I stepped through the door of my apartment and immediately felt the heavy, suffocating weight of Dr. Lan's presence still clinging to me, like a second, electrified skin I couldn't shake off. His scent—sharp, musky, faintly metallic, in a way no purely human should possess—lingered in my nostrils, drowning out the controlled elegance of my home. The memory of those violet eyes—the way they had scanned me, stripped me bare, and found the weakness in my very core—made my stomach twist into a hard, uncomfortable knot, a perverse mix of dread and arousal.
The apartment was luxurious, a meticulously crafted fortress of understated wealth. Polished oak floors gleamed beneath soft recessed lighting; modern, minimalist furniture was placed with careful, demanding precision, as if the house itself had been curated by someone who expected absolute control in every corner. Plush, steel-gray couches, a sleek glass coffee table, and the faint, feminine scent of jasmine—it was an oasis I had bought with my own money, a sanctuary of predictable straightness. Yet, tonight, it felt impossibly fragile compared to the psychological storm Dr. Lan had deliberately brewed inside me.
She was there. Lian.
Lian, my girlfriend, leaning casually against the marble archway of the living room. Her long, dark hair cascaded over one shoulder of her expensive, emerald silk pajamas, which hugged her curves with liquid grace. Her eyes, dark and knowing, flicked toward me immediately, assessing my demeanor in a heartbeat.
"So… appointment?" Her voice was soft, teasing, a familiar velvet blanket, but there was that edge—half genuine amusement, half quiet, demanding expectation for things to be normal.
I swallowed hard, the dryness in my throat an immediate problem. I forced my trembling hands to drop the small paper bag of expensive dark chocolate onto the clean, white marble counter. My pulse had a rhythm entirely its own, a frantic, disorganized drumming against my ribs, shouting a name that wasn't hers.
"Y-yeah," I muttered. My voice sounded alien, too high, too fragile, like cheap glass against the backdrop of my carefully curated life.
"You're tense, Chen Rei," Lian observed, pushing off the archway. She moved with purpose, closing the distance. Her hands brushed my shoulders, tracing a path down my arms. "Relax. I just want a little fun tonight… nothing serious. Don't overthink."
Don't overthink. Easy for her to say. I nodded stiffly, trying desperately to ground myself. The dark chocolates Lan had recommended—my prescription—sat on the counter like a worthless talisman. They did nothing against the blinding chaos in my chest.
Against the echo of his words: "Don't waste your money… treasures… not made in your body," "goodnight… wet dreams," "what if it was me…?" I flushed, a wave of heat and shame washing over me. How could a man—no, that king of a desire cultivator—have this much absolute, destabilizing sway over me after a mere twenty minutes?
My mind provided the answer by replaying his image in flawless, high definition. His hair was thick, impossibly dark, untouched by the professional stress that should have thinned any normal man's vitality. His skin was flawless, eyes both a scorching sun and icy cold, commanding like a grandmaster of his hospital clan. One look, and the world seemed to either align perfectly—or shatter irrevocably. He had thrown that poor sap out like garbage, and I had seen the man's humiliation, final and absolute. How could someone so human, so clinical, also be this… perfectly dangerous?
The bedroom awaited, a large space filled with clean lines and soft sheets. Lian followed, pressing her body close to mine as we walked. She smelled like vanilla and warm sheets, a living, comforting contrast to the pure electric fire that Lan had left scorching my nerve endings.
"Rei?" Lian's voice cut through the heavy air, soft yet carrying that razor edge of suspicion. She tilted her head, one brow arched like she was studying me under a lamp.
I blinked and forced a tired smile, peeling off my jacket as if that motion could hide my disarray. "Y…yes, darling?"
Her eyes lingered on mine, steady, unblinking. "Your eyes aren't on me tonight." She paused, her tone casual but her gaze sharp. "Are you thinking about something else… or…" she leaned closer, her breath grazing my cheek, "someone else?"
The word hit harder than it should have. Someone else. My stomach tightened, an electric jolt shooting down my spine. Why did it feel like she had carved Dr. Lan's silhouette right out of my skull and thrown it on the bed between us?
I swallowed hard. "Don't be silly," I muttered, aiming for lightness, but my voice wavered, betraying me. The denial tasted thin, fragile.
Her lips curved into a faint smile, though not warm. She touched my face, tracing my jaw with deliberate slowness, as if she was testing whether I'd flinch. "Then prove it," she whispered, pulling me down into her orbit.
The problem was him… or me?
I tried to focus. I really tried. I grabbed Lian, forcing myself to concentrate on the weight of her body, the familiar press of her mouth. Her kiss was soft, open, a generous offer, and I met it with a desperate, crushing intensity. My hands sought her skin beneath the silk, trying to find a solid anchor in the storm.
The dark chocolate, the breathing exercises—they were supposed to harmonize my "desire system," but my body had violently rejected the diagnosis. It had other, far more complicated plans, plans etched by violet eyes.
Every touch from her, no matter how familiar or tender, made me flinch with a terrifying mix of genuine longing and profound, internal shame. I pulled her down onto the bed, wanting the contact, needing the distraction, but the contact felt wrong. It felt like substitution.
My mind kept sliding back to Lan—the deliberate curve of his lips, the slow, intentional motion of his tongue against his cheek, that cold, commanding voice threading through my skull, repeating the poison: "Imagine… me… in or on you…"
I wrestled with the phantom image of his perfection. I tried to act like a man performing under the pressure of a necessary, high-stakes exam. I kissed her harder, my hands gripping her waist, trying to force the scene back into the predictable script Dr. Lan had mocked.
Lian was beautiful, responsive, her sighs warm against my ear, her hands moving down my back with encouraging heat. I could feel her body softening, opening to me, her vanilla scent becoming stronger, more intoxicating. The sensation should have been overwhelming, consuming.
But the more I forced it, the faster the chaos overtook me. Lian's soft sighs, the heat of her skin, the vanilla scent—it all became a desperate, losing battle against the memory of musk and violet fury. I was pressing my face into her neck, feeling the softness of her skin, yet all I could picture was Dr. Lan's gloved hand and the sharp, humid splatter of his dismissal. The image was a violent, sexual intrusion, and it was enough to tip me over the edge.
It took two minutes. That was all.
My body betrayed me with an explosive, panicked speed, a frantic, joyless climax, and I came before anything had even truly begun, before the clothes were fully gone, before the true intimacy had settled. It was a release devoid of pleasure, sharp with humiliation.
I collapsed onto the sheets, trembling, the physical tension gone, replaced by a devastating emptiness.
Lian paused, her hand hovering over my skin. Disappointment, unmistakable and scalpel-sharp, flickered across her beautiful, dark eyes, instantly replaced by a guarded neutrality. "Really, Chen Rei?" Her voice was soft, almost teasing to disguise the depth of her hurt, but I felt every ounce of that judgment slice me open.
"I… I don't know what's wrong," I admitted, my voice muffled as I buried my face in the pillow, a pathetic act of self-flagellation. "It's… it's just…" I couldn't finish. The lie was too big. I couldn't articulate that it was Dr. Lan's shadow still draped across my thoughts, making my physical reality impossible.
"You're distracted," she murmured, the edge softening into resignation as she pressed a soft, sisterly kiss to my temple. That kiss hurt more than her anger. "It's alright… maybe sleep separately tonight. Space might help."
I nodded into the pillow, though the suggestion felt less like therapy and more like an immediate, crushing punishment. My chest ached, an emptiness sharpened by the terrible realization that it wasn't her, my perfectly beautiful, kind girlfriend, I wanted. My body, my mind, even my shame—it all belonged, in some dangerous, twisted way, to him. Lan.
I lay in the sterile, silent guest room, staring up at the dark ceiling, the silence pressing against my eardrums. Every muscle in my body ached with a raw, desperate desire that wasn't meant for this life. Every pulse screamed his name in memory. Even the crumpled dark chocolate wrapper lay useless on the floor, its promise empty against the raging storm inside me.
And yet, buried in that humiliation, that frustration, there was something else. A hard, dangerous seed. The terrifying, primal certainty that this wasn't over. That no matter what I tried, no matter how I ran or hid, I would think of him again. And again. I wasn't just obsessed.
I was infected. And the cure was the poison itself.
The night stretched long and silent, my body restless and useless, my mind a blazing battlefield of shame, guilt, and forbidden desire. I had stepped through the door of my apartment a man ready to be with someone who cared for me. I lay there, undone, knowing with a clarity that scared me more than anything:
The man who fixed desire had successfully awakened mine, and I would never leave Lan's terrifying, seductive gravity.