Flashback
The calendar on the wall read October 27th.
A Wednesday.
But in the hospital room, time had no meaning. There was no warmth. No visitors. No promises. Just silence, the faint scent of antiseptic, and the mechanical beeping of machines desperately trying to prolong what had already passed.
Li Wei lay still beneath pale blue sheets — a shell of the man he once was. His skin was thin, almost translucent. His lips were colorless. The light in his eyes had dimmed long ago. Even his Omega scent—once soft and soothing, like morning tea and pressed linen—had faded into near nothingness.
A whisper of who he used to be.
He remembered how it began. The cough. The fatigue. How he'd brushed it off as seasonal or stress-related. But then came the days where no amount of sleep helped. The breathlessness. The dizziness. The ache in his bones.
And the heats.
They became unbearable. Not just in their intensity—but in their isolation. Suppressants dulled the physical edge, but nothing could numb the loneliness. He'd lie curled on one side of the vast bed, flushed and shaking, while Chen Lihuan remained in another wing of the penthouse.
Always busy. Always out. Always on a call.
Li Wei told himself it was temporary.
He told himself a lot of things.
The diagnosis came months later. A rare autoimmune condition. Terminal. Slow. Inevitable.
He sat in the doctor's office, paper trembling in his hand—covered in numbers, medical codes, and words that sounded like a foreign language. The doctor explained gently. But none of it mattered.
What mattered was what wasn't there.
No hand to hold.
No voice saying, "We'll get through this."
No Alpha beside him.
Only the sound of his own breathing. And then later, a cold message.
> "I've asked my assistant to take care of the bills,"
Chen Lihuan had said.
"Just follow the treatment plan."
No warmth. No fear. No reaction.
Just logistics.
Something inside Li Wei cracked—not from illness, but from the unmistakable truth: he was alone. Even now. Especially now.
He had married for duty.
He had hoped for love.
He had settled for silence.
Still… he tried. For a time.
He waited for Chen Lihuan with carefully made dinners. He talked about his students. About the little gifts they gave him. He tried to remind him that he was still alive.
That he mattered.
But slowly, the attempts dwindled.
Fewer words.
Fewer glances.
Until one day, there was nothing left to say.
The last time Chen visited, he didn't even sit.
He stood at the foot of the bed, dressed in black, pristine as always. Li Wei tried to speak, but a racking cough choked the words. When he looked up, eyes rimmed with tears, hoping for the smallest gesture—
Chen was already turning away.
> "Make sure he's comfortable," he told the nurse.
Like he was talking about a hotel guest.
Like Li Wei was already gone.
No goodbye.
No apology.
Not even a pause.
And just like that… the door clicked shut.
Li Wei lay there for hours afterward. Not sleeping. Not moving. Just existing. A second death, colder than the first.
Even the machines seemed to grow tired. The beeping slowed. The room dimmed. His world—so small already—shrank further still.
He remembered his students.
A paper crane left on his desk.
Sunlight in his tiny apartment.
Laughter in a classroom.
Moments far removed from this sterile prison.
He hadn't been perfect.
But he had been kind.
He had been loyal.
He had tried.
His last breath came softly. No audience. No witness.
Only a name. Whispered once.
> "Chen... Lihuan."
Not with longing.
But with finality.
A bitter acknowledgment of the man who had let him disappear.