The wind was still.
Even the moon seemed to look away.
Shu Yao stood in the center of the circle like a prayer torn from its page, his knees shaking, his breath uneven, the taste of fear sharp on his tongue.
And then—
Rip.
Another button snapped.
Then another.
And his shirt—once pristine, once carefully chosen, once wrapped around him like armor—fell open.
The pale skin beneath was laid bare to the night, the moonlight skimming across the soft expanse of his chest like a lover's reluctant hand.
The cold touched him first.
Then came the shame.
The laughter around him didn't echo—it scraped. It clawed. It buried itself in the hollows of his ribs like poison.
Shu Yao bowed his head, his shoulders curling inward.
And for the first time—not in silence, not in memory, not in secret—he wept.
Tears slipped down his cheeks like apologies no one had asked for. They fell without flourish, wetting the edge of his chin, catching in the folds of his shirt before dropping to the ground like wilted petals.
His voice followed—soft and broken.
Please," he whispered, no longer trying to sound strong. "Please… let me go…"
It was not a scream.
It was not defiance.
It was begging.
The kind that tasted like rusted nails and childhood prayers. The kind he had never allowed himself to speak—not even when his heart shattered in the dark, not even when the world had turned its back.
But now—
Now he begged.
Before strangers.
Before men who smelled like gasoline and violence and boredom sharpened into cruelty.
And none of them moved.
Not at first.
But something in their eyes shifted when his shirt opened—when the fragile rise and fall of his chest was exposed, the tremble of his breath as he tried to hide his sobs behind his hands.
They stared.
Not with kindness.
Not even with lust.
But with that terrible thing that happens when beauty is turned into something less than human.
And then—
The leader stepped forward.
He didn't speak.
He just raised his gloved hand, the leather catching a sliver of light like the tip of a blade.
And he placed it—
Right on Shu Yao's bare chest.
The contact was chilling. Measured. Possessive. His fingers splayed like a brand across Shu Yao's heart, as though he could feel it drumming beneath his palm and wanted to carve his name into its rhythm.
Shu Yao flinched—hard.
His arms twisted, trying to retreat. But the hands holding him only pressed tighter, fingers digging into his sleeves like vices.
"I'm sorry," Shu Yao gasped, over and over. "I'm sorry… please… I didn't mean…"
The words spilled out like rain from a broken gutter. Helpless. Repeating. Meaningless. Because nothing he said would change the eyes staring back at him.
Especially not the leader's.
He didn't blink. He didn't breathe.
He just stood there with his hand pressed against Shu Yao's chest, as if trying to feel whether it would crack… or keep beating.
This, Shu Yao thought, must be what it feels like to be turned into something silent.
Not a person.
Not a soul.
Just an object.
A moment.
A pause between violence.
A breath before something worse.
The sobs came faster now, his tears streaking down his face, his pride lying in pieces at his feet like shattered glass.
And still, no one let him go.
And still, he begged.
Not with words anymore.
But with the way his eyes closed. The way his body leaned back—not from surrender, but from need. The need to disappear. To vanish. To dissolve into wind and never be found again.
But cruelty is a thing that doesn't listen.
It only waits.
Smiling.
The engines roared again.
Like wolves losing interest after the kill.
The motorcycles circled once—slow, smug, satisfied—not with wealth, not with anything worth stealing, but with the echo of control. Of having watched something sacred bend.
The leader, the one with the grey eyes and laughter that never reached his soul, mounted his bike last. A flick of his hand sent gravel scattering, a curl of smoke trailing from his lips as he glanced back—just once.
And he smiled.
Not with joy.
But with a sickening calm.
He had taken nothing tangible.
And yet—he had won.
They sped off, their red taillights vanishing into the throat of the night, leaving behind dust, smoke, and something colder than silence.
He lay on his side near the edge of the pavement, where the light didn't dare follow. The stones beneath him were indifferent—cold and ancient, worn smooth by time, now stained by something far more recent. His body curled in on itself, not from the chill in the air, but from the ruin blooming beneath his skin.
His eyes were dry now.
Dry in that terrible way that comes only after too much weeping—when the body stops making tears and starts weeping elsewhere. In the bones. In the lungs. In the spaces between each breath.
His shirt hung off him like seaweed clinging to a drowned man—shredded, useless, stained. A few buttons still clung to their threads like survivors of a storm, but they were lost causes, barely hiding the map of wreckage carved across his chest.
His trousers—once part of a suit, crisp and proud—now looked like they belonged to someone who had crawled through fire and been forgotten halfway through the rescue.
And still—he moved.
He tried.
One arm trembling beneath him, the other curled over his ribs like a failed shield, Shu Yao pushed against the ground. The pavement bit into his palm, and his limbs folded wrong, graceless, as though his body no longer remembered how to carry him.
Still—he tried again.
And failed.
This time he hit the wall.
The bricks met his shoulder with the gentle cruelty of reality. It didn't shove him—it simply was. Unyielding. Silent. Like everything else.
He slid down again, breath hitching, body folding like origami soaked in real shame.
And then he whispered it—
that name.
The only name his soul could still recognize in the ruin.
"Bai Qi…"
It left his lips like a secret escaping a coffin.
"Bai Qi…"
Again. Softer.
Not a plea—just a sound.
The way a dying star might call to the void before going dark.
He was shaking now.
Not from cold.
Not from pain.
But from the unraveling.
The collapse of everything that had once held him together.
Memories, flesh, dignity—
all of it coming undone like frayed thread caught in a cruel wind.
His mind wouldn't stop screaming.
It replayed every second like a film burning through its reel—overexposed, warped, endless.
The touch.
The hands.
The silence.
He pressed his forehead to the wall.
It felt stable.
Real.
Rough against his skin.
Which made it different from everything else.
"Bai Qi…"
This time the name broke halfway through—like a violin string pulled too tight.
And then came the tears again.
Not loud.
Not theatrical.
But quiet things.
Cracks in a frozen lake.
Salt on already-burned skin.
He wasn't sure if he was crying for what had been done to him—
or for the fact that he was alone when it happened.
His hands curled at his sides like petals retreating from frost.
And his breath came out in shallow gasps, like someone learning to speak again after years of silence.
He wanted to vanish.
To be nothing more than air slipping through fingers.
A sigh lost in the noise of the world.
But instead, he leaned against the wall—
a ruined cathedral of a boy,
still upright only because falling further was impossible.
And the name—his only tether—
drifted from his lips again like incense in a ruined chapel.
"Bai Qi…"
A prayer.
A ghost.
A whisper sent into the dark, hoping something—someone—might still hear it.
And then—
A sound.
Sharp. Raw. Ripped from the ribs.
Shu Yao screamed.
Not words.
Not a name.
Just a sound.
A scream meant for no one and everything. A scream that the moon might carry to the gods in protest. A scream made of broken glass and drowning stars.
He slammed his fist into the wall.
Once.
Twice.
But not with strength. There was none left. Only the memory of it. Only the ghost of resistance left in a body that shook with each shallow breath.
Why me?
He didn't speak it. But it lived in every tremor of his hand. In the way his knees pulled up to his chest. In the way his eyes refused to meet the world.
He wanted to disappear.
To fold in on himself like paper burned at the corners, curling inward until nothing remained but ash.
And yet—
There he was.
Still breathing.
Still trembling.
Still here.
The night moved on without him. Cars passed in the distance. A neon light buzzed from across the street. Somewhere, a dog barked.
But none of it reached him.
Because in that moment, Shu Yao wasn't sitting on pavement in a city.
He was somewhere beneath it.
Buried beneath shame and hands and voices that had turned him into something small.
Something bruised.
And yet, even in that darkness, he was still clutching his coat closed.
Still hiding his heart like it was the last part of him untouched.
Still alive.
And somewhere—distant, approaching—the sound of footsteps.
A new figure coming down the road.
But Shu Yao didn't hear it yet.
Because all he could hear was the scream still ringing in his ears—his own.
The car slowed.
It hadn't meant to. George hadn't meant to look.
But something in the wind shifted—something in the road, in the hush that passed like breath withheld.
The headlights cast out ahead like searchlights, slicing through night's heavy curtain.
And there—
Curled near a wall, like a fallen angel stripped of his hymn—
A shape.
Small.
Still.
Wrong.
"Stop," George said sharply.
The driver blinked, confused. "Sir?"
"Stop the car."
The brakes sighed.
The engine idled. George pushed the door open and stepped into the cold with unease in his chest—an instinct before understanding.
He took a step forward. Then another.
The closer he drew, the heavier his footsteps felt, as if the air itself begged him to turn around. But his eyes—his sharp, falcon eyes—had already glimpsed the truth.
That wasn't a stranger.
That was him.
Shu Yao.
The delicate boy with rain in his voice and glass in his gaze.
But now—he looked like something memory had shattered and grief had tried to reassemble.
His knees were pulled tightly to his chest, arms wrapped around himself like a final prayer, his face half-hidden behind trembling hair that had once been tied with careful pride. Now, the ribbon lay crumpled on the pavement like a promise broken mid-sentence.
George's breath hitched when he saw the bruises.
No—not bruises.
Bite marks.
And lower, near the collarbone—what looked like torn fabric, gripped so tightly in pale fingers that his knuckles had gone white.
The coat he wore wasn't for warmth anymore.
It was a curtain.
A barrier.
A plea.
George stood frozen.
He hadn't prepared for this.
He had known cruelty. He had seen ruin. But this? This was delicate ruin. Innocence undone. Something that should have bloomed, now trampled in the dust.
He bent slowly, his coat brushing the pavement, and said gently, "Shu Yao?"
The boy didn't move.
Didn't blink.
His chest rose only barely, like breath itself had become a betrayal.
George reached out—fingers hesitant, as though nearing the wing of a wild bird that had been hurt too often.
He touched Shu Yao's shoulder.
And then—
"Don't touch me!"
The scream ripped from him like thunder from a cracked sky.
George recoiled, stunned—not by volume, but by emotion. It wasn't rage. It was fear. Shaking, raw, personal fear.
The kind of fear that lives in the marrow. The kind that doesn't just say you've been touched—
It says you've been unmade.
Shu Yao pulled tighter into himself, trembling like a candle in too much wind.
His lips, bitten and bruised, tried to form words that couldn't fit in the broken places. His chest heaved with shallow gasps, and yet he still clutched that coat closed, as if any part of his soul could still be covered.
He looked up, eyes glassy, wild.
Not at George.
But beyond him.
Through him.
"Bai Qi…" he whispered, voice cracking like porcelain dropped from trembling hands.
"Bai Qi, why didn't you come…?"
A sob escaped him—half name, half plea. "Why didn't you come? They.... They Robe my..... Pride...
George saw him. "with Horror Eyes" as if he got Shot through, his heart.
And George finally understood.
This wasn't just fear.
This was heartbreak.
This was a scream meant for someone else.
For someone who would never hear it.
George's throat tightened.
He wanted to reach again. To comfort. To say you're not alone.
But how do you touch someone who flinches from light?
How do you speak to someone whose pride lies shredded at their feet like torn silk?
He crouched again—but slower this time. Quieter.
"Ich werde dir nichts tun," he said softly. "You know my name. George.
Und ich kenne deinen auch. Shu Yao."
"And I know your's"
He paused, as if the silence needed to breathe before it shattered.
"Du bist sicher jetzt."
You're safe now.
"Ich bin nicht hier, um dir etwas zu nehmen."
I'm not here to take anything from you.
The boy didn't respond—but the tremble in his shoulders slowed.
Just slightly.
George's gaze fell to the ribbon again—soft and crumpled, like Shu Yao himself.
He picked it up, careful as if it were glass, and whispered,
„Darf ich?"
"May I?"
Shu Yao didn't answer. But he didn't pull away either.
George gently, reverently, pushed the fallen strands of hair behind Shu Yao's ear. He didn't try to tie the ribbon back. Not yet.
He just wanted him to feel… seen.
Shu Yao blinked.
And for the first time, his eyes locked with George's.
Not with recognition.
But with question.
Was he safe?
Was he worth saving?
Was he still… whole?
And George, without a word, answered him in silence—by staying. By not running. By kneeling in the gutter beside him like a man who didn't see a victim…
…but a boy who still had something sacred left.