The sterile air of the hospital corridor felt like a vacuum, sucking the very breath from Bai Qi's lungs. He stood just outside Room 43, his back pressed against the cold, painted cinderblock. His chest heaved in a jagged, uneven rhythm.
"Fuck," he spat, the word a jagged glass shard in the silence. "What the hell is wrong with me?"
He wiped his eyes with a violence that left his skin red. Every time he closed his lids, the image returned—Shu Yao, standing in a field of roses, hair spilling like silk, laughing with a freedom he had never possessed in the waking world. That laugh was a ghost that haunted Bai Qi more than any scream ever could. It was the sound of a man who had already let go.
His heart ached—a sharp, localized throb that he tried to crush with his own fist. He hated this. He hated the way his lower lip trembled, the way his pride was disintegrating into a puddle of salt and grief.
Whenever he looked at Shu Yao's serene, unconscious face, he saw the ruins of his own dynasty. He saw Qing Yue.
He saw the week's and months of anger he had fueled by blaming this boy. If Shu Yao woke up and saw him like this—crying, broken, uncertain—Bai Qi would never be able to wear the crown of the Monarch again.
"Damn you, Shu Yao," he hissed, turning away from the door. He began to stride down the hallway, his boots clicking in a frantic, staccato beat against the linoleum.
At the end of the hall, the elevator doors hissed open. George burst out, his emerald eyes blown wide with a frantic, pulsing dread. He was moving with the desperation of a man who had already lost too much.
They collided with the force of two storms meeting.
"Can't you see where you—" Bai Qi began to bark, his voice a lethal snarl, but he stopped mid-sentence.
George grabbed Bai Qi by the shoulders, his fingers digging into the expensive wool of his coat. "Bai Qi! Where is he? Is he... is he alive?"
Bai Qi wrenched himself away, his movements rude and jagged. George gasped, but his eyes stayed fixed on his nephew's face.
In the harsh fluorescent light, George saw it—the tear streaks, the reddened eyes, the vulnerability that Bai Qi was trying to scrub away with his sleeve.
"He is still unconscious," Bai Qi said, his voice sounding hollowed out, as if the words were being spoken from the bottom of a well. He wouldn't look George in the eye.
Bai Qi didn't wait for a response. He walked past his uncle, his silhouette tall and rigid, leaving a trail of cold air in his wake. George stood frozen for a second, watching him go. Why was he crying? A terrifying thought struck George—did something happen to him? Did shu Yao?
George turned and sprinted. He didn't stop until he found the door labeled 43.
George entered the room as if it might shatter beneath him.
His heart thudded painfully in his chest, each beat too loud in the sterile quiet.
He paused just inside the doorway, afraid—absurdly—that if he moved too fast, the fragile balance holding everything together would collapse.
Then he heard it: the steady, mechanical hiss-click of the ventilator, slow and rhythmic, like a borrowed heartbeat.
Only then did he exhale.
The breath left him in a long, trembling sigh, his shoulders sagging as relief mixed cruelly with dread. The boy was still there.
Still here. His soul had not slipped away yet—only hovering, tethered by thin strands of electricity, oxygen, and stubborn will.
George stepped closer.
Shu Yao lay motionless beneath the pale lights, his face smooth and unnaturally calm, as if carved from porcelain. Too quiet. Too perfect. It frightened George more than any struggle ever could.
Tubes traced delicate paths across his body, rising and falling with each assisted breath, proof that life had not completely let go.
He stood there for a long moment, saying nothing.
"You were always so stubborn," George finally murmured, his voice barely louder than the machines surrounding them.
He reached out, hesitating just before his fingers touched skin, as if afraid the warmth might already be gone.
Gently—so gently—he brushed a stray lock of chestnut hair from Shu Yao's forehead. It slipped back into place almost immediately, disobedient even now.
A bitter smile tugged at George's lips.
"You hurt yourself," he continued quietly, eyes fixed on the boy's closed lashes, "even when you know it won't change anything."
His hand lingered there, trembling.
"Even when you know…" His voice faltered, the words turning heavy and sharp in his throat. "…he won't love you."
The ventilator answered in his stead, breathing for the boy who could no longer answer at all.
George's gaze drifted to the chair beside the bed.
It stood too close. Close enough to suggest hours, not minutes.
The cushion was still slightly sunken, the fabric creased in a way that hadn't yet relaxed—an unmistakable imprint of someone who had sat there for a long time, unmoving.
George stared at it.
A thought crept in, unwelcome and sharp.
Was Bai Qi sitting here?
The idea tightened his chest. His jaw clenched, muscles locking as he fought the image forming in his mind. He didn't want to accept it. Didn't want to believe that the same man who had raised his hand against Shu Yao—who had struck him, broken his ribs, —could also sit in silence beside this bed and grieve.
That kind of contradiction felt obscene.
George reached for the chair and pulled it closer, the legs scraping softly against the floor. The sound was small, but deliberate. Possessive. He dragged it until it nearly touched the bed, erasing the distance, erasing the trace of whoever had been there before.
Reclaiming the space.
If anyone was going to keep watch now, it would be him.
"Don't worry, Shu Yao," George murmured.
His voice was low, roughened by everything he hadn't said and couldn't afford to say aloud. He leaned closer, careful not to disturb the fragile stillness of the room, as if even sound might weigh too much.
"I'm here," he continued quietly.
His hand rested on the edge of the bed, close enough to feel the warmth beneath the sheets, close enough to convince himself that Shu Yao was still real, still present. His fingers curled slightly, grounding himself in the moment.
"I'll look after you now."
It wasn't a grand promise. There was no urgency in it, no desperation—only a steady, protective resolve, spoken as if it were already a fact rather than a hope.
Outside, the city was a sprawling tapestry of gold and neon. Bai Qi sat in the back of his car, his head leaning against the cool leather of the seat. Outside the window, the massive digital billboards of the Rothenberg industry's flickered—images of him and Qing Yue from a months ago.
He closed his eyes, but the "Ice Monarch" imagery brought him no comfort. Mixed fury and grief swirled in his gut like a toxic cocktail. No matter how hard he tried to be gentle now, the fact remained: Shu Yao was the one who let his sister die. She was his world, his everything.
Why is she keep reminding me of his journal? Qing Yue's voice from the dream echoed in his mind. Inside that journal lies a secret beyond your expectations. "What is it?" he muttered to the empty car. "What did you see in him that I didn't?"
Every time he tried to focus on his anger, the memory of Shu Yao's laugh in the field of roses broke through. It was a visceral, haunting sound.
"Dammit," he growled, slamming his fist against the leather armrest.
Across the city, in a villa that felt more like a mausoleum of glass and steel, Armin lay on his bed. He wasn't sleeping. He couldn't.
The news of Bai Qi's secretary, the cold storage, the near-death—it made him sick. Not because he cared for Shu Yao, but because it was a mirror. He looked up at the luxurious chandelier hanging from the ceiling, its crystals sparkling like frozen tears.
"Fools," Armin whispered. "We are all fools."
His mind wandered, slipping through years, across oceans, to a cold night in Germany.
The memory came unbidden—sharp and vivid. Florian. His assistant.
Florian, who had always reminded him of Shu Yao in ways he hadn't wanted to admit: fragile, almost otherworldly, yet unwavering in his presence. Thin as a reed, but steady, like a candle that refuses to die.
A quiet devotion clung to him, subtle but absolute, felt in the careful way he moved, in the gentleness of every small gesture.
Armin remembered him stepping into His office that day, balancing a coffee tray, a hesitant smile barely brushing his lips, soft enough to almost be swallowed by the cavernous room. Even as Armin barked commands, even at his cruelest, Florian's smile endured, small and unshakable.
"It's cold. I want another," Armin had snapped, voice sharp, eyes glued to his papers, a storm barely contained in his words.
Florian had only nodded, quiet, obedient, and left without complaint, carrying warmth that didn't belong to him alone.
"Just as you say, sir," Florian had murmured, his voice small, fragile, eyes cast to the floor.
Later that day, the room had grown colder—not just with winter, but with something sharper, more biting. A German winter that crept through walls, through coats, through even the thickest resolve.
A locket, delicate and precious, resting against his chest. Inside, a small photo that seemed to glow with quiet longing. Florian had stared at it, unguarded, his gaze soft and yearning—and that had been enough to ignite Armin's fury.
"How many times have I told you not to fucking mess with me?" Armin's voice had torn through the room, roaring, jagged, leaving no corner untouched by its anger.
Florian's reply had been almost inaudible, trembling:
"Sir… I am openly telling you… that...I I love you."
The words, whispered as if they were a prayer, had only fueled the storm.
In a cruel, panicked rage, Armin had seized the locket. His hand had been tight, unrelenting, and then—he had thrown it.
Out the window.
Into the swirling snow. Into the darkness of the courtyard, several stories below.
Out the window.
Into the swirling snow. Into the darkness of the courtyard, several stories below.
Florian had flinched, frozen, heart clenched, staring at the spot where the tiny treasure had disappeared, lost to the cold and night.
"Get the hell out!" Armin had bellowed, voice like a whip cracking through the room.
And Florian had obeyed, retreating silently, leaving only the echo of his devotion and the vanished warmth of a locket swallowed by winter.
Armin had left the building an hour later.
He had climbed into his heated car, the engine thrumming beneath him, and driven away without a backward glance. The world inside his vehicle was warm, insulated, indifferent.
He didn't see Florian.
He didn't see the boy on his hands and knees in the snow, the thin beam of his phone torch trembling and flickering over the frozen ground. Searching. Searching for the only thing that had ever truly mattered.
Florian had stayed there for hours.
Hours where the cold was a weight pressing into his bones, into his chest, into the fragile thread of his lungs. A chronic disease, a secret fragility, made his frame thin, almost delicate—but it did nothing to lessen the strength of his heart, the stubborn, aching devotion that refused to yield.
His lungs burned with every ragged breath. Every inhale ripped through him, harsh and unrelenting. His legs, once steadfast, finally gave way beneath him, buckling under the cruel weight of hypothermia.
Yet even in that agony, even as the snow clung to his hair and soaked through his coat, his hands continued to search.
For the locket.
For the piece of himself that had been thrown into the night.
For the symbol of a love that refused to leave him, even when the world had turned cold enough to make him feel like it might.
When the security guard found him the next morning, Florian was still there.
Unconscious.