The waiting area of the hospital was a sterile purgatory of humming fluorescent lights and the faint, chemical smell of antiseptic. Bai Qi sat alone, his long legs stretched out, his back pressed against the uncomfortable plastic chair. He hadn't moved for an hour. He was a statue of charcoal wool and simmering guilt, though he refused to give that guilt a name.
The silence was broken by the sharp, rhythmic vibration of his phone. He blinked, the light of the screen reflecting in his obsidian eyes.
Mom.
A bittersweet smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. No matter how much of a predator he was in the boardroom, to Bai Mingzhu, he was still her son. He hesitated, smoothing his expression before answering.
"Hello, Mom," he said, his voice dropping into a softer, practiced register.
"Honey? How are you? Did you eat dinner?" His mother's voice was a warm contrast to the icy hospital walls. "Did you take a bath? Are you about to sleep now?"
Bai Qi's smile felt like a mask. "Yes, Mom. I already had dinner." He swallowed hard, the memory of the disastrous meal at the penthouse flashing behind his eyes—the wine, the cold, the silence.
"Honey, dear, do not worry about anything, okay?" she continued gently. "The contract, the signs... your father will take care of it."
Bai Qi's brow furrowed. He leaned back, his tone turning lazily defensive. "Of course, Mom. It wasn't my fault. It was Father's fault for hiring Shu Yao as my personal assistant in the first place."
"Honey," Bai Mingzhu interrupted, her tone firm but loving. "You shouldn't speak badly about Shu Yao. He is your friend and your right hand. You and Shu Yao are still children in our eyes."
Bai Qi nodded silently, though his jaw tightened. He didn't want the blame. He didn't want to be the villain in his mother's story.
"Take good care of yourself, okay honey?" she added.
"And pay attention to your new shoots.
I know my honey will listen. Take care of yourself—and take care of Shu Yao, too. Goodnight, honey."
"Goodnight, Mom," Bai Qi whispered.
The line went dead. Bai Qi stared at the black screen, his reflection staring back—hollow and dark.
He ran a hand through his black wolfcut, a jagged laugh escaping his throat.
"I nearly forgot who I was...
who I used to be."
The heavy double doors of the trauma unit swung open. Dr. Qin stepped out, stripping off his latex gloves. Bai Qi stood up instantly, sliding his expensive phone into the pocket of his overcoat.
"The patient is stable for now," the doctor began, his expression unreadable. "But his rib... it is a clean fracture.
It will take at least five to six weeks to knit back together properly.
He is very lucky the bone didn't puncture his lung more deeply."
"Can I see him now?" Bai Qi asked, his voice sounding like a command despite his exhaustion.
The doctor hesitated, his eyes narrowing behind his spectacles. "We will let you in, Mr. Bai. But there is a complication.
Why was the patient injected with a sedative?"
The air in the hallway seemed to vanish. Bai Qi's frown deepened into a dark scowl.
"What do you mean, Doctor? A sedative?"
"The toxicology report is clear," Dr. Qin
stated. "Before he was trapped in that cold storage, he was injected with a powerful sedative.
It's the only reason a healthy young man wouldn't have been able to beat on the door or stay awake to fight the cold. He was silenced before he was frozen."
Bai Qi didn't wait for the rest of the explanation. He shoved the doctor aside, his mind a chaotic whirl of fire and ice. He threw open the door to the recovery room, and the world slowed to a crawl.
Shu Yao lay in the center of the clinical white bed, looking less like a man and more like a discarded porcelain doll.
The oxygen mask was fogged with his shallow, struggling breaths. IV tubes snaked from his pale arms, connecting him to machines that hissed and beeped in a rhythmic, taunting cycle. His long, brown lashes fanned out against skin that was so translucent it looked like wet paper.
Bai Qi walked toward the bed, his footsteps silent on the linoleum.
He looked at Shu Yao and felt a ghostly glimpse of the past—a child laying broken.
He shook his head violently. No. That was Qing Yue. Not him.
He leaned down, his shadow falling over Shu Yao's still face. What was left of the boy he knew? Shu Yao's body was withering before his eyes, a flower caught in a permanent frost.
"Why?"
Bai Qi whispered to the unconscious boy.
"Why do you keep chasing me when you know I won't love you? Why die for someone who doesn't love you back?"
His fist clenched. He hated the loyalty. He hated the way Shu Yao made him feel like a monster just by existing. Isn't it better to let me go? To start a new life away from my shadow?
Suddenly, his phone rang again. Bai Qi snarled, pulling it out. The screen read:
UNCLE GEORGE.
He sighed heavily, his thumb sliding across the screen. "Yes, Uncle?"
"Bai Qi!" George's voice roared through the speaker, distorted by rage. "Which hospital did you take him to? Tell me right now!"
Bai Qi leaned against the hospital bed, watching the slow rise and fall of Shu Yao's chest. He rolled his eyes lazily, a smirk playing on his lips.
"I can take care of Shu Yao myself, Uncle. Why are you poking your nose into my business?"
"You son of a...!" George's voice cracked with fury. "Tell me where he is! I won't let you bury him again!"
Bai Qi didn't answer. He simply ended the call, the silence of the room returning like a heavy blanket. He felt a twisted sense of victory. George could rage all he wanted, but for now, Shu Yao belonged to the Monarch.
The hospital room was a symphony of mechanical exhales and sterile light. Bai Qi remained anchored to the chair beside the bed, his arms crossed over his chest like armor. He had promised himself he wouldn't leave, a stubborn penance for a sin he still hadn't fully admitted.
Minutes bled into an hour. The heavy rhythm of the ventilator began to work like a hypnotic metronome. His eyelids, usually ossified by a sheer force of will, grew leaden. He blinked once, seeing Shu Yao's motionless form; he blinked twice, and the white walls dissolved into a soft, crimson blur.
He woke up in a world of impossible color. He was standing in a vast, undulating field of roses—deep, blood-red blooms that stretched toward a horizon of violet silk. He didn't know these were Shu Yao's favorite flowers; to Bai Qi, they were merely beautiful, dangerous things.
He walked carefully, his boots avoiding the delicate stems. Then, he saw her.
Qing Yue stood among the thorns, her back to him, her long hair caught in a wind that didn't exist. Bai Qi's heart stuttered. He moved forward, his voice a breathless rasp.
"Qing Yue?"
She turned her head slowly. The girl he had mourned, the ghost he had built an altar to in his mind, looked at him with eyes devoid of warmth. There was no joy in her expression, only a heavy, crystalline disappointment.
"Bai Qi," she murmured, the sound like a distant bell. "Why didn't you read the journal?"
Bai Qi froze. The memory of the leather-bound book—the one he had dismissed as a pathetic diary os shu Yao—flashed in his mind. "I... I tried to ask, but..."
"You didn't try hard enough," Qing Yue interrupted, her gaze piercing his defensive shield. "You still haven't found the truth."
"Why do you keep talking about that damn book?" Bai Qi's jaw clenched, his old anger flickering even in the dream. "It's Shu Yao's journal.
It's just words about how much he wants me, how he chases me like a shadow. Why should I care?"
"Enough!" Qing Yue's voice rang out, silencing the rustle of the roses.
"Inside that journal lies a secret beyond your expectations, Bai Qi. A truth that justifies every tear he has shed."
"What is it?" Bai Qi stepped forward, reaching for her. "If you know, why can't you tell me? Why play these games?"
Qing Yue's expression shifted to one of profound sorrow.
She looked away, her silhouette beginning to fray at the edges.
"I cannot betray him. I promised him I would keep his secret, even in death. I cannot speak what he has chosen to bury."
"Don't go!" Bai Qi roared, the red petals swirling around him like a crimson storm. "Tell me what's wrong! Qing Yue!"
"If you do not find the truth," she whispered as she began to vanish into the mist, "you will regret everything.
Now She was gone.
The field stretched out before Bai Qi, vast and colorless, the wind whispering through the grass as if it were speaking her name and erasing it at the same time.
His chest rose and fell unevenly, each breath shallow, scraped raw by something he couldn't name. His vision blurred. He frowned, confused—he hadn't felt anything touch his face.
A warmth slipped free anyway.
He lowered his gaze, expecting his hand to be empty. Instead, a tear struck skin that did not belong to him.
It startled him so badly he sucked in a breath.
Shu Yao stood there.
Not the Shu Yao who followed him through glass corridors and silent offices. Not the man folded into himself beneath pressed suits and lowered eyes.
This Shu Yao was closer—close enough that Bai Qi could see the faint softness at the corners of his eyes, the gentle rise and fall of his breathing.
His long brown hair was loose, spilling freely over his shoulders, stirred by the same pale wind that passed through the field. There was no fear in his expression.
No restraint. Only a calm so fragile it felt like it might break if Bai Qi spoke too loudly.
Shu Yao lifted his hand.
His fingers were cool when they brushed Bai Qi's palm, impossibly gentle, as if he were afraid of startling him. He wiped away the tear with a tenderness that didn't ask permission.
Bai Qi froze.
Shu Yao looked up at him then, eyes clear, steady, unbeardened by the weight they carried in waking life.
"Don't cry, Bai Qi," he said softly, the words hesitant, like they'd never been spoken before.
The shame came immediately—sharp, humiliating. Even here, even in something unreal, Shu Yao was careful with him.
Kind to him.
Afraid of hurting him.
Bai Qi yanked his hand back as if burned, dragging his sleeve across his eyes.
"I'm not crying," he snapped, the denial rushed and clumsy. "It's nothing. The wind got into my eyes—"
He stopped.
Shu Yao was smiling.
Not the polite curve he wore out of habit, but something lighter. Freer. A quiet laugh escaped him, barely more than a breath, and yet it filled the empty field like a sound that had been missing all along. There was no pressure in it. No fear.
Bai Qi's chest tightened. Heat crept up his neck, sharp and unwelcome. That laugh felt like it was meant for someone else—someone better.
"Why are you laughing?" he demanded, but his voice betrayed him, cracking at the edges. "What's so funny?"
Shu Yao's smile softened rather than fading. He looked past Bai Qi, toward the horizon where Qing Yue had disappeared, where the light was thinning into white.
"I'm just… happy,"
he said quietly. "Because soon…
I'll reunite with her."
The words hollowed the air.
Bai Qi felt it then—the sudden drop, like the ground giving way beneath his feet. Cold slid down his spine, heavy and suffocating.
"What are you talking about?"he whispered.
"What do you mean… reunite?"
Shu Yao didn't answer.
He turned away.
Each step he took toward the horizon felt unreasonably slow, as though the world itself were reluctant to let him go. Bai Qi lunged forward, reaching, his hand cutting through empty space.
"Shu Yao!" His voice broke fully now, stripped of command, stripped of pride.
"Come back. You're not— you're not going anywhere."
The wind swallowed his words.
Shu Yao paused.
Shu Yao turned his head one last time, offering a smile so gentle it felt like a knife twisting in Bai Qi's heart. Then, he vanished into the white light.
Shu Yao dissolved into white, leaving nothing behind—not even warmth.
Bai Qi stood alone in the field, his hand still outstretched, fingers curled around a goodbye he hadn't been ready to say.
"SHU YAO!"
Bai Qi woke up with a violent start, his body jerking so hard he nearly tumbled backward from the hospital chair. His heart was hammering against his ribs, a wild, panicked bird trapped in a cage of bone.
The silence of the hospital room rushed in to greet him. The rhythmic hiss-click of the ventilator was the only sound.
He stared at the bed. Shu Yao was still there. He hadn't vanished. He was still connected to the tubes, still fighting for air behind the plastic mask.
Bai Qi sat there, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Before he could stop them, hot tears spilled over his lower lids, tracing paths down his face. He stared at Shu Yao in disbelief, his hands trembling in his lap.
"Why?" he whispered, his voice broken.
"Why did it feel like I lost you?"
He wiped his face aggressively, turning his head away in a fit of shame and confusion. He had never felt this—this crushing, hollow ache in his chest. He had always told himself that he loved Qing Yue and that Shu Yao was just a nothing.
But the dream had stripped away the lie.
The thought of Shu Yao "reuniting" with Qing Yue—the thought of him choosing to die just to be with her—made Bai Qi feel a level of jealousy that wealth couldn't cure.
If Shu Yao left, what would be left of Bai Qi? He would have his money, his buildings, and his power, but the only person who had ever looked at him and seen the man behind the Monarch would be gone. Shu Yao would die willingly for him, and yet, Bai Qi realized with a sickening thud of his heart, he knew nothing.
He knew nothing of the roses. He knew nothing of the journal. And he knew nothing of the boy who was currently fading away on a bed of white linen.
"You can't go," Bai Qi hissed, leaning over the bed, his shadow falling over Shu Yao's closed eyes. "I won't let you follow her. Do you hear me? I won't let you leave me alone."
But Shu Yao didn't answer. He only continued his shallow, mechanical struggle to stay in a world that had treated him with nothing but ice.