After completing the medicine application, Marcus retreated rapidly to what he judged a safe distance—moving like someone who'd just successfully defused a live explosive device and wanted to put maximum space between himself and potential detonation. His fingertips still retained phantom sensations: the cool slickness of the medicinal paste, the impossibly delicate texture of Elena's skin beneath his touch.
Moments later, the notification he'd been anticipating finally materialized in his consciousness, lines of eye-catching red text scrolling across his mental interface:
[System: Ding! Congratulations, Host! Based on detected reduction in target's resistance to "medicine application" behavior, this interaction has been classified as weakly positive feedback. Your "Positive Value" +1 point! Current cumulative score: -9 points.]
Marcus felt euphoria surge through him so powerfully he nearly whistled aloud in triumph. Yes! It worked! The strategy actually worked!
He congratulated himself internally with smug satisfaction. The "gentle, nurturing care" approach was clearly the correct tactical choice, even when starting from what might as well be negative infinity on the favorability scale.
The smile that had been forming on his lips—unbidden, uncontrollable—had barely begun to manifest when he registered the weight of a cold, penetrating stare. His gaze snapped upward and collided directly with Elena's obsidian-dark eyes. Those eyes held absolutely zero gratitude. Instead, they radiated the particular brand of scrutiny and mockery one might direct at a suspected idiot or madman.
Marcus immediately wiped all traces of amusement from his face with practiced speed, his expression transforming faster than a page turning. He reverted to that carefully crafted persona—slightly distant yet forcing warmth, controlled concern with detached edges—and cleared his throat with affected casualness.
"Ahem. Well. If there's nothing else requiring my immediate attention, I should... I need to step out for a while."
Elena's eyelids lowered fractionally. She turned her head away in deliberate dismissal, presenting him with her profile—all sharp, cold lines and icy composure. Her tone emerged light, airy, dripping with disdain:
"Your legs belong to you. You're a free agent." The subtext couldn't have been clearer: Your presence or absence is of complete indifference to me.
Having received what could charitably be interpreted as permission—or at least non-objection—Marcus felt a measure of tension release from his shoulders. He turned toward the massive wardrobe system that occupied an entire wall of the bedroom, a monument to conspicuous consumption.
Behind him, Elena's fingers drifted almost unconsciously to the corner of her freshly medicated eye, touching the skin with feather-light pressure. The cooling sensation from the ointment had indeed dispersed some of the underlying ache and throb. But the confusion blooming in her chest continued expanding like invasive vines, wrapping around her thoughts with strangling persistence.
She studied Marcus's retreating back with profound bewilderment. This man—who'd embodied hysterical, demonic violence just hours ago—was now capable of such... jarringly inconsistent behavior. The cognitive dissonance was almost physically painful.
Is this some new manipulation tactic...?
Marcus stood before the dazzling array of clothing options, methodically evaluating his selection for today's expedition into the outside world.
His background as a professional bodyguard had instilled certain aesthetic principles and utilitarian priorities that ran bone-deep, practically encoded in his DNA:
Sharp, impeccably tailored suits in black or navy blue. Hair maintained with meticulous precision. Leather shoes polished to mirror-bright perfection. Every single element of his appearance—from fountain pen to shoe heel, from tie clip to belt buckle—had been carefully selected to serve dual purposes: professional presentation and potential improvised weaponry.
His fingers moved unconsciously toward a set of beautifully understated navy custom-tailored suits, drawn by ingrained preference. But his hand froze mid-reach, stopping mere centimeters before making contact with the quality fabric.
No. Wrong. The Original Owner would never choose something this tasteful.
His fingertip traced an arc through empty air, redirecting with obvious reluctance until it landed on the adjacent garment—an aggressively garish red suit absolutely plastered with oversized LV monogram logos repeated in eye-assaulting density.
The color saturation was retina-burning. The logo ostentation qualified as a legitimate visual assault. The overall effect screamed nouveau riche desperation so loudly it was practically deafening.
With a resigned sigh, Marcus pulled open the adjacent drawer to select appropriate accessories. The interior was crammed absolutely full with luxury timepieces—diamonds, yellow gold, white gold, platinum, all refracting fragmentary rainbow light in the dim illumination. The sheer concentrated wealth nearly blinded him.
He randomly selected one particularly heavy, diamond-encrusted monstrosity of a wristwatch and held it up to examine in the light, shaking his left wrist experimentally. These are probably the "most expensive" wrists on the planet, he thought with dark self-mockery. Dripping with nouveau riche vulgarity.
"Ahem." An extremely soft cough emerged from behind him, loaded with unmistakable sarcastic intent.
Marcus didn't need to turn around to identify the source. He could feel Elena's judgment radiating across the space like cold radiation. Maintaining his performance, he made a show of naturally fastening the blinding timepiece around his wrist while speaking with studied carelessness:
"What's the problem? You think it's too much? I think it looks fantastic—absolutely beautiful!" He even deliberately raised his left hand toward the light, admiring the "overwhelming display of wealth" effect with theatrical appreciation, allowing his face to arrange itself into the Original Owner's characteristic expression of smug, vapid satisfaction.
Perfect. The act is nearly complete. He needed Elena to continue believing that beneath any superficial behavioral changes, he remained fundamentally the same—vain, shallow, easily read. The morning's medicine application could be dismissed as temporary aberration, meaningless anomaly.
Clutching the eye-searing suit, he turned toward the attached dressing room. At the threshold, he paused deliberately to glance back over his shoulder, flashing Elena a smile he'd carefully practiced—one that managed to convey simultaneous fawning eagerness and poorly concealed smugness.
"Elena, I'm just going to change clothes. Won't take long at all."
Elena's expression darkened perceptibly, but she offered no verbal response. Her palm, however, moved almost against her conscious will, stroking gently across the corner of her eye where medicine had been applied. The skin beneath her fingertips seemed to retain ghost traces of his body heat, warmth lingering where it shouldn't.
Her features flickered with some emotion too quick and subtle to name, and she immediately suppressed whatever anomalous feeling had stirred, forcing it back down into darkness.
Marcus emerged from the dressing room fully equipped in his "battle attire" and strode toward the villa's exit with exaggerated confidence, head held high, as though departing to attend some prestigious fashion gala rather than running mundane errands.
The moment his tall but ridiculously dressed figure disappeared beyond the doorway, silence descended over the bedroom like a physical weight.
Elena remained seated in her wheelchair, pale fingers tapping against the smooth armrest in irregular patterns—soft sounds that nonetheless seemed loud in the empty quiet. Her eyes had gone unfathomable, dark as deep wells.
The household manager Sophia entered carrying a glass of warm water. Observing the conspicuously empty room, she released a small sigh. "The Young Master just returned home, and now he's gone out again. He certainly is... very busy."
Elena's face settled into grim lines. She maneuvered her wheelchair toward the door with practiced efficiency, voice emerging cold as arctic wind: "Let's go to the study. I need to speak with our contacts at the nightclub—find out exactly what 'interesting developments' occurred after he left last night."
She needed to understand what had transformed a rabid dog into something that suddenly knew how to wag its tail.
During daylight hours, stripped of nocturnal noise and intoxicating chaos, the nightclub appeared hollow and desolate. The air retained lingering traces of stale alcohol and cheap perfume mixing into an ambient scent of regret and poor decisions.
Three women—scantily dressed, makeup smeared from sleep—had been hastily roused and summoned. They arrived tired from hangovers and radiating nervous apprehension, then were escorted to the establishment's largest VIP lounge.
The trio consisted of:
A sweet-faced girl wearing a wrinkled chiffon dress, cultivating an image of pure innocence.
A punk-styled woman in a black sequined micro-dress, sporting a lip ring and projecting deliberate defiance through heavily kohled eyes.
And a mature woman with an aggressively sexual figure and dramatic red hair styled in calculated waves of seduction.
All three perched uneasily on the expensive leather sofa, casting anxious, furtive glances toward the shadows pooling in the corner.
Where light met darkness, Elena Nightshade sat motionless in her wheelchair. She made no overt effort to project dominance or authority, yet her presence alone—that innate coldness, that razor-sharp intelligence barely concealed beneath her eyes' dark surface—seemed to lower the ambient temperature by several degrees.
Morning sunlight filtered weakly through gaps in the heavy curtains, painting Elena's pale face in alternating bands of light and shadow. The effect added an almost supernatural quality of menace to her already unsettling stillness.
"B-boss..." The sweet-faced girl broke the tense silence first, her voice trembling with obvious fear. "We really did everything exactly as instructed. Young Master Chen was perfectly normal earlier—high spirits, excellent mood. He immediately requested all three of us to keep him company, sing karaoke, play drinking games. He consumed quite a lot of alcohol too... We absolutely, positively did not reveal a single inappropriate word! Not one syllable!" The poor girl looked on the verge of tears, terrified of being blamed for some failure she didn't understand.
"That's right! We wouldn't dare betray you even under threat of death!" The punk girl rushed to add her confirmation, one hand unconsciously moving to touch the tattoo on her exposed arm—a nervous gesture meant to bolster failing courage.
Elena didn't bother looking at them directly. Her fingertips continued their rhythmic tapping against the wheelchair's armrest—soft percussion that somehow felt like each impact was striking directly against the three women's frantically beating hearts.
"Then what other explanation could there possibly be?" Her voice remained low, barely above conversational volume, yet it carried crushing pressure that instantly silenced all three women like a physical gag.
They exchanged panicked glances among themselves, then dropped their gazes to study the floor. Flushed cheeks betrayed embarrassment or fear or both. They seemed to be desperately searching their memories for some reasonable explanation, some detail that might satisfy their employer's obvious suspicion.
But they found nothing that made sense.