He sat there, beside the walk, the world around him swallowed in pale light and lingering frost.
A woolen scarf, soft and brown, was wrapped loosely around his neck, the fibers catching the cold breeze but offering some fragile comfort. His business suit, still crisp and dark, clung slightly damp to his form, the sleeves rolled just enough to hint at hours of searching, of waiting, of endless persistence.
His head tilted slightly, resting toward the scarf, and his eyes were closed. Long, damp lashes brushed against cheeks flushed bright from the cold, each exhale forming a thin, fleeting mist that vanished into the morning air.
His long blonde hair, tied into a low ponytail, fell over his shoulders in a muted cascade, strands escaping and brushing the curve of his jaw.
And still, clutched in his fingers, was the locket.
He had found it at last—but it had come too late. Hours of searching, of kneeling in the frozen silence, had stolen the strength from his legs. They had betrayed him, folding beneath him until he slumped, nearly collapsing, the locket pressed against his chest like the last tether to something precious.
The locket had belonged to his boss, Armin—thrown with careless frustration, a gift Florian had never wanted but had accepted anyway, carrying it with a heart full of love, a gentle smile softening his features. Inside, Florian had tucked two pictures: one of his mother, delicate and kind, and the other of the man he had dared to call his own, Armin.
He had not been afraid to admit his feelings, even when the world demanded caution.
It had been too precious for him to let go.
That was why he had spent all those hours, kneeling, searching, his fingers numbing in the cold. That was why, even as his body grew weak, even as his legs finally gave way, he had not released his hold.
The locket had become more than a piece of gold or a fragment of memory—it had become the measure of his devotion, the proof that even in a world that often refused to notice him, he had loved fully, quietly, and completely.
And now, finally, he could rest, if only for a moment, with the treasure held tight against his chest.
Time in the German winter did not pass; it dissolved.
Days turned into weeks, and weeks curdled into months. Armin lived within a hollow ribcage of glass and silence. His office, once a temple of power, was now a cavern of strangers. They brought him coffee that tasted of ash. They spoke in voices that carried no weight.
There was no warmth. No trace of the one face that had anchored his soul to the earth.
He had survived his mother's death, clinging to her promise that he would find someone like her to keep him whole. He had survived his father's new marriage and the cold, performance-art dinners with a "new family." He had built a dynasty out of isolation.
But this? This was a different kind of starvation. He was missing a piece of his own anatomy, and he hadn't realized it until the wound turned necrotic.
When the address finally arrived, Armin didn't drive; he hunted.
The hospital was a cathedral of clinical despair. As he strode through the halls, his heart was a wild, trapped thing, thudding against his ribs with a violence that made him dizzy. He burst into the room, a storm of expensive wool and jagged desperation.
Inside, the light was too bright, too thin. The doctors stood like silent sentinels over a bed that seemed to hold more shadow than man.
Armin's eyes fixed on the figure beneath the sheets. Florian.
He was a translucent sketch of the boy he had been.
"Hey, Mister—" a doctor began, reaching for Armin's arm.
Armin wrenched himself away, his gaze lethal. "What happened to him? Why is he under glass?"
The doctors lowered their eyes, the silence in the room thickening like frost. "I am sorry, sir," the elder doctor whispered. "His lungs are a battlefield of scars. The hypothermia was the final blow. He is breathing, yes... but he is merely negotiating with the end."
Armin's vision fractured. He seized the doctor's collar, his knuckles white. "What the hell do you mean!, I have the wealth of a kingdom—use it! Don't tell bragging negotiation!"
"Forgive us," the doctor said, unhooking Armin's trembling fingers. "But he is only waiting for a reason to let go."
Armin stumbled to the bedside. The air was filled with the rhythmic, ghost-like hiss of the oxygen mask.
"Florian," Armin breathed.
The boy's eyes, half-lidded and clouded with the fog of the end, flickered. At the sound of that voice—the voice that had been both his sun and his storm—Florian's head turned with agonizing slowness.
"Sir..."
The word was a sigh caught in silk. Florian looked at Armin, and the weight of the missing months vanished, replaced by a radiant, terrifying peace.
"What did you do to yourself?" Armin's voice broke, the executive's mask finally shattering. "Why are you so thin? Why happened?"
Florian offered a smile that was more light than flesh. "Sir... I was waiting for you."
Slowly, with an effort that seemed to drain his very marrow, Florian reached beneath his pillow. He pulled out the gold locket—the one Armin had cast into the night. It was scratched, the metal dulled by the ice, but it was there.
Armin's heart lurched. "You... you still have it?"
Florian took Armin's hand. The contact was like touching a statue carved from ice. He pressed the locket into Armin's palm, his fingers curling around Armin's with a ghost's strength.
"Sir," Florian whispered, his breath hitching. "I am sorry... if I won't be here... to stand by your side anymore."
"Don't say that," Armin barked, his eyes stinging with the first real salt they had known in years.
Florian's tears were silent, sliding down his temples into the white pillow. "Sir... could you speak to me?
Even if it is a lie...
even if it is just for now..."
Armin clutched the boy's hands, leaning in until their foreheads almost touched. He could smell the cold, the medicine, and the fading scent of the boy he had broken.
"Can you say... that you love me?" Florian breathed.
Armin didn't answer with logic. He didn't answer with pride. He answered with the wreckage of his soul. "I am sorry, Florian. I was wrong. I was fucking damn wrong."
Florian fought for air, his chest hitching in a frantic, hollow rhythm.
"I love you... sir."
"I love you too," Armin choked out, the words tearing through his throat like wire. "I love you, Florian."
Florian's eyes blew wide. A flash of pure, shimmering disbelief ignited in his gaze—a final spark of hope that turned his olive eyes into gold. He squeezed Armin's hand one last time.
"I love you... and thank you... thank you so much..."
Then, the world stopped.
The monitor emitted a single, flat, unrelenting note. A horizon of sound that meant the sun had finally set.
"Florian?" Armin's voice was a small, wounded thing. "Florian, open your eyes. You said you wouldn't work for anyone else except me. You said I am yours! Open your eyes!"
But Florian's smile was fixed. He had died in the warmth of a truth that had come too late to save him.
A scream, primal and jagged, tore from Armin's lungs, echoing against the sterile glass walls. He collapsed over the body, his forehead pressed against Florian's cold skin. He clutched the locket so tight the metal bit into his palm, drawing blood.
"I'm a fucking bastard" Armin whispered at first, the word breaking apart as it left his mouth.
Then his voice collapsed.
"I gave you nothing," he sobbed into the dead, echoing room.
"Nothing but cold hands. Cold words. Cold silences."
His fingers tightened helplessly in the sheets, in the empty space where warmth should have been.
"And you…" His breath hitched, a sound too raw to be human. "You gave me everything. You gave me the only warmth I ever knew."
His forehead pressed to Florian's still hand, tears spilling freely now, unstoppable.
"I didn't deserve it," he choked. "I never deserved you."
The machines had gone quiet. The room no longer breathed.
"I'm sorry," he begged, voice shaking, breaking, dissolving into grief. "I'm so sorry… If love could have saved you, you would still be here."
But Florian did not answer.
But the oxygen mask was still, and the heart was quiet. The executive was left alone in the winter he had created, holding a piece of gold and the weight of a ghost.
The ghost of the German winter receded, leaving Armin alone in the heavy, suffocating silence of his villa. He lay still, the shadows on the ceiling stretching over him like the bars of a cage.
A single tear escaped his eye, tracing a cold path toward his ear.
In his hand, the locket glimmered—a small, golden weight that felt heavier than the entire Rothenberg empire.
He had changed it.
Years ago, he had opened the delicate casing and removed the faded photograph of Florian's mother. In its place, he had tucked a picture of Florian—the only one he had—where the boy was looking at the camera with that same, hauntingly gentle smile.
Armin brought the cold metal to his lips.
He felt like a monster. The realization wasn't new, but it was sharper tonight. He was a man living in the ruins of a devotion he had been too proud to accept until it was a corpse.
He was living in the boy's grief, breathing in the hollow space where Florian should have been. Every breath Armin took felt stolen—a gift from a person who had used his own last bit of oxygen just to say, "I love you."
He closed his eyes, the image of the locket in the snow burning behind his lids.
We are all such magnificent fools. We break the wings of the only ones who try to help us fly. We treat love like a burden until it becomes a ghost, and only then do we realize we are starving.
Armin wiped the moisture from his face and sat up. The silk sheets rustled, a hollow sound in a hollow house. He pressed the locket against his chest, right over his heart, feeling the edge of the gold bite into his skin.
He couldn't stay silent.
He saw the same pattern of ice forming around Bai Qi. The same arrogance. The same lethal blindness that had led Florian to a snowy courtyard.
"I won't let you do it, Bai Qi," Armin murmured, his voice hardening with a sudden, desperate purpose.
"I won't let you repeat my mistake."
Meanwhile, The car glided through the neon- streets, but for Bai Qi, the world inside the leather-bound interior was a vacuum. He stared down at his watch, the seconds ticking by with a rhythmic, mechanical cruelty.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Every second felt like a heartbeat he was stealing from Shu Yao.
He pressed both hands against his face, his palms cold. He was the "Ice Monarch," the man who dictated the fate of industries, yet he was paralyzed. The dream of the roses and Qing Yue's disappointed eyes were a fever in his mind.
"you will regret bai qi." her ghost had demanded.
Bai Qi's breath hitched. He knew what he had to do, but he was terrified. To go to Shu Yao's house—the modest house he had never once visited after Qing yue died he had — admit that Shu Yao was more than just a tool. It was to admit that the "shadow" had a life, a heart, and a secret that even the dead were guarding.
"Drive to his apartment," Bai Qi commanded, his voice muffled by his hands.
"But Sir?" the driver asked, hesitant. "It is too late—"
"I said to shu Yao house," Bai Qi snapped, dropping his hands. His eyes were bloodshot, rimmed with a darkness that made the driver instantly accelerate.