The heart monitor's steady rhythm transformed into a frantic, jagged staccato.
Shu Yao's eyes snapped open, but they weren't seeing the hospital room.
They were still searching for the white silk of a dress that had vanished into the mist. He sat up with a violent, sudden jerk, his spine snapping upright like a bowstring under too much tension.
"Qing'er!" The name was a strangled sob, dying in the dry air of the room.
George jumped to his feet, his chair screeching harshly against the linoleum. "Shu Yao! Calm down".
Shu Yao's gaze darted around the room, his pupils blown wide with a primal, disoriented terror. When his eyes finally landed on George, the recognition didn't bring peace—it brought the flood.
His eyes became a waterfall, tears spilling over his pale cheeks in thick, hot tracks. His lower lip quivered uncontrollably, and a series of hitching, broken sobs tore through his chest, making his small frame rattle.
He lunged for the white hospital sheets, clutching them in his fists so hard his knuckles threatened to pop. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to force the dream to come back, then threw them open again, gasping as if he were drowning in the very air he breathed.
He was shaking his head frantically. There was no silver sea. There was no Qing Yue to hold him. The silence of the room was a physical blow.
"It's okay, Shu Yao" George asked, his voice thick with a sudden, sharp fear. He crouched down beside the bed, trying to bring himself into Shu Yao's line of sight. "Just relax, calmed down"
Shu Yao didn't answer. He couldn't. He buried his face in his palms, his shoulders heaving as he cried harder, the sound raw and visceral. It was the sound of a man who had been given a glimpse of heaven only to be dragged back into his own personal hell.
George watched him, his own light green eyes darkening with a lethal, simmering fury. He looked at the IV needle in Shu Yao's bruised arm, then at the tear-stained face of the boy who had been pushed past the brink of human endurance.
George leaned in, his large hand landing gently but firmly on Shu Yao's back, feeling the violent tremors racking the boy's spine.
"Stop it, Shu Yao," George whispered, his voice a low, soothing velvet. "It's alright. You're safe. There is no Bai Qi here. He can't hurt you in this room. Just rest... please, just breathe."
But Shu Yao didn't stop. He couldn't rest. The dream wasn't a memory; it was a mandate. Qing Yue's voice was still echoing in his ears, telling him the truth he was too terrified to tell.
He wasn't crying because of the pain. He was crying because he was back in a world where he was a liar, and the only person he loved was walking straight into the arms of a serpent.
"I need to... I need to save him," Shu Yao gasped, his voice a frantic, breathless rasp. He shook his head miserably, the movement so violent it sent a spray of tears onto the white pillow. "If I don't... she will... she'll harm him."
He lurched forward, his body obeying some desperate, animal instinct that refused to acknowledge exhaustion or pain. The movement was clumsy, uncoordinated—born not of strength, but of panic.
George reacted at once. He stepped in quickly, large hands closing around Shu Yao's shoulders, steady but careful, as if he were holding something already cracked. He tried to guide him back toward the hospital bed, afraid that even a little force might shatter him.
"Shu Yao… stop it," he said, the command catching in his throat before it could harden. "Please. Lie down."
But Shu Yao didn't seem to hear him.
His gaze was distant, unfocused, as though his mind were trapped somewhere far away—caught in the amber of his sister's final warning.
The room, the bed, the ache in his arm—all of it fell away. There was only urgency, only fear.
He reached for the IV line, fingers trembling so badly they could barely find the tape. Pain flared up his arm, sharp and unforgiving, but he ignored it.
He was going to tear it out.
He was going to run—until his lungs burned, until his legs gave out—if it meant reaching Bai Qi before the serpent struck.
"Shu Yao—" George tried again, louder this time, the word breaking free before he could stop it.
The sound echoed too sharply in the sterile room.
Immediately, he regretted it.
Shu Yao froze mid-motion. His breath hitched violently as he looked up, eyes wide and glassy, pupils blown with raw, unfiltered terror—like a frightened animal caught in sudden light.
For a heartbeat, he looked small. Fragile. As though one more harsh sound might undo him completely.
George swallowed hard, his grip loosening at once.
"He doesn't deserve this," George hissed, his light green eyes burning with a righteous, protective fury. "He doesn't deserve a single ounce of your kindness, Shu Yao! He won't look at you with anything but ice, and yet you are willing to bleed out for him?"
But, "He… he is—"
George didn't let him finish.
The words were already written all over Shu Yao's face—love twisted into something lethal, something that had tightened into a noose around his own throat. Watching it finally broke something in George. His restraint gave way with a quiet, irreversible crack.
He stepped in and pulled Shu Yao against him.
It wasn't gentle. It wasn't rough either. It was the kind of embrace meant to hold the pieces together—powerful arms locking around a shivering body as if sheer will could keep it from unraveling.
Shu Yao stiffened at once, hands pressing weakly against George's chest.
"Let go—" His voice fractured. "George, I have to—"
"No." George's answer was immediate, final.
He bent his head, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly murmur beside Shu Yao's ear. "Calm down. Just… calm down, Shu Yao." He tightened his hold when Shu Yao tried to pull away. "You don't need to go anywhere. You don't need to do anything."
Shu Yao shook violently.
"You've done enough," George continued, each word heavy with suppressed fury. "You've given him everything you had.
Everything." His jaw clenched hard. "And he threw it back."
"Please let go—" Shu Yao sobbed, the sound tearing out of him despite his resistance. "Please… let me go. I need to see him. I have to—"
George couldn't.
Worry crushed his chest, thick and merciless. And beneath it—something quieter, more dangerous. A love he never named. Never crossed. But it lived there all the same, raw and aching, watching this fragile boy destroy himself for someone else.
"I won't," George said softly. Too softly. "I can't."
Shu Yao's strength finally gave out. His forehead pressed into the expensive grey wool of George's coat, fingers clutching it like a lifeline. He sobbed—openly now, helplessly—each breath breaking apart in his chest.
He felt small in George's arms.
Like a bird with shattered wings, caught mid-fall by something impossibly large.
George stared ahead, teeth grinding as he held him tighter, as if daring the world to try and take him back. Rage burned hot and silent behind his eyes.
Bai Qi, he thought grimly.
If I could, I'd slap you a thousand times for this—and still it wouldn't be enough.
But all he did was hold Shu Yao.
The interior of the luxury car was a velvet-lined cage, smelling of expensive leather and Ming Su's suffocating, floral perfume. Outside, the city blurred into a gray smear of motion, but inside, the air was thick with the scent of an impending kill.
Ming Su reclined against the seat, her eyes tracking the rigid silhouette of her assistant. Naina's jaw was set so tightly it looked like it might shatter.
Ming Su sensed the girl's simmering resentment and leaned in, her movements fluid and predatory. She placed a gloved hand on Naina's thigh. Naina jolted as if struck by a live wire, her breath hitching as she stared at the woman beside her.
Ming Su gave a wink that carried no warmth at all, more threat than flirtation. "You seem in a foul mood, Naina."
A flush crept up Naina's cheeks, dark and unmistakable. She drew a steadying breath, her voice catching. "Well… that's not—"
Before the sentence could finish, Ming Su's hand shot up, her slender fingers clamping around Naina's jaw with surprising, bruising strength. "Look into my eyes."
Naina's peach-colored eyes darted frantically before locking onto Ming Su's dark, hollow gaze. She felt the weight of her subjugation. "Please, Madam Su..."
Ming Su's response was a perverse act of dominance. She deliberately pressed a finger into Naina's mouth, silencing her plea with a gesture that felt both intimate and violent. Naina jolted again, her eyes wide with shock.
Ming Su withdrew her finger with a slow, agonizing languor. She reached for a silk tissue from the red upholstery of the car, wiping her hand with meticulous, clinical precision.
"No need to be jealous," Ming Su murmured, a cold smirk playing on her lips.
Naina turned her head away, her voice a fragile thread. "I... I wasn't."
Ming Su's hand moved to Naina's chin, forcing her face back around.
"Everything you saw back there—with Bai Qi—was a performance. A part of my act. And you knew that."
Naina's blush deepened, her heart hammering against her ribs.
Ming Su's expression shifted instantly. The cruel, sweet veneer evaporated, replaced by a non-expression so void of humanity it was terrifying.
"On your knees," Ming Su barked. The command was sharp, absolute, and left no room for defiance.
Naina swallowed hard, the bile of humiliation rising in her throat as she sank onto the floor of the moving car.
Across the city, in the sterile silence of the Rothenberg Tower, Bai Qi sat staring at his phone.
He had dialed Shu Yao's number five times. Each time, he was met with the same cold, digital wall: The mobile you are calling is switched off.
Bai Qi's jaw clenched, his knuckles whitening around the device. In his mind, Shu Yao didn't deserve a seat at Ming Su's table. He was a liar, a betrayer, a man who had let his own sister die—and yet, Ming Su, in her infinite, saint-like kindness, had insisted.
"He is your friend, Bai Qi," she had cooed. "He looks so weak. Bring him. Let us mend things."
Bai Qi took a deep, jagged breath. He was trapped by the "mercy" of a woman who reminded him so much of the light he had lost. If Ming Su wanted the "Little Secretary" there, then Bai Qi would drag him there by his collar if he had to.
But the phone remained dead.
The silence on the other end was a growing omen, one Bai Qi was too blinded by his own sanctimony to understand. He looked out over his empire, oblivious to the fact that while he was planning a dinner, his uncle was sitting by a hospital bed, watching the very person he was cursing fight for his next breath.
"Pick up the Damn! phone, you coward," Bai Qi hissed into the empty room.
The dial tone was his only answer.
The silence of the private wing was clinical, heavy with the scent of antiseptic and the muted hum of expensive machinery.
George stood outside the glass doors of the intensive care suite, his shadow long and imposing against the polished linoleum.
Through the glass, he watched the boy. Shu Yao lay adrift in the center of the vast hospital bed, his frame looking skeletal beneath the heavy white linens.
His eyelids were weighted with a bone-deep exhaustion, yet they twitched with a residual terror—a fear that even unconsciousness couldn't fully erase.
Beside George, the head physician held a tablet, his face a grim mask of professional concern.
"It isn't just one thing, Mr. George," the doctor whispered, his voice a low vibration. "It is a systematic collapse. Attrition of the highest order."
George didn't look away from Shu Yao. "Give it to me straight, Doctor."
"Months of malnutrition. His body has been cannibalizing its own muscle for energy. He hasn't had a full cycle of REM sleep in weeks. The psychological erosion—the depression, the acute anxiety—is
manifesting as physical trauma."
The doctor tapped the screen, showing a jagged line on a graph. "His heart is under immense strain. If he is subjected to one more high-stress event, his nervous system might simply... quit."
George's jaw tightened, the muscles jumping beneath his skin. "He was working. He was being pushed until he broke."
"He is forbidden from any stress," the doctor said, his tone turning clinical and sharp. "No work. No visitors that cause agitation.
Inside the room, the world was a silent blur. Shu Yao could see the silhouette of George and the doctor through the glass, but their voices were nothing but a dull, underwater murmur.
His mind was not in the room. It was trapped in the high-rise office of Rothenberg Industries. It was fixated on the image of a serpent coiling around a man who refused to see the fangs.
Bai Qi. The name was a heartbeat, a prayer, a curse. Shu Yao's fingers twitched against the sheets, his brain screaming at him to move, to stand, to find the strength he no longer possessed.
He didn't care about the IV drip. He didn't care about the doctors' warnings or his own failing heart. He only knew that Bai Qi was walking into a trap, and he was the only shield left.
Bai Qi was his home, his past, and his only reason for breathing. If Ming Su took that away, Shu Yao would be nothing but a ghost in an empty world.
He stared at the ceiling, the fluorescent lights burning into his retinas.
I have to get out, he thought, his pulse beginning to thrum erratically against the hospital monitor. I have to save him. Even if it's the last thing I do.