The ICU was a cathedral of clinical despair. The shadows stretched long and thin across the linoleum, cast by the flicker of a dozen monitors that hummed a low, synthetic requiem.
Bai Qi sat in the center of the gloom. He was a monolith of grief, his once-sharp posture collapsed into a jagged silhouette. His eyes were no longer the obsidian mirrors of a monarch; they were hollowed out, rimmed with a violent, bloodshot red that spoke of a month without true rest.
He didn't look at the door. He didn't look at the charts. His universe had shrunk to the size of the pale, slender hand he held between his own.
"You won't hate me, won't you?" Bai Qi whispered.
The question hung in the sterile air, unanswered. He leaned forward, his forehead resting against the edge of the mattress. With a trembling finger, he traced the curve of Shu Yao's jaw, then the dry, pale line of his lips.
"I mistook you," Bai Qi choked out, a single tear splashing onto Shu Yao's knuckles. "I spent every waking moment relentlessly blaming you... for nothing. I chased a phantom and trampled a miracle."
He closed his eyes, the weight of his own cruelty pressing down on his chest like a leaden shroud. He waited for the silence to swallow him whole.
Suddenly, the rhythmic thump-hiss of the ventilator was punctuated by a sharp, electronic trill.
Bai Qi's head snapped up. His breath hitched. He looked at the heart rate monitor—the jagged green line was dancing, accelerating into a frantic staccato.
Then, he felt it. A microscopic twitch of the fingers.
Bai Qi's gaze flew to Shu Yao's face. The boy's long, brown lashes were trembling. Slowly—agonizingly slowly—the heavy veils of the coma began to lift.
"Shu Yao?" Bai Qi gasped, his voice a frantic, broken prayer.
He lunged forward, his hands cupping Shu Yao's face as if he could pull the boy back to the surface by sheer force of will. "Shu Yao, can you hear me? Please... look at me."
The dilated, beautiful eyes opened. They were glassy, unfocused, reflecting the harsh fluorescent lights, but they were open.
For a heartbeat, the world stopped spinning. Bai Qi's heart lurched against his ribs, a violent, painful rhythm of hope.
Shu Yao's gaze drifted, searching the blur of the room until it landed on the man hovering over him. He stared at Bai Qi for what felt like an eternity, his mind fighting through the fog of Belladonna and darkness.
With a weak, shaking effort, Shu Yao began to straighten himself against the pillows.
"Don't—don't move," Bai Qi pleaded, his hands hovering over Shu Yao's shoulders, terrified that the boy would shatter like fine porcelain.
Shu Yao didn't listen. His movements were slow, fluid, and ghostly. He raised a hand—the one Bai Qi had just been weeping over—and placed it gently against Bai Qi's cheek.
His skin was lukewarm, but to Bai Qi, it felt like a brand of white-hot iron.
"Why are you crying?" Shu Yao whispered.
The voice was a rasp, a thin thread of sound that barely survived the journey from his throat. But the words were clear.
They weren't filled with accusation. They weren't sharpened by spite.
Bai Qi let out a strangled sob, his face crumbling. He grabbed Shu Yao's hand, pressing it harder against his own skin, drowning in the impossible gentleness of the boy he had broken.
"I... I am so sorry," Bai Qi wailed, the words finally breaking free from the dam of his pride.
Shu Yao's brow furrowed in a soft, confused rhythm. He looked at the powerful heir, seeing only a man who looked like he had been hollowed out by a storm.
"Why are you apologizing... Sir?"
The title—Sir—was a jagged blade that cut through Bai Qi's soul. It was a reminder of the distance he had enforced, the hierarchy he had used as a shield for his own bitterness.
"Don't call me that," Bai Qi whispered, leaning in until their foreheads touched. "Call me Bai Qi. I don't care about the titles. I don't care about anything but you."
Shu Yao's thumb moved, tracing the path of a tear down Bai Qi's cheek. A ghost of a smile touched his lips—a smile so sad it made the air in the room turn to ice.
"Tears doesn't suit you," Shu Yao murmured.
Bai Qi tried to force a smile back, but it fractured instantly, leaving him looking more devastated than before.
Suddenly, Shu Yao's expression shifted. His eyes widened, and he instinctively clutched his chest, his fingers digging into the thin hospital gown.
"It hurts," he gasped, his breath turning shallow and jagged.
Bai Qi panicked. He reached for the call button, his voice rising in terror. "What? What happened? Shu Yao, look at me!"
Shu Yao didn't look at the machines.
He kept his eyes on Bai Qi, even as the monitors began to beep frantically, signaling a sudden, dangerous spike in blood pressure.
"You should be happy," Shu Yao whispered, his eyes swimming with a sudden, tragic clarity.
"No—no, I am not!" Bai Qi cried, his hands shaking as he held Shu Yao's fragile frame. "I am lost without you. Shu Yao, please, stay with me!"
Shu Yao's smile didn't fade; it grew more luminous, even as his own tears began to fall. "I make you cry every time," he whispered, his voice hitching. "If it weren't for me... you wouldn't be like this."
"No, it's not you! It was never you!" Bai Qi roared against the mechanical screaming of the room. He pulled Shu Yao into a fierce, desperate embrace, burying his face in the boy's neck. "Don't do this to me. Please!"
Shu Yao's head fell against Bai Qi's shoulder. He was losing the battle with his own lungs, but he gathered the last of his strength to speak into Bai Qi's ear.
"I love you... no matter what."
Bai Qi felt his heart splinter into a thousand pieces. The irony was a poison more lethal than Belladonna. He broke the embrace, holding Shu Yao at arm's length so he could see those fading eyes.
"I am sorry, Shu Yao! I don't hate you! I love you more than anyone!"
Shu Yao's breathing had become a terrible, rattling sound. He was slipping. The bridge between life and death was collapsing beneath him.
"I mistook you," Bai Qi shouted, his voice cracking, desperate to get the truth out before the light vanished. "I mistook you for Qing Yue! She was nothing! She was a lie from the very beginning! I chased the wrong person for twenty years, and I punished you for it!"
Shu Yao's eyes drifted. He heard the words, but the names were just sounds in a darkening tunnel. He looked confused, his strength failing him before he could even process the magnitude of the confession.
He smiled one last time—a small, tired expression of pure, unadulterated devotion.
"You... will never do something... worse. I know..."
The words were a rattling exhale.
"Shu Yao?" Bai Qi's eyes went wild.
He saw it happen in slow motion. Shu Yao's head tilted back. The tension left his body. His hand, which had been clutching Bai Qi's face, slipped away, falling limply onto the white sheets.
The heart monitor let out a single, continuous, soul-piercing tone.
——————
"Shu Yao!" Bai Qi's voice was a primal scream. "Why are you closing your eyes? Open them! I still haven't explained everything!"
He grabbed Shu Yao's shoulders, shaking him with a frantic, rhythmic desperation. But Shu Yao didn't respond. He was like a fragile, lifeless doll, his head lolling with every movement, his skin turning a translucent, terrifying grey.
Bai Qi collapsed over the bed, his body heaving with violent, agonizing sobs. He wrapped his arms around Shu Yao's torso, trying to force his own warmth into the boy's cooling skin.
"Why did you suddenly sleep?" Bai Qi choked out, his voice muffled against Shu Yao's chest. "If you keep sleeping... how am I supposed to explain myself? How am I supposed to tell you that you were the one I was looking for all along?"
He pressed his forehead against Shu Yao's temple, his tears soaking into the hospital pillow.
"Please don't leave me," he whispered into the flatline of the monitor. "I am so sorry. Please... don't leave me in this dark."
Bai Qi laid Shu Yao's head back onto the pillow with a tenderness that bordered on the holy. His fingers trembled as he tapped the boy's cheek, his touch feather-light, as if he were trying to wake a butterfly.
But Shu Yao was gone. The warmth was receding, leaving behind a marble effigy of the boy he had finally learned to love.
"Open your eyes," Bai Qi rasped, his voice a jagged sliver of glass. "Hear me this once. Please. I am begging you."
He grabbed Shu Yao's face, his palms framing the hollowing features. "Open them. I am not cruel anymore. I am not that Bai Qi. I am the one who remembers the hospital. I am the one who knows it was you."
The heart monitor continued its flat, endless shriek. Bai Qi's grip on the bedsheets tightened until the fabric groaned under the strain of his despair. He squeezed his eyes shut, his entire soul screaming into the void for a second chance.
Bai Qi's eyes flew open.
He gasped, a violent, lung-burning intake of air that felt like he had been underwater for a lifetime. He bolted upright in his chair, his heart hammering a frantic, erratic rhythm against his ribs.
He blinked, his vision blurred by cold sweat and stinging tears.
The high-pitched scream of the flatline was gone. In its place was the rhythmic, hypnotic hiss-thump of the ventilator and the steady, sluggish beep... beep... beep of the pulse oximeter.
The room was dim. The fluorescent lights were hummed with clinical indifference.
Shu Yao was there.
He was still a pale splinter beneath the white sheets, his chest rising and falling with the mechanical grace of the machine. He hadn't woken up. He hadn't smiled. He hadn't died.
It was a nightmare—a visceral, cruel hallucination born from a month of sleep deprivation and a conscience rotting with guilt.
Bai Qi collapsed to his knees, his legs turning to water. He reached out, his hand shaking so violently he had to steady it with the other, and grabbed Shu Yao's hand.
He didn't just hold it; he pressed the boy's limp palm against his own chest, right over his thundering heart. He needed Shu Yao to feel the life that was currently failing Bai Qi.
The nightmare had been so vivid, the scent of jasmine and the warmth of Shu Yao's final smile so real, that the reality of the coma felt like a different kind of purgatory. The phantom sensation of Shu Yao's hand slipping away still burned in his skin.
"You... you will sleep a little more," Bai Qi whispered, his eyes wide and wild. "Then you'll wake up. You'll wake up because you always came back to me. Even when I was a monster, you stayed."
He leaned his head against the mattress, his shoulders heaving with the weight of the relief and the lingering terror. The nightmare had undone him. It had stripped away the last of his royal artifice, leaving behind a man who was terrified of his own mind.
He lifted Shu Yao's hand and pressed a lingering, desperate kiss to the knuckles. His tears fell freely now, soaking into the sterile bandages.
"I won't disturb you, okay?" he murmured, his voice cracking into a thousand pieces. "Just sleep. It's okay. I won't beg anymore. Just stay where I can see you breathe."
He was terrified to close his eyes again. The darkness behind his eyelids was no longer a place of rest; it was a theater of the macabre where his subconscious played cruel jokes on his heart.
He couldn't stand the punchline. He couldn't survive another goodbye, even if it was only made of smoke and shadows.
Bai Qi settled back onto his heels, his gaze fixed on Shu Yao's face with a predatory intensity. He wouldn't sleep. He would watch every rise of the chest, every flicker of the monitor.