[FENG YU POV ]
Three Years Earlier
Jinling University didn't announce its purpose. It didn't need to.
Feng Yu understood within his first week that the ivy...covered buildings and manicured lawns were theater—beautiful set dressing for a more practical function. The university sorted the elite into three categories: inheritors, weapons, and casualties.
Feng Yu had accepted that he was category three.
Scholarship students occupied an unofficial fourth tier: smart enough to be useful, poor enough to be disposable.
He'd accepted those terms when he accepted the admission letter. Full tuition, a stipend for housing, and a meal plan that kept him fed, if not comfortable. All he had to do in return was maintain perfect grades, stay invisible to the families that mattered, and never forget that his presence was conditional.
Easy enough. Feng Yu had been conditional his entire life.
"Move."
The command came from somewhere behind him in the campus center's crowded corridor. Feng Yu stepped aside automatically, pressing against the marble wall as a group of students swept past. Designer clothes, expensive accessories, and the particular confidence that came from never doubting the world would accommodate you.
He recognized two of them from his Economics of Global Markets lecture—Zhou Meng and Kai Fang. Both were heirs to empires that operated in Jinling's gray spaces where legitimate business and criminal enterprise blurred together.
Neither looked at him as they passed.
Feng Yu was excellent at being invisible. It was the first survival skill he'd mastered, long before academic excellence or social observation. Invisibility meant safety. It meant not being noticed by people who could hurt you casually, without consequence.
But invisibility also meant proximity. Meant he could watch, listen, and learn the unspoken rules that governed this place.
Like now, standing against the wall while the crowd parted for Zhou Meng's group, he noticed the subtle hierarchies at play. Who stepped aside first? Who made eye contact? Who received acknowledgment and who was ignored.
Power made itself known in small gestures.
"—complete overreaction," someone was saying ahead. Raised voices near the east corridor, where the business school classrooms clustered. "He bumped into you. It was an accident."
Feng Yu's curiosity pulled him forward. Altercations were rare here—the children of Jinling's elite had been trained since birth to handle conflicts quietly, to never create scenes that might damage family reputations.
This made public disputes worth observing.
He moved closer, careful to stay at the crowd's periphery. Twenty or so students had gathered, forming a loose circle around two figures. One was a sophomore, Feng Yu recognized from the finance track—Lin Ming, whose father controlled shipping routes through Jinling's port. Aggressive, entitled, the kind of rich that confused wealth with immunity.
The other was a junior Feng Yu had never seen up close before, though he'd heard the name whispered with particular reverence: Su Yishui.
"It wasn't an accident," Lin Ming was saying, his voice tight with anger. "You think I don't know when someone's trying to humiliate me?"
Su Yishui stood perfectly still, hands loose at his sides, posture neither aggressive nor defensive. Just... present. Feng Yu couldn't see his expression from this angle, but something about his stillness drew attention more effectively than Lin Ming's volume.
"I apologized," Su Yishui said quietly. "I was"t watching where I was going. My fault entirely."
The apology should have de-escalated things. Should have given Lin Ming the face...saving exit that campus politics required.
Instead, Lin Ming stepped closer, crowding Su Yishui's space. "Your fault? You're damn right, it's your fault. You, Su family heirs, think you can do whatever you want, don't you? Think your name means you don't have to watch where—"
"Lin Ming." Su Yishui's interruption was soft but somehow cut through the other student's tirade. "I've apologized. If you want something else from me, tell me what it is."
Feng Yu's attention sharpened. There was something in the way Su Yishui spoke—not confrontational, but not quite submissive either. Offering something without specifying what. Making the other person define the terms of resolution.
Clever. And dangerous, if the other person decided to push.
Lin Ming's face flushed. "What I want is for you to—"
"Accept my apology and move on?" Su Yishui suggested. Still quiet. Still controlled. "Or continue making a scene that reflects poorly on both our families?"
The reminder of the family reputation hit its mark. Lin Ming's jaw clenched, but Feng Yu saw the exact moment he realized he'd been maneuvered into a corner. Either accept the apology and look reasonable, or keep escalating and risk his father hearing about how he'd caused a public incident over nothing.
"Fine," Lin Ming spat. "But watch yourself."
He shoved past Su Yishui—deliberately hard, shoulder-checking him. Su Yishui absorbed the impact without reacting, did"t stumble, did"t respond. Just stood there as Lin Ming and his friends left, the crowd already dispersing now that the entertainment was over.
Feng Yu stayed where he was, watching.
Su Yishui remained motionless for another moment, then his shoulders dropped fractionally. Not relief—more like release of tension he'd been holding. His hand came up to rub his shoulder where Lin Ming had hit him. Just once. Then he caught himself, lowered his arm, let his left hand tap twice against his thigh instead—hidden, unconscious.
Feng Yu filed the gesture away.
Then he turned, and Feng Yu got his first clear look at Su Yishui's face.
Beautiful in the way expensive things were beautiful—refined features, perfect symmetry, the kind of face that appeared in family portraits and political campaigns. But it was the expression that caught Feng Yu's attention. Not angry despite the provocation. Not proud despite having won the exchange.
Just... tired.
Practiced tired. The kind that came from performing the same routine too many times.
Their eyes met.
Three seconds. Maybe four.
Something passed between them that Yishui could t name—recognition that had nothing to do with knowing each other's names. The stranger had seen past the performance to the exhaustion underneath.
It should have felt invasive.
Instead, it felt like relief.
Then Su Yishui's expression smoothed back into pleasant neutrality. He nodded politely—the way someone acknowledged a stranger's presence without inviting interaction—and walked away toward the library.
Feng Yu stood frozen against the marble wall, heart beating faster than the situation warranted.
He'd just watched Su Yishui de...escalate potential violence through pure trained compliance. Watched him absorb an insult and physical aggression without defending himself, without calling for help from the family name everyone seemed to fear.
And Feng Yu recognized it because he'd been doing the same thing his entire life—making himself smaller, quieter, more accommodating to survive in spaces that barely tolerated his presence.
But Su Yishui had been taught this. Trained in it the way other people were trained in languages or instruments. This wasn't survival instinct. This was conditioning.
Someone had made him this way deliberately.
The realization did something strange to Feng Yu's chest. Something that felt like recognition and fury and a dangerous kind of fascination all tangled together.
He pushed off the wall and followed Su Yishui toward the library without deciding to do it. Just moved, pulled by something he didn't have words for yet.
The library was nearly empty this time of afternoon—most students were either in class or at the expensive cafes off campus where the real social sorting happened. Su Yishui had claimed a table in the back corner, already surrounded by textbooks, laptop open, perfectly absorbed in his work.
Or pretending to be absorbed. Feng Yu noticed the way his eyes didn't quite focus on the screen, and the tension still present in his shoulders.
Feng Yu selected a table within visual range but not obtrusively close. Close enough to observe. Far enough to maintain plausible coincidence.
He pulled out his own laptop, opened his Economics assignment, and proceeded not to work on it.
Instead, he watched.
Su Yishui typed something, deleted it, typed again. His posture was immaculate, even sitting—back straight, shoulders squared. Every few minutes, he'd glance around the library, checking who was present, who might be watching. When his gaze passed over Feng Yu, there was no recognition. No acknowledgment that they'd made eye contact twenty minutes ago.
Feng Yu was invisible again.
Usually, that was what he wanted. But watching Su Yishui sit alone in his corner, surrounded by books and perfect performance, something in Feng Yu's chest pulled tight with an emotion he couldn't name.
This person had everything Feng Yu didn't. Family name, wealth, social position, a future guaranteed by generational power.
And somehow, he looked more trapped than Feng Yu had ever felt.
Feng Yu spent the next hour cataloging details most people never noticed. The phone checks every fifteen minutes—messages read but not answered. The tea was sipped but never finished. The way Yishui's left hand tapped twice against his thigh when he was anxious, always hidden below the table.
Small tells. Observable patterns.
Feng Yu collected them the way other people collected currency.
When Su Yishui finally packed his things to leave, Feng Yu made a decision.
It was"t rational. Was"t strategic. Maybe it wasn't even safe.
But he'd spent his entire life being careful, being invisible, being whatever he needed to be to survive without causing ripples.
And something about Su Yishui's exhausted performance of perfection made Feng Yu want to be seen.
Made him want to see Su Yishui—not the heir, not the trained mediator, but whoever existed underneath all that conditioning.
I'll get close, Feng Yu thought, watching Su Yishui disappear through the library's main doors. Whatever it takes.
He did t know yet what getting close would cost.
Didn't know that obsession started quietly, with small observations that accumulated into a dangerous fixation.
Didn't know that five years later, he'd be sitting in the Red Room watching Su Yishui learn the lessons Feng Yu had paid in blood to understand.
But in that moment, in Jinling University's pristine library, Feng Yu made the choice that would eventually destroy both their lives and reshape them into something neither of them recognized.
He closed his laptop.
Getting close to Su Yishui would require a strategy. Patience. Calculated vulnerability that looked like an accident.
Feng Yu had none of those things naturally.
But he'd learn. No matter the cost. Obsession did t start with love.
It started with control disguised as proximity.