Flashback
The calendar on the wall read October 27th. A Wednesday.
But in the hospital room, time had long since lost its meaning. There were no visitors. No warmth. No promises. Only the cold sterility of white walls, the sharp scent of antiseptic, and the quiet, rhythmic beeping of machines — machines trying to prolong a life already slipping between the cracks.
Li Wei lay still beneath thin, standard-issue sheets. A ghost of the man he once was.
His skin was pale, waxy. The once-bright glimmer in his eyes had dulled weeks ago. Even his Omega scent — that soft, calming presence that used to feel like home — had withered into near nothingness. Just a faint trace. A dying signal.
He remembered the beginning clearly.
It started as a cough. Just seasonal, he thought. Or maybe stress. But then came the constant fatigue, the tightness in his chest, the heaviness in his limbs that no amount of rest could ease. His heats grew worse — not just in pain, but in loneliness.
Suppressants dulled the edge, but nothing dulled the ache of going through it alone.
He would curl on one side of the vast bed, flushed and shaking, while Chen Lihuan stayed in another wing of the penthouse.
Always "on a call."
Always "too busy."
Li Wei told himself it was just a phase. That Lihuan cared in his own way.
He told himself a lot of things.
The diagnosis came later. A rare autoimmune condition. Slow. Irreversible. Terminal.
He sat in the doctor's office, white walls pressing in around him, hands trembling as he held a file he barely understood. The doctor's voice was kind. Patient. But nothing the man said could fill the hollow in Li Wei's chest.
Because the one thing he needed — someone to see him — wasn't there.
Later that evening, when he finally told Chen Lihuan, the response was clinical. Cold.
> "I've asked my assistant to take care of the bills,"
Lihuan had said.
"Just follow the treatment plan."
That was it.
No comfort. No hand to hold.
Just another task managed, like a calendar reminder.
In that moment, something inside Li Wei fractured.
Not because of the illness.
But because he realized: he could be dying… and still be invisible to the one person who was supposed to matter.
He had married out of duty.
He had hoped for love.
And in the end, he settled for silence.
Still, he tried. For a while.
He waited up with dinner.
He spoke about his students, their jokes, their little handmade gifts.
He tried — desperately — to remind Chen Lihuan that he was still here. That he was human. That he was worthy of more than just a signature on a contract.
But over time, the efforts faded.
His words fell into the void.
His smiles went unanswered.
And one day, he simply stopped trying.
The final time Chen visited, it wasn't a visit.
He stood at the foot of the bed, eyes unreadable, suit crisp and perfect.
Li Wei tried to speak. But the cough tore through his lungs, cruel and unrelenting.
When he looked up — teary, breathless, desperate for anything — Chen Lihuan was already turning away.
> "Make sure he's comfortable," he told the nurse.
As if Li Wei wasn't even in the room.
As if comfort was something that could be ordered like room service.
No goodbye.
No apology.
Not even a glance back.
The door clicked shut.
And Li Wei lay there. Still. Silent. Swallowed by the crushing weight of abandonment.
Even the machines seemed to tire. The beeping slowed. The light dimmed.
The world shrank to a single, suffocating point.
He thought of his students.
Of a paper crane made from pink notepaper.
Of sunshine through a window in a tiny apartment.
Of laughter that once felt like a promise.
He hadn't been perfect.
But he had been kind.
He had been loyal.
He had tried.
His final breath came softly. No tears. No witnesses.
Just a name, whispered like the last sigh of a fading dream.
> "Chen… Lihuan."
Not out of love.
Not out of longing.
But as a final, bitter recognition.
The name of the man who let him die alone.