Inside the obsidian tower, the trap was being lined with silk.
Ming Su leaned across the mahogany desk, her eyes shimmering with a calculated, iridescent warmth. She watched Bai Qi—the supposedly untouchable Ice Monarch—unraveling before her very eyes.
"I want to invite you to my penthouse tonight, Bai Qi," she murmured, her voice a soft lure.
Bai Qi's eyes widened, his professional armor fracturing. "That is... it is very generous of you, Ming Su, but perhaps too much."
"We are partners, aren't we?" She tilted her head, winking with a playful energy that sent a jolt of nostalgia through his chest. It was Qing Yue's spirit, resurrected in a stranger's body. "Friends visit each other. It's normal. Unless... the great Bai Qi is afraid of a little dinner?"
Bai Qi cleared his throat, a rare blush creeping onto his neck. "If you are insisting, I cannot refuse."
Ming Su clapped her hands together, her smile radiant. "Wonderful! And... I want you to bring Shu Yao with you as well."
The name hit the room like a sudden drop in temperature. Bai Qi's brows knitted together, his jaw tightening. "He is just an assistant, Ming Su. There is no need."
"But I heard you two were such good friends," she countered, her voice dripping with fake innocence. She caught the way his gaze averted, and for a fleeting second, a sharp, jagged smirk sliced across her face.
When he looked back, it was gone, replaced by a mask of pure kindness. "Don't worry, Bai Qi. It will be good for him. A way to move past everything that happened between you two"
Bai Qi's knuckles turned bone-white as he clutched the edge of his desk. He took a deep, steadying breath. "Alright. If that is what you wish."
He offered her a small, hesitant smile. Ming Su blinked, genuinely surprised by the rare beauty of his expression, but internally, her gears were already turning. She would use this dinner to expose Shu Yao, to paint him as the hypocrite she knew Bai Qi wanted him to be.
She is so kind, Bai Qi thought, watching her. Shu Yao doesn't deserve a soul as pure as hers.
Three miles away, the world was silent, save for the rhythmic hum of a heart monitor.
George sat beside the hospital bed, his silhouette a heavy shadow against the sterile white walls.
He watched the clear fluid of the IV drip descend into Shu Yao's vein. It had been three hours. Three hours of a silence so profound it felt like a physical weight.
Inside the darkness of his coma, Shu Yao was no longer in a clinic.
He was standing on a shore of endless silver sand. The air smelled of salt and ancient sorrows. Before him, the ocean stretched into infinity, the waves lapping at the feet of a girl standing at the water's edge.
She wore a long, white frock that billowed around her knees like a cloud. Her bobbed hair had grown long in the afterlife, fluttering in a phantom breeze.
"Qing'er," Shu Yao whispered.
He moved toward her, his bare feet sinking into the wet sand. He was wearing the simple clothes of their childhood—a white shirt and brown trousers. His heart lurched with a mixture of agony and ecstasy.
Qing Yue turned. Her face was perfect, a mirror of the memory he kept in a locket in his soul. Seeing him, she didn't wait; she ran.
Shu Yao's legs gave way, his strength failing even in this dreamscape. He fell, and she was there, catching him, pulling his head into her lap as they collapsed into the shallow surf.
"Qing'er... Qing'er..." he sobbed, the sound torn from the deepest part of his lungs.
She stroked his hair, her touch cool and soothing. "What happened, Gege?"
The voice was a melody he thought he'd never hear again—the sweet, bell-like tone that used to turn his grey world into color.
"You look so tired," she murmured, her voice barely louder than the hush of the waves.
Her eyes shimmered with a sorrow that felt too old for her face, as if she had been carrying it long before this moment. She brushed damp hair from his forehead with trembling fingers. "Stay still. Just… rest for a while."
Shu Yao shook his head weakly against her knees, the motion desperate and broken.
Tears spilled freely from his eyes, dissolving into the seawater beneath him as if even his grief wanted to disappear. His fingers clenched into her clothes, afraid that if he loosened his grip, she would vanish again.
"I can't…" His voice cracked, each word scraping his throat raw. "I lost you. I lost you." A strangled breath tore out of him. "It was my fault. I hesitated. I was scared. I was a coward…" His shoulders shook violently. "I should have saved you. It should have been me. I should have—"
"No, Gege," she whispered quickly, bending down before his guilt could drown him completely.
She pressed her forehead gently against his, warm despite the cold wind, grounding him.
"Don't say that. Please don't carry that weight."
Her hands cupped his face, thumbs brushing away tears that never seemed to end. "You are my brave brother. You always were."
Her lips curved into a fragile, painful smile. "Do you remember when you fell into the fountain just to save my Pipi?" she asked softly. "Everyone was laughing.
You were soaked and shaking, and you didn't even know how to swim properly back then." Her voice trembled. "But you didn't think twice. You didn't care about your life at all.
She leaned closer, her breath mingling with his. "That's who you are, Gege. Someone who runs toward danger, not away from it. Someone who loves so deeply it hurts." Her eyes glistened. "You can't changed."
Shu Yao hiccuped, a broken, childlike sound. He hid his face in the crook of her neck, feeling small despite being the elder. He trembled in her embrace, a martyr finally allowed to weep.
She rested her cheek against his hair, holding him as if she could shield him from every regret he carried.
"So don't punish yourself for something that was never your sin."
And Shu Yao wept—not loudly, not dramatically—but with the quiet devastation of someone who loved too much and believed he had lost everything.
"I wish…" Qing Yue's voice drifted away, thin and distant, like a tide pulling back from the shore. "I wish you would tell him everything, Gege."
She lifted her gaze to him, eyes gentle but unbearably knowing. "Tell him how deeply you love him. Tell him how much it hurts when you pretend you don't." Her fingers tightened slightly in his sleeve. "Tell Bai Qi the truth."
Her words unraveled something inside Shu Yao.
The scene blurred, shifting—becoming another memory, another ache.
It was just like before, back when she was still alive.
Shu Yao stood in the corner of his room and peeking from his window, half-hidden by shadows, watching the two of them laugh together.
Bai Qi's smile was warm, effortless—meant for her. Qing Yue's laughter rang bright and free, untouched by the weight Shu Yao carried in his chest.
They looked perfect together. Whole.
And he was only a spectator.
His heart splintered into shards with every shared glance, every soft word exchanged between them. He told himself to be happy for them. He told himself this was enough—to watch, to protect, to love silently from the sidelines.
But the truth gnawed at him, cruel and relentless.
He loved Bai Qi so fiercely it terrified him.
Yet he stayed in that corner, unseen and unheard, swallowing his feelings like broken glass—because loving quietly hurt less than being rejected aloud.
Qing Yue's voice returned, tender and aching. "Don't live the rest of your life hiding, Gege," she whispered. "If you love him… let him know. Even if it breaks you."
And Shu Yao realized the cruelest thing wasn't losing her.
It was knowing that while she lived, she had seen his love —while Bai Qi never had.
It was only then that he understood—that day. The day she died.
On that day, she had already known.
She had known that he was in love with Bai Qi.
The realization struck him like a wound torn open. His breath hitched, chest aching as if something inside him was collapsing all over again. He had believed he was careful, that he had hidden it well enough. He had given up on love silently, burying it deep, choosing pain over selfishness.
Yet she had seen him clearly.
And she had died knowing.
The thought hurt more than he could bear—that while he was still alive, still breathing, she had slipped away, leaving him behind with a love he had never dared to claim.
He had abandoned his own heart the moment she was gone, convincing himself that love no longer had a place in his life.
But she hadn't wanted that.
"Live on, Gege," her voice echoed softly, steady and warm despite everything. "Don't let my death be the end of you."
She looked at him the way she always had—gentle, unwavering, as if she were entrusting him with something precious. "Tell him," she whispered. "Tell Bai Qi everything. Tell him how you love him—how you always have."
Tears blurred Shu Yao's vision. His hands trembled, clutching at emptiness, at a memory he could never touch again.
She had died… yet she was the one urging him forward.
And in that moment, Shu Yao understood the cruel irony—
she had left the world carrying his secret, while leaving him behind with the courage he never had.
The silver tide rose around them, the water warm as a summer memory. Shu Yao clung to his sister with a desperate, white-knuckled grip, his face buried in the crook of her neck. He was terrified that the moment he loosened his hold, she would dissolve into sea foam and salt.
"I'm sorry, Qing'er... I'm so sorry," he sobbed, the words muffled by the white fabric of her dress.
Qing Yue didn't pull away. She gasped softly as he squeezed her, her small hands moving in a rhythmic, soothing motion across his back. "It's alright, Gege. Calm down. You're safe now."
"I won't forgive myself," he cried, the agony in his voice vibrating through the dreamscape. "I let you go. I watched the world take you. And Bai Qi... he will never forgive me either. He looks at me and only sees your death."
Qing Yue stopped her motion. She gently but firmly pushed him back, holding him at arm's length so she could look into his shattered, raw eyes. The spray of the sea caught in her hair like diamonds.
"You should tell him, Gege," she said, her voice a soft command. "Tell him that the 'brave child' he remembers from his youth—the one who laid on the hospital bed—was never me. It was always you."
Shu Yao froze. The revelation hung between them, a golden thread of truth in a sea of lies. He looked at her, his vision blurred by a fresh wave of tears.
"If I tell him... will he believe me?" His voice cracked, a fragile sound that made Qing Yue's heart lurch. "He has lost every last bit of trust in me, Qing'er.
He looks at me with such... such unadulterated disgust. I don't blame him. I am the shadow that followed his light to the grave."
"Enough, Gege. Stop."
Qing Yue placed her hands on his shoulders, her touch suddenly grounding. "You didn't hurt anyone. You were always the boy who suffered in the quiet. You, who wouldn't even hurt a butterfly... how could you be the villain of his story?"
She leaned in closer, her bang's brushing against his forehead.
"Bai Qi will understand. He will see the truth when it is spoken. But you cannot keep the silence any longer, Shu Yao. The silence is what is killing you both."
Shu Yao shook his head, a mess of self-blame and grief. He was a man drowning in a past he couldn't rewrite, trapped in a devotion that felt like a death sentence.
"I can't," he whispered into the wind. "I'm afraid."
The Awakening
In the sterile reality of the clinic, Shu Yao's eyelids began to flutter. His fingers, hooked into the hospital sheets, twitched with a phantom memory of white silk.
George sat forward, his chair scraping against the floor. He watched as a single, crystal tear escaped Shu Yao's closed eye and tracked slowly down his temple, disappearing into his hair.
"Shu Yao?" George whispered, his voice thick with hope and fear.
Shu Yao's breath hitched. The steady beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor began to accelerate, mirroring the panic rising in his chest. He was leaving the shore. He was leaving the girl.
He gasped, his lungs suddenly feeling the cold, clinical air. His eyes snapped open—not to the silver sea, but to the harsh, fluorescent lights and the worried face of the man who had saved him.