading on his pale forehead. "He must be in his office."
He placed a hand against the wall for support, his fingers leaving faint streaks on the pristine paint, and began the agonizing trudge toward the executive suite.
The elevator dinged.
Bai Qi stepped out, his hands tucked casually into the pockets of his obsidian suit. He adopted the posture he used to have when she was alive—relaxed, arrogant, untouched by grief.
He turned the corner, heading toward the secretary's office, intending to issue a dismissal.
He stopped.
A figure was shambling toward him in the dim hallway. It took Bai Qi a moment to recognize the ruin before him.
Shu Yao was walking with his head lowered, watching his own feet as if navigating a minefield. He sensed the presence in front of him and slowly, painfully, lifted his gaze.
The moment he saw Bai Qi, the exhaustion seemed to vanish, replaced by a frantic, primal terror.
"Sir!"
Shu Yao surged forward, forgetting his station, forgetting the pain. He grabbed Bai Qi's elbows, his grip desperate and trembling, clutching the fabric of the expensive suit as if it were a lifeline.
Bai Qi flinched violently. The physical contact was a shock, an unwanted intrusion into his bubble of perfection.
"What are you doing?" Bai Qi demanded, looking down at the hands gripping him.
Shu Yao ignored the tone. He ignored the etiquette.
"You are in danger," Shu Yao coughed, the words tumbling out in a breathless rush.
Bai Qi frowned, trying to step back, but Shu Yao's grip was hysterical, iron-clad.
"Let go of me," Bai Qi said, his voice dripping with clean, unadulterated disgust.
Shu Yao shook his head frantically, his eyes wide and bloodshot. "She... she isn't a good person."
The air in the hallway froze.
Bai Qi's expression shifted instantly. The annoyance hardened into a scary, cold anger.
"She?" Bai Qi asked, his voice dangerously quiet.
Shu Yao nodded, tears of desperation pricking his eyes. He wasn't trying to be disrespectful. He was trying to expose the trap. He knew the truth that Bai Qi was blind to—that Shen Haoxuan had orchestrated this.
Shen Haoxuan, the man who hated Bai Qi not for business, but for blood. The man who couldn't stand that his own mother had cared for Bai Qi, they are both her son but different fathers. Ming Su was merely the bait in a trap years in the making.
"You dare," Bai Qi hissed, finally shoving Shu Yao away with a forceful push. "You dare to speak ill of her?"
Shu Yao stumbled back, catching himself against the wall. "No! I didn't mean—"
"Then what are you talking about?" Bai Qi cut him off, his voice rising.
"I am trying to tell you!" Shu Yao cried out, his voice cracking. "It's a trap! She is involved with him!"
Bai Qi stared at him. The words didn't register as a warning. They registered as madness.
"I can't keep going on like this," Bai Qi sighed, running a hand through his hair in frustration. "You always indulge your nose in everything. How am I supposed to live like this?"
Shu Yao opened his mouth, but no words came. He was drowning in misunderstood intentions.
Bai Qi blinked, studying the frantic misery on Shu Yao's face. A thought occurred to him—a simple, ugly explanation for this behavior.
His mouth twitched.
"Is it because you are jealousy?" Bai Qi asked.
Shu Yao's head snapped up. The accusation struck him harder than a physical blow.
"No..." he stammered, shaking his head. "No... sir..."
He wasn't jealous. He was terrified. He was the shield trying to protect the knight, but the knight was holding the sword against himself.
"Oh, really?" Bai Qi stepped closer, invading Shu Yao's personal space, his presence looming and threatening. "But to me it looks like jealousy? I never indulge my nose in yours, do you want me to speak that, Shen Haoxuan also something to you?"
Shu Yao's eyes widened. "What?"
"Since you are gay," Bai Qi sneered, weaponizing Shu Yao's identity with casual cruelty, "I have many doubts about you, Shu Yao."
Shu Yao shook his head, a tear finally escaping the corner of his eye.
"No..."
"The way Shen calls your name," Bai Qi continued, relentless, picking apart Shu Yao's trauma and presenting it as evidence of sin. "It was something intimate.
"It's not... it's not like that!" Shu Yao wailed softly.
"And not even Shen," Bai Qi scoffed. "But my uncle, too. I wonder too... my uncle's behavior changed recently. He is too obsessed with you."
Bai Qi leaned in, his voice a poisonous whisper. "Are you trying to seduce other men to get back at me?"
Shu Yao felt his heart shatter. The accusation was so vile, so far removed from the reality of his sacrifice, that it left him breathless.
Tears fell silently now, tracking through the dust on his cheeks. He shook his head slowly.
"Then what is it?" Bai Qi demanded.
Shu Yao looked at him. He looked at the man he had destroyed himself for, the man he was currently dying for.
"I didn't do anything," Shu Yao whispered. "I... I only love..."
He paused, looking deep into Bai Qi's cold, hateful eyes.
"I only love you," Shu Yao confessed, the words fragile as glass. "No one else. Just
you."
Silence stretched between them, heavy and suffocating.
Bai Qi stared at him. He didn't feel pity. He didn't feel gratitude.
He felt disgust.
He turned his head away, curling his lip.
"Pathetic," Bai Qi muttered. "You are pathetic, Shu Yao."
Shu Yao's lips trembled, a sob trapped in his throat.
Bai Qi turned back, his gaze sweeping over Shu Yao with utter disdain. "That jealousy looks pathetic on you.
I don't want to judge you, but you should stay away from me."
Shu Yao stood there, lost in the silence of his own destruction.
But Bai Qi wasn't finished. He needed to protect the illusion of Ming Su. He needed to crush this interference.
"You've spent years lurking in the corners of my life," Bai Qi said, his voice rising with self-righteous anger. "Watching me. Waiting. And now that I've actually got someone who actually resembles the warmth I lost... now that I might be happy..."
Bai Qi pointed a finger at Shu Yao's chest.
"You try to poison it with your disgusting lies."
Shu Yao's eyes were wide, swimming in a pool of unshed tears. He was shaking, his body failing, his heart failing.
"It... it isn't lies," Shu Yao sobbed, his voice cracking, desperate to be heard one last time. "She is planning against you..."
"Shut up!" Bai Qi roared.
Shu Yao flinched, curling in on himself.
"Get out of my sight," Bai Qi spat. "I don't want to see you.
Shu Yao didn't fall; he dissolved.
His spine scraped against the cold, unforgiving plaster of the hallway wall as he slid downward, his strength evaporating into the sterile air.
He landed in a heap, a marionette whose strings had been severed by the very hand that held them.
Above him, Bai Qi adjusted his cuffs, his silhouette sharp and unyielding against the morning light.
The mood—the fragile, borrowed happiness of the morning—was shattered, replaced by a suffocating irritation. He couldn't bear to look at the wreckage on the floor.
"You finished your work," Bai Qi said, his voice devoid of warmth, sounding like a judge passing a death sentence. "Consider yourself dismissed. Not for the week. For a lifetime."
The words hung in the air, heavy and irrevocable.
Bai Qi turned his back. He walked away, his footsteps echoing a rhythm of finality, leaving Shu Yao drowning in the silence.
Shu Yao sat there, staring at the retreating figure. Useless. The word echoed in his mind. Worthless.
He tried to push himself up, his fingers scrabbling uselessly against the carpet, but his muscles were water. The accusations burned like acid in his chest.
Seducing Mr, George?
A hysterical, broken sob caught in his throat. George was the only sanctuary he had ever known in this tower of wolves. George was a father figure, a big brother—a protector who offered warmth when others offered poison. To have that pure, familial kindness twisted into something sordid was the final cruelty.
"I... I couldn't protect him," Shu Yao whispered to the empty corridor.
The crushing realization settled over him. Bai Qi was walking straight into the fire, blinded by a beautiful lie, and Shu Yao had been stripped of his shield. If something happened to Bai Qi—if the trap snapped shut—Shu Yao knew he would never forgive himself. He would die of the guilt before the starvation took him.
What should I do?
Panic clawed at his chest.
He won't listen to me. He hates me.
His mind raced, frantic and feverish. If he couldn't stop the victim, he had to stop the predator.
I need to warn her, he thought, a dangerous clarity cutting through the haze. I need to tell Ming Su to stay away from him.
It was madness. Confronting the woman who held all the cards, the woman who was a mirror of a ghost. But it was the only path left.
But what if she twisted the whole plane?
The fear spiked, sharp and cold. She was Shen Haoxuan's weapon; she wouldn't stop out of kindness.
Then I will beg, Shu Yao decided, his jaw trembling. I will do whatever it takes.
He forced a breath into his burning lungs. He had to stand.
He had to move. He would confront the deception face-to-face.
It was the only way to save his Bai Qi.