Shu Yao drifted softly into a world stitched from silk and honeyed hush, a dreamscape where the air shimmered like candle smoke in still water. At first, it was empty—just a field of quiet, colorless light that held no shape. But then, like a breath drawn from the lungs of memory, a figure emerged.
Bai Qi.
Alone.
No one else stirred in that world. No voices. No shadows. Just him.
Shu Yao stepped forward, barely hearing the rustle of grass beneath his feet, as if even the ground itself held its breath. And then Bai Qi turned—slowly, gracefully—and his eyes caught Shu Yao like a fishhook to the heart. The moment their gazes collided, Shu Yao's breath faltered. He turned his head quickly, overwhelmed, shy—a blush blooming along the bridge of his nose like spilled rosewater.
It couldn't be. Bai Qi had looked at him… like that.
Not with distance, not with duty—but with a softness that trembled like the edge of spring.
Before Shu Yao could retreat into disbelief, Bai Qi moved closer. Every step he took carried the gravity of moons. Shu Yao's lungs forgot how to function. Bai Qi's hands, warm and certain, found their place around Shu Yao's waist—like the world had always intended them to be there.
And then—it began.
A rain of petals fell from the sky, slow and weightless. Pink, white, crimson. Each one whispered something only the heart could hear. Shu Yao stood beneath them, dazed, melting into the arms that held him.
He was love-drunk and blindfolded by beauty.
His soft brown strands fell loose, fluttering with the wind, his long lashes trembling like butterfly wings against his cheekbones. He wore his favorite white hoodie and simple black trousers, unadorned, as if even his clothes knew this dream was not about grandeur—but about raw, quiet longing.
Bai Qi, wrapped in a soft grey jacket over a white shirt, his black jeans paired with those familiar sneakers—the same brand Bai qi's father Brand—stood taller, broader, infinite.
Shu Yao had never felt smaller. Or safer.
Bai Qi leaned down—so close, the space between them thinned into stardust—and though he spoke no words, Shu Yao felt everything in his silence.
His heart was fluttering too fast to cage.
Butterflies in his stomach flapped wild, their wings brushing every nerve as if saying: This is love. This is love. This is love.
And Shu Yao let himself fall—into the warmth, into the dream, into him.
Bai Qi leaned closer, his breath brushing Shu Yao's cheek like a breeze stirred from an old memory. The petals were still falling—soft as sighs, delicate as things unsaid. His voice, when it came, was quiet and warm, like candlelight in the dusk.
"Shu Yao... do you remember the first time we met?"
The question was simple, almost tender. But it slid into Shu Yao's chest like a blade tipped in nostalgia.
"I… I do," Shu Yao replied, his voice stammering on the edges, caught between past and present. "It was you… you bumped into me—by accident."
For a moment, there was silence. Then Bai Qi laughed.
But not the kind of laugh that held warmth. It was hollow—distant, like a bell rung underwater. A sound that knew how betrayal tasted. A sound that didn't match the petals still dancing around them.
Shu Yao couldn't meet his eyes anymore. His gaze dropped—unfocused, lost somewhere near Bai Qi's shoulder, as if looking directly would unravel him.
"…Wasn't that's how we met?" he asked softly, uncertainty pooling like ink in his voice.
But Bai Qi's hands—once so sure around Shu Yao's waist—loosened. The fingers no longer held intention; they merely existed, like ghosts of affection. He turned his head, face unreadable beneath the dimming dreamlight.
And something inside Shu Yao curled in pain.
The ache wasn't sharp. It was slow, wide, and cruel—like something ancient cracking beneath skin. His hand moved to his chest, pressing against it, as if he could still the shuddering beneath bone.
Because Bai Qi… Bai Qi was thinking of something else. Someone else.
Not Shu Yao.
But Qing Yue.
The name passed through Shu Yao's mind like a winter wind—biting, nameless, full of questions no heart should have to answer.
If, in Bai Qi's eyes, the first meeting belonged not to Shu Yao but to Qing Yue… then why? Why did Bai Qi appear here, in this dream? Why not to her?
Why now?
Why him?
And the petals, which once felt like love falling, now fluttered like ashes.
Shu Yao stood still, his hand pressed tightly over his chest as if to calm a tremor that began not in the flesh—but in the soul. The petals had thinned in the air now, drifting slower, heavier, as though the dream itself sensed a shift in gravity.
Then Bai Qi turned again.
Not to offer kindness.
Not to draw near with warmth.
But to confess—words that were never meant for Shu Yao at all.
His gaze was sharper now, not the softness Shu Yao adored, but something crueler, prouder. He leaned forward, a shadow folding across his face—and for a fleeting moment, his features blurred into something Shu Yao had only ever seen in nightmares. That death-stained expression.
The same expression that haunted the dark corridors of his sleep.
"This… This is what I've been trying to tell you," Bai Qi said, his voice low and venomous—honey dipped in poison. "From the very beginning."
He paused. His next words didn't shatter like glass—they sank like a blade.
"It was always her."
A smirk.
"It was always Qing Yue."
The petals stopped. Midair. Suspended in disbelief.
Shu Yao's breath caught.
No, this wasn't the Bai Qi he knew.
This Bai Qi… he was arrogant.
Not just proud—but elevated, unreachable. As if love itself bored him. As if kindness were beneath him.
Too unlike the real Bai Qi—whose smirk, when it came, always held serenity behind it. A secret tenderness. A boy who knew silence better than cruelty.
This one? This dream-forged Bai Qi was too terrifying in his beauty.
A cold god sculpted not from memory, but from doubt.
"You better be aware of me, Shu Yao," he said next—his voice gliding like silk over a dagger's edge.
"Because you never knew…"
He stepped closer.
"…the real me."
Shu Yao's world tilted.
He couldn't move. Couldn't breathe.
The gaze Bai Qi fixed upon him was no longer familiar. It was the stare of a stranger wearing the face of someone he once dared to love. Something ancient and unknowable flashed in Bai Qi's eyes, and it unstrung the light in the scene.
Shu Yao took a step back.
Then another.
And another.
As if distance could undo this moment.
As if retreat could rewind what was said.
But Bai Qi only smiled—an evil, mocking curve of the lips. The kind that didn't hurt the skin, but struck somewhere far crueler: the heart.
Shu Yao's chest tightened again. It stabbed. Hard. Deep.
Because this version of Bai Qi…
This dream-phantom…
He was never supposed to exist.
And as the dream began to dissolve—petals falling in reverse, light dimming to grey—Bai Qi's smirk was the last thing to remain.
A cruel crown.
A terrifying farewell.
The dream did not end. It twisted.
Like ink poured into clear water.
Now Shu Yao stood in a place he had no memory entering—Bai qi's father's office, or perhaps some haunting imitation of it. But the walls were darker, the air too still. The books on the shelves looked unread. The fire in the hearth did not burn.
And sitting behind the great desk, in his father's chair—was Bai Qi.
No, not Bai Qi. Not the one Shu Yao knew.
This version sat like a king forged from shadows.
Dressed in obsidian, his suit sculpted to sharpness, his wolfcut neatly arranged like a crown of command.
Those eyes—those black opal eyes—did not shimmer with affection, but with something colder. Something ancestral.
Loathing.
Shu Yao felt it in his spine before it reached his skin.
It ran down his back like ice water, as if the soul itself recoiled from what it saw.
Bai Qi didn't speak at first.
He only stared.
And then, with a voice slick with venom, he said,
"You're three seconds late."
The words cracked through the silence like a whip.
Shu Yao opened his mouth, but nothing came.
He was clothed again in a suit that didn't belong to him—tailored too tightly, like a cage.
And Bai Qi rose.
Slowly. Deliberately.
"So…" he said, turning that beautiful, ruthless face toward him, "what's the excuse now?"
Shu Yao took a step back.
But the dream would not let him go.
He was trapped—caught in the space between memory and nightmare, past and punishment.
And Bai Qi moved forward.
The closer he came, the darker the room grew. As if his fury drained the light from the walls.
That black suit shimmered like liquid night. His eyes rimmed red, like blood had kissed the whites.
Shu Yao backed away—
but the wall found him first.
His body struck it, breathless.
He curled his hands to his chest, shielding them, shielding himself—though from what, he no longer knew.
He only knew the fear.
And then Bai Qi's words came again—
not shouted, but spat.
"Why didn't you die that day?"
The words did not pierce like a knife.
They exploded like a curse.
Shu Yao gasped.
The world reeled.
He tried to speak. To understand. To breathe.
But the grief was already rising in his throat like water in a drowning man's lungs.
And Bai Qi leaned in—closer, unforgiving, monstrous in his beauty.
"Why…"
He growled now, not a whisper but a storm.
"…why couldn't you die?"
The silence shattered inside Shu Yao.
His autumn-colored eyes welled—tears not born of weakness, but of devastation. They slipped free, silent and stunned, as though even his body didn't know how to process this betrayal.
This was not real.
This wasn't him.
This couldn't be him.
But it hurt.
God, it hurt.
More than knives.
More than fire.
Because it was Bai Qi—and even in dreams, the heart does not forget who it loves.
Shu Yao's heart cracked. Not loudly.
But like a porcelain cup falling from too high a shelf.
And in the broken echo of Bai Qi's fury, Shu Yao stood trembling.
Alone in a world made by memory, warped by fear.
And punished by love turned cruel.
The world around Shu Yao melted, shadows collapsing like ink spilled across silk. The dream shifted once again—ruthlessly, without warning.
He now stood beneath a charcoal sky.
Rain, faint as whispered apologies, wept from the heavens, speckling the earth with cold breath. Before him, a lone grave stretched beneath a canopy of black umbrellas.
Yet no faces—only silhouettes blurred by mist.
Shu Yao stood in silence, clad in a tailored black suit. His long, autumn-gold hair had been tied back neatly, the strands falling like memory over his shoulder. In his hands trembled a bouquet of lilies, white and unbruised, a quiet promise of mourning.
He stepped forward, the soil beneath his shoes damp and unwelcoming. And there—standing like a statue etched in storm—was Bai Qi.
His back was turned. Head bowed. Cloaked in ink-black, unmoving.
Shu Yao's throat felt dry. Something about this scene felt wrong, like a page torn from a book he never wrote.
Then, as if summoned by dread itself, Bai Qi turned.
His hair, slick and wet, was combed back into its familiar wolfcut, save for one rebellious strand that fell across his obsidian eye. He looked through Shu Yao—not at him, but through him—with the kind of disdain that curdled blood.
And Shu Yao gasped.
His cheeks were still damp from tears he didn't remember crying.
His soul—already bruised—braced.
Then Bai Qi moved.
In a flash, cold hands gripped Shu Yao by the collar, yanking him forward so violently the bouquet tumbled from his grasp—lilies falling like broken wings to the mud.
"You," Bai Qi hissed. His voice no longer human but sharpened steel. "Why couldn't you just disappear?"
Shu Yao struggled. His breath caught. His body was trembling.
"You are nothing but a disappointment."
Another lash.
"So stop lingering."
Shu Yao's lips parted, quivering, but no words emerged.
His silence was not surrender—it was devastation.
Because even if this was only a dream…
…it still hurt like a memory.
And it still broke him like truth.