The night air was a serrated blade, cutting through the silence of the residential street. Bai Qi stood before the modest, two-story house—a structure that felt like a relic from a life he had tried to bury months ago. He stared up at a singular, darkened window on the upper floor.
Shu Yao's room.
Bai Qi clenched his jaw so hard the muscle ticked rhythmically. He felt like a titan stripped of his thunder. He was the "Ice Monarch," a man who could dismantle corporations with a signature, yet he stood paralyzed on a sidewalk, suffocating under a weight he couldn't name.
"Whatever is in that journal," he whispered, his breath a ghostly plume in the dark. "I need to find it. Whatever damn thing she wants me to see..."
He blinked, his eyes stinging from the biting wind. He took a step toward the porch, then stopped abruptly, his hand hovering over the threshold.
"I don't have the keys," he muttered, a flare of dramatic frustration rising in his chest. He glared at the front door as if he could command it to unlatch by sheer force of will. He was an emperor standing before a locked gate, and his patience was a fraying thread.
Just as he was about to lounge forward—his shoulder tensed to break the wood from its hinges—the door groaned and swung inward.
Bai Qi recoiled, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs.
"Bai Qi? Darling?"
The voice was thin, like parchment being torn. Han Ruyan, Shu Yao's mother, stood in the doorway. She looked smaller than he remembered, her features etched with the deep, permanent grooves of long-term grief. She blinked at him, her expression a fragile mosaic of surprise and worry.
Bai Qi instantly shifted, straightening the lapels of his charcoal coat, his face snapping back into the rigid mask of the Monarch. "Yes... yes, Auntie."
"Is Shu Yao still working?" she asked, her voice trembling with a mother's instinctual dread. "I haven't spoken to him"
Bai Qi felt his spine stiffen. A cold sweat pricked the nape of his neck. How could he tell her? How could he say that her only son was currently tethered to a ventilator in Room 43 because of a bottle of wine and a locked cellar?
"Well, Auntie," he began, his voice uncharacteristically hesitant. "Shu Yao... he is..."
His mind raced, weaving a lie from the threads of his own guilt.
"I came to tell you that he won't be returning home tonight. Or for a while. There is... a massive project at the villa. He is working there, staying in the guest quarters to ensure everything is perfect."
Han Ruyan's eyes shimmered. She hadn't been the same since Qing Yue died. She had retreated into a shell of silence, rarely leaving this house that smelled of memories and dust.
"I haven't talked to him since..." She stopped, her voice breaking. She looked away, toward the stairs where Qing Yue's laughter used to echo. "Forget it. Where is my child? His phone is switched off. I feel... I feel like he's vanished."
Bai Qi cleared his throat, the lie tasting like copper in his mouth. "His phone broke, Auntie. An accident at the office. I wanted to tell you myself so you wouldn't worry."
Han Ruyan looked up at him, her eyes searching his for a truth he wasn't ready to give. "Bai Qi, darling, is it time? Is he really that busy that he couldn't talk to his own mother?"
"I promise, Auntie," Bai Qi said, his voice dropping an octave, heavy with a promise he didn't know if he could keep. "Once his work is done, he will return home... safe and sound."
Han Ruyan's expression crumpled into a sorrowful grace. "I want to talk to him," she whispered. "About everything. He always takes the blame so easily... I want him to forgive me for how harsh I was. For how I blamed him for her death."
Bai Qi froze. His head turned away, unable to meet her gaze.
"It was an accident," she continued, a tear finally spilling over and tracing a path through her cheeks. "My Shu Yao was a victim too. But I... I only saw my daughter. I didn't see him."
Bai Qi felt a sharp, localized throb in his chest. He wanted to agree with her, but the week and months of anger he had cultivated was a stubborn weed. It was his fault, he reminded himself. Qing Yue is dead because of him. "Tell him," she sobbed, clutching the doorframe. "Tell him his mother is home. And I am waiting."
Bai Qi nodded curtly, his throat too tight for words. "Okay, Auntie. Goodnight."
He turned and strode toward the car, his boots crunching on the gravel like breaking bone. He didn't look back until he was safely inside the leather sanctuary of the backseat. Through the tinted window, he saw her—a lonely silhouette bathed in the amber glow of the porch light, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears.
"Drive," he barked at the driver. "Back to the villa."
As the car pulled away, Bai Qi slumped into the seat, burying his face in his hands. He was trapped. Shu Yao's broken ribs would take six weeks to heal. His lungs were a battlefield. How was he supposed to maintain this charade?
"How the hell am I supposed to get that journal," he muttered, "when she's asking about him?"
"I am so fucked."
he cursed into his palms. "I am absolutely fucked up."
While Bai Qi was drowning in the ruins of a lie, the sterile quiet of Room 43 was broken by a jagged, mechanical hiss.
Shu Yao's eyelids fluttered. The world returned to him in fragments: the smell of ozone, the rhythmic thump-hiss of the ventilator, and a dull, agonizing pressure in his side.
He groaned, the sound muffled by the oxygen mask. His mind was a daze of half-formed images. He remembered the cold. He remembered the smell of expensive wine, and the chemical tang of a sedative.
Ming Su. Naina. The syringe.
His eyes flew open, wide and panicked. He tried to sit up, but a phantom weight seemed to hold him down.
"Shu Yao?"
The voice was close. Concerned. Shu Yao turned his head slowly, his neck muscles screaming in protest. George was leaning over him, his face a mask of relief and fury.
"Mr, George..." Shu Yao wheezed, the mask fogging with the heat of his breath.
"Calm down," George said, his hand firm on Shu Yao's shoulder. "The heart monitor is spiking. Just breathe, Shu Yao. You're safe."
But Shu Yao wasn't thinking about safety. He was thinking about the silhouette he saw in the dark of the cellar. He was thinking about the voice that had called his name right before the world went black.
"Where..." Shu Yao gasped, his fingers twitching against the starched white sheets. "Where is... Bai Qi?"
George's heart stopped for a beat, then ignited with a righteous, protective anger. "Stop thinking about him, Shu Yao! Don't you dare think about him right now!"
Shu Yao ignored the command, his eyes glazed with a desperate, lingering devotion. "Is... is he alright? Did she...?"
George let out a harsh, disbelieving laugh. His jaw clenched so tight it looked like stone. "Is he alright? You are lying here with a chest full of tubes, and you're asking about that monster?"
"Please," Shu Yao insisted, his voice a frail rasp.
"He's fine," George spat, forcing himself to speak the words. "He's probably back at his villa right now, sleeping peacefully in his silk bed while you fight for air. He's perfectly fine."
Shu Yao closed his eyes, a small, visible wave of relief washing over his pale features. "Thank God... thank you... Mr, George."
"But Why I am here?" Shu Yao asked after a moment of silence. "What happened after... the cellar?"
George hesitated. He didn't want to be the one to tell him. "That bastard... he broke your rib, Shu Yao. When he found you, he was... he did things. You have a fracture that nearly pierced your lung."
Shu Yao's brows knitted together in a painful frown. He broke my rib? He tried to remember. He remembered the sedative. He remembered the cold. But then, there was a gap—a hole in his memory filled only with the sensation of being carried.
Had he struggled? Had he done something in his delirium that forced Bai Qi to be violent?
Shu Yao felt a deep, hot flush of shame. I must have been a burden, he thought. I must have made him angry even while I was dying.
The ceiling of the hospital room was a flat, indifferent white. Shu Yao stared at it, his mind drifting through the fog of sedatives and pain.
A burden, he thought. The word tasted like ash. He was always a burden to Bai Qi. He assumed he had done something wrong in that cellar—perhaps he had been too slow, or perhaps his dying had simply been an inconvenience. He assumed the fractured rib was a mark of the Monarch's frustration.
But then, a flicker. A spark ignited in the darkness of the "gap" in his memory.
Suddenly, Shu Yao's eyes flew wide. The heart monitor beside his bed began to pulse with a new, frantic rhythm.
Ting-ting-ting-ting.
The memory hit him with the force of a tidal wave. He wasn't just being carried. He wasn't just being shouted at.
He remembered the cold—the kind of cold that turns blood into ice. But through the frost, he felt a sudden, searing heat against his face.
He remembered the feeling of strong, trembling hands lifting his chin. He remembered a voice, jagged and raw, echoing against the stone walls:
"Then You leave me no choice, Shu Yao."
And then, the sensation. The collision of lips. The desperate, frantic pressure of someone trying to force life back into his failing lungs.
Bai Qi hadn't just found him. The "Ice Monarch" had leaned down into the filth and the cold to give him breath.
Shu Yao's heart hammered against his ribs—the broken one and the whole ones alike. He realized now that the fracture wasn't an act of malice. It was the result of a man who didn't know his own strength, a man who was desperately pressing down on his chest to keep his heart beating.
A deep, hot flush crept up Shu Yao's neck, burning through the pallor of his skin. Despite the oxygen mask, despite the tubes and the agony, he felt a wave of pure, unadulterated shame.
He touched me. He... he did that for me.
Shu Yao turned his head sharply, hiding his face in the starched pillow. He felt utterly shameless. How could he have let the Monarch see him like that? How could he have forced Bai Qi to touch someone as "guilty" as him?
George jumped to his feet, his chair scraping loudly against the floor. He saw the heart monitor spiking into the red zone.
"Shu Yao? Shu Yao, what's wrong? Is it the pain?"
Shu Yao tried to shake his head, but he couldn't find his voice. The blush was visible even through the plastic of the mask.
"I'll call the doctor! Stay still!" George cried, his voice thick with panic. He didn't wait for a response; he strode toward the door, his boots thudding against the linoleum.
Shu Yao reached out a weak, trembling hand to stop him, but the door was already swinging shut.
He was left alone with the echo of that memory. He didn't blame Bai Qi for the broken bone. He would never blame him.
If a fractured rib was the price for that moment of desperate warmth, Shu Yao would have let Bai Qi break every bone in his body.
He closed his eyes, the image of the Monarch's face—not cold, but terrified—burning behind his lids. For the first time in months, the ice didn't feel quite so thick.