The elevator echoed with a hollow, metallic chime, announcing the return of the Monarch.
Bai Qi stepped into the corridor, his stride slightly less lethal than before, softened by the presence of the woman at his side. He felt a strange, frantic pride blooming in his chest. To him, this was a display of magnanimity—bringing the "Saint" to visit the "Broken."
Beside him, Ming Su walked with the grace of a phantom. She wore a coat of dove-grey wool, her hair styled in the exact, delicate fashion of the late Qing Yue. To the passing nurses, she was a vision of mourning beauty. To herself, she was a hunter approaching a cornered animal.
"Are you sure he's up for visitors, Ah Qi?" Ming Su whispered, her hand resting lightly on Bai Qi's arm. The touch sent a jolt of electricity through him, a sensation he mistook for love.
"He'll be fine," Bai Qi grunted, though his obsidian eyes flickered toward the door of Room 43 with a trace of unanalyzed tension. "He's lucky you're here."
Inside the room, the click of the lock was a thunderclap.
Shu Yao froze. He was still holding the iPhone 17 to his chest, the cool titanium a stark contrast to the heat of his blush. At the sound of the door, he frantically shoved the midnight-blue box beneath the sterile white sheets, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his splintered ribs.
The door swung open.
Bai Qi entered first, his silhouette casting a long, imposing shadow. But it was the figure behind him that made the air vanish from Shu Yao's lungs.
Ming Su stepped into the light.
Shu Yao's eyes widened, his pupils dilating in sheer, instinctive terror. Behind the oxygen mask, his lips parted in a silent gasp. He didn't see a "kind friend." He saw the woman who had watched him be sedated, the woman who played with Bai Qi's heart like it was a cheap toy.
"Shu Yao," Ming Su breathed, her voice a flute-like melody of false sorrow. "Oh, you poor thing. Look at you."
She moved toward the bed before Bai Qi could speak. Every step she took felt like a needle pressing into Shu Yao's skin.
Bai Qi stood at the foot of the bed, his arms crossed, his face a mask of stern observation. He watched Ming Su lean over Shu Yao, his heart swelling with a perverse sense of satisfaction. See? he thought. She is perfect. She is what a real soul looks like and yet he disrespect her grace, how pathetic of you shu Yao.
Ming Su reached out, her fingers—manicured and cold—brushing Shu Yao's forehead. Shu Yao flinched, a violent tremor racking his frame. The monitors began to protest: Ting-ting-ting-ting.
"Don't be afraid," Ming Su whispered, her face inches from his. To Bai Qi, it looked like a blessing. To Shu Yao, who could see the grey, metallic ice in her eyes, it was a threat.
Her gaze dropped to the bedsheets, noticing the slight rectangular bulge where Shu Yao had hidden the phone. Her smirk deepened, invisible to the man standing behind her.
"Bai Qi told me he gave you a gift for your 'efficiency,'" she murmured, her voice dropping to a register only Shu Yao could hear. "How sweet. A new phone to record your final days."
"Ming Su," Bai Qi's voice cut through the tension. "Don't overexert yourself. Yes he's stable, but he's still pathetic."
Ming Su turned back to Bai Qi, her expression melting into one of angelic concern. "Ah Qi, how can you say that? He's suffered so much. Look at his eyes... he looks like he's seen a ghost."
She turned back to Shu Yao, her hand moving from his forehead to his hand—the one still clutching the sheets. She squeezed, her nails digging into the soft flesh of his palm
Ming Su leaned in closer, the scent of her expensive, floral perfume—the exact scent Qing Yue used to wear—filling Shu Yao's lungs until he felt he was suffocating. She reached out, her fingers trailing with a serpentine grace toward his cheek.
"Stay shut, Shu Yao," she breathed, her voice a low, lethal vibration meant for his ears alone. "Or I will make sure the silence of your sister becomes the silence of your mother. You know what I am capable of."
Shu Yao's world tilted. A cold, visceral sweat broke across his brow. The threat was a tincture of pure malice. In a sudden, frantic burst of adrenaline and terror, his hand shot out.
Smack.
He slapped her hand away with a sharp, echoing crack that shattered the clinical quiet of Room 43. He recoiled into the pillows, turning his head away so sharply he heard his own neck joints protest. He couldn't look at her—not at that face, not at that predatory light disguised as grace.
The air in the room didn't just turn cold; it turned lethal.
Bai Qi stilled, his obsidian eyes widening as he witnessed the "Saint" strike the "Ghost." A roar of unadulterated fury vibrated in his chest. He took a monolithic stride forward, his large hands curling into fists, his presence radiating a heat that promised a slow, methodical destruction.
But before he could reach the bed, the narrative shifted.
Ming Su's expression didn't shatter; it transformed. The cold, demonic smirk vanished in a heartbeat, replaced by a mask of porcelain-perfect hurt.
Her brown, doe-like eyes flooded with unshed stars, her lip quivering with the practiced precision of a tragic heroine. She looked small, fragile, and utterly betrayed.
"Ah Qi..." she gasped, her voice a wounded melody.
Bai Qi's jaw clenched so hard the bone seemed to groan. He turned his predatory gaze toward Shu Yao, his eyes flashing with a dark, obsidian fire. "You... you ungrateful—"
"No! Don't worry, Ah Qi!"
Ming Su lunged forward, not at Shu Yao, but at Bai Qi. She grabbed his elbow, her touch a tether of soft silk that checked his violent momentum. She looked up at him, her face a masterpiece of angelic forgiveness.
"It's fine," she whispered, her voice trembling just enough to trigger Bai Qi's protective instincts. "He is just scared. He's been through so much trauma... it's okay for him to hate me. I shouldn't have been so forward."
She turned her head slightly, casting a glance toward Shu Yao. For a fraction of a second, the mask slipped—just enough for Shu Yao to see the victorious smirk beneath the tears—before she looked back at Bai Qi.
"I understand," Ming Su continued, her voice dropping to a somber, haunting register. "Since everyone says I look so much like his sister... maybe seeing me is just a reminder of his own failure. Maybe he sees his guilt when he looks at me. I don't blame him for wanting to strike out."
The words were a dagger. She had used the memory of Qing Yue to frame Shu Yao's panic as cowardice and guilt.
Bai Qi froze, the fury in his eyes replaced by a complex, agonizing storm of jealousy and resentment. He looked at Shu Yao—pale, trembling, and hidden behind an oxygen mask—and then at Ming Su, who was "suffering" his abuse with such grace.
He didn't speak. He couldn't. The way Ming Su held him back was the only thing keeping the room from becoming a crime scene. But the silence he offered Shu Yao was worse than a shout; it was a promise of a reckoning.
"We're leaving," Bai Qi stated, his voice a low, abrasive rumble.
He didn't look at Shu Yao again. He turned, his movements stiff and dangerous, leading Ming Su toward the door.
"Since you have enough strength to assault a guest," Bai Qi muttered as he reached the threshold, his voice carrying a lethal edge, "you have enough strength to face the consequences of your 'efficiency' tomorrow. Don't think I will forget this, Shu Yao."
The heavy door swung shut with a muffled, final thud.
Shu Yao remained curled on the bed, his fingers still stinging from the slap. He watched through the frosted glass as the two silhouettes vanished into the hallway. He could see Bai Qi's arm around Ming Su's shoulders, sheltering the viper from a storm that didn't exist.
Shu Yao remained curled in a tight, defensive knot beneath the sheets, his fingers still aching from the impact of the slap.
Every breath felt like a serrated blade drawing across his ribs, yet the physical agony paled in comparison to the dread pooling in his stomach.
Bai Qi's last words—that promise of a reckoning for his "assault" on Ming Su—vibrated in his mind like a death knell.
He stared at the frosted glass, his vision blurring with the heavy, salt-thick weight of exhaustion. He wanted to work. He wanted to be the "efficient" tool Bai Qi demanded, but his body was a mutinous vessel. The terror of the coming night—the fear that at any moment, the door would fly open and the Monarch would return to vent his obsidian rage.
Slowly, the tension bled from his limbs. His grip on the midnight-blue box beneath the blankets loosened, and his head tilted toward the door, his features settling into a mask of tragic, weary expectation. He fell into a sepulchral sleep, waiting for a storm that had already moved on.
Hours bled into the evening. The hospital's clinical rhythm shifted into its nocturnal hum until the atmosphere in the corridor suddenly fractured.
The air didn't just change; it stilled.
The hospital corridor, usually a symphony of squeaking rubber soles and the low hum of machinery, suddenly fell into a stunned, reverent hush.
George moved through the hallway like a celestial intrusion. His blonde hair, a meticulously swept wave of spun gold, captured the flickering fluorescent lights, casting a halo around a face that seemed carved from the finest Carrara marble.
His eyes—piercing, emerald gemstones—looked neither left nor right, yet every nurse he passed felt the visceral pull of his presence. A collective, involuntary blush swept through the nursing station; he was a dashing, breathtaking anomaly in this world of sickness and sterile shadows.
In his hand, he carried a bouquet of deep, crimson roses. Their fragrance was thick and defiant, a vibrant rebellion against the scent of bleach
As he approached Room 43, George stilled. His brow, usually smooth and aristocratic, knitted into a sharp, suspicious line. The "mountain of a man"—the guard he had personally vetted and paid to be an immovable wall—was gone. The chair was empty. The post was abandoned.
Where is he? George thought, his grip tightening on the flower stems. He didn't know that Bai Qi had already staged a financial coup, removing the sentinel with a simple double-payment. To George, the empty chair felt like a breach in a fortress.
He pushed the door open with a feather-light touch, the hinges barely whispering.
Inside, the room was bathed in the pale, blueish glow of the monitors. Shu Yao was asleep, his frame looking painfully small against the vastness of the hospital bed.
His head was tilted toward the door, a posture of tragic expectation—as if, even in the depths of exhaustion, he was still waiting for someone who might never truly arrive.
George felt a sharp, uninvited pang of guilt in his chest. He looked at the translucent skin, the dark circles like bruised ink beneath Shu Yao's eyes, and the rhythmic rise and fall of the oxygen mask. The boy looked like a splintered porcelain doll, discarded by a cruel child and left to dry in the cold.
A faint, uncharacteristic blush touched George's high cheekbones. He moved toward the bedside, his movements fluid and silent, as if he were walking on air.
He leaned down, carefully placing the bouquet of roses on the nightstand.
"Get better soon," George whispered. It wasn't a command; it was a prayer.
He lingered there for a moment, the dashing "avenging angel" standing vigil over the broken martyr. He wanted to reach out, to brush a stray lock of hair from Shu Yao's forehead, but he remembered the way the boy had flinched before—the way he had screamed, "Don't touch me!" George's hand hovered, then dropped back to his side.
He wouldn't dare wake this sleeping beauty. He wouldn't risk being another source of fear in a life already saturated with it.
"Goodnight.... Shu Yao," he breathed, the word a soft, velvet benediction.
He turned, his shadow stretching long across the floor as he made his way back to the door. The moment he crossed the threshold, the tenderness in his expression vanished, replaced by a cold, crystalline fury.
The door clicked shut, and George was no longer the silent guardian. He was the employer who had been betrayed.
He reached into his pocket, pulling out his phone with a sharp, staccato motion. His thumb swiped across the screen, dialing the guard's number with lethal intent. He paced the small area of the hallway, his emerald eyes flashing with a sharpened, German edge.