Bai fell to his knees on the hardwood floor, clutching the leather to his chest as if it could somehow stitch his soul back together. He buried his face in the bedsheets, a broken, visceral cry escaping his throat.
"How was I so blind?" he sobbed, the sound muffled by the fabric. "How could I have been so goddamn blind?"
It was him. The boy who had waited. The boy who had kept the candies and the promise for years. The boy who had watched from the shadows as the person he loved gave his heart to a ghost.
Then, the present moment crashed into him like a tidal wave.
The gala. The kitchen. The tray of hot chocolate.
He saw it all in slow motion: Shu Yao standing there with wide, horrified eyes. He remembered his own voice—cold, mocking, and full of a murderous suspicion.
"If you really didn't do anything... then prove it!."
The memory was a searing iron against his mind. He had forced Shu Yao to drink that liquid. He had watched the boy take spoonful after spoonful of a lethal toxin just to prove an innocence that Bai Qi should have known by heart.
"He was poisoned," Bai Qi gasped, his voice a fractured rasp. "He drank it because of me. He did it all because of me."
He scrambled to his feet, but his equilibrium was gone. He stumbled, hitting the bedside table before finding his balance. He lunged for the door, his movements frantic and uncoordinated.
He threw the door open, his eyes wild and bloodshot. He collided almost immediately with Armin, who was standing in the hallway, looking concerned.
"Bai Qi? What happened?
Bai Qi didn't wait for him to finish. He didn't even acknowledge his brother's existence. He pushed past him, his shoulder clipping Armin's as he sprinted toward the stairs.
"Bai Qi! Where are you going?" Armin shouted after him, but the words were lost to the wind.
Bai Qi was a man possessed, a Monarch fleeing the ruins of his own throne. As he ran through the corridors of the villa, his mind was a kaleidoscope of guilt.
I never understood, he thought, the words a rhythmic mantra in his head. Why didn't you say anything? Why did you let me hurt you for so long?
But the answer was right there in the journal, written in the ink of a decade's worth of devotion. Shu Yao hadn't stayed silent to hurt him. He had stayed silent because he loved the Prince who had once promised that the pain would go away.
And tonight, the Prince had become the very source of the pain that was now claiming Shu Yao's life.
Bai Qi burst through the front doors of the villa, the winter air hitting him like a wall of ice. He didn't care about the cold. He didn't care about the gala or the guests. He only cared about reaching the hospital.
The engine of the obsidian-black sedan roared like a wounded beast as Bai Qi tore through the winter night.
The speedometer needle flirted with a lethal velocity, the blurred lights of the city streaking past like celestial tears. He was driving himself, his hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel, his vision distorted by a relentless deluge of salt and regret.
He had tracked George's number with a frantic, trembling precision. Every second felt like a laceration.
"I should have been the one," he choked out, the words dissolving into a sob that rattled his chest. "I should have been your protector, Shu Yao. Not your enemy."
His mind was a kaleidoscope of agonising memories. He thought of all the times he had taken Qing Yue on extravagant dates, parading his affection while Shu Yao stood in the periphery, a silent, dutiful shadow. He remembered the boy's tragic, quiet smiles—the way Shu Yao would nod and say he was happy for them, his voice never wavering even as his soul was being dismantled piece by piece.
How could he have been so damnably, cosmically blind?
Every rejection, every cold command, every time he had raised his voice in a fit of misplaced "Monarch" pride—it all came crashing down on him. He remembered the kitchen only an hour ago. He remembered the way Shu Yao had looked at him, the sacrificial light in his eyes as he tipped the cup back.
Shu Yao pov: "See? I drank it. There is nothing."
The memory shattered Bai Qi's heart into a thousand jagged shards of obsidian. He pushed the accelerator harder, the car fishtailing slightly as he swerved around slower drivers who honked in futile rage. He didn't hear them.
When he reached the hospital, he didn't park; he abandoned the car at the curb, the engine still ticking with heat. He burst through the sliding doors, a dishevelled wreck of a man, his expensive suit rumpled, his eyes bloodshot and wild.
"The boy," he gasped at the triage nurse, his voice sounding like it was being dragged over broken glass. "Shu Yao. Where is he?"
The nurse gestured toward the Emergency Wing, her eyes widening at the sight of the prestigious Bai Qi looking so utterly destroyed.
He sprinted. His expensive shoes skidded on the polished linoleum, and for a moment, his knees buckled, sending him stumbling to the floor. He didn't stay down. He crawled back to his feet, his breath coming in jagged, panicked hitches.
As he rounded the corner to the trauma ward, he saw a familiar silhouette.
George stood like a sentinel outside the double doors of the Emergency Room. His back was a rigid wall of grief, his hands buried deep in his pockets to hide their tremors.
"Where is he?" Bai Qi's voice was a frantic whisper.
George turned. The moment his eyes landed on Bai Qi, a visceral wave of loathing rolled off him. He hated the sound of that voice—the voice that had spent belittling the only pure thing in the Rothenberg industry.
"What are you doing here?" George hissed, his voice low and dangerous, vibrating with a protective fury.
Bai Qi stumbled forward, his gaze fixed on the swinging doors that separated him from the boy he had murdered. "Where is he, Uncle? Is... is he alright? Please tell me he's alright."
George didn't offer comfort. He spat the words out like they were tainted. "Why are you asking me now? How in the world did he take Belladonna, Bai Qi? Tell me!"
Bai Qi's eyes widened, a fresh wave of sickle-like fear slicing through his gut. "Belladonna"?
George couldn't even look at him. He turned his head sharply, staring at the fluorescent lights that flickered with a cold, mechanical indifference. "I am praying to God," George whispered, his voice thick with a sorrow he refused to let spill over. "I am praying that it is in His hands now. Because if he leaves this world, he leaves it because of you."
Bai Qi moved to walk past George, his hands reaching out for the doors as if he could physically pull Shu Yao back from the abyss. "He has to be fine. Nothing can happen to him. He... he can't leave me like this. I won't let him."
Suddenly, George's hand shot out, grabbing Bai Qi's elbow with a grip of iron. He snarled, his face inches from Bai Qi's. "Where do you think you're going? You are nothing to him. Not after what you did in that office. Not after what you did tonight."
Bai Qi's breath hitched. He grabbed his own hair, pulling at the roots as if he could tear the guilt out of his skull. "I know! I know I hurt him! I didn't want to... I was so angry, so fucking stupid..."
He looked at George, and the last of his "Monarch" dignity finally disintegrated.
Bai Qi fell. He didn't just sit; he collapsed to his knees at George's feet, his forehead hitting the cold hospital floor. A broken, animalistic sob erupted from him—the sound of a man who had finally found his home only to realize he had burned it to the ground.
He clutched the hem of George's long wool coat, his fingers white and desperate. "What should I do, Uncle? Tell me what to do!"
George stepped back, his expression one of pure, unadulterated shock. He had known Bai Qi since he was a child. He had seen him through the rise of his empire, through the mourning of Qing Yue. He had never seen this.
"What the hell are you doing?" George breathed, looking down at the shaking man at his feet.
"I wasted all these years!" Bai Qi cried out, his voice echoing through the sterile hallway, drawing the eyes of nurses and patients alike. "I wasted every single second loving the wrong person! Why? Why was I so blind?"
He looked up at George, tears streaming down his face, his features contorted in a mask of agony. "I hurt him over and over. He was the child from the hospital! He was the one who waited for me! And I yelled at him... I let Shen shred his soul... I let him drink poison just to prove he was innocent."
Bai Qi's voice broke into a high, wheezing wail. "I am not a human, Uncle. I am a monster! I was supposed to protect him, but in the end, the person he needed protection from was me! Please... someone explain to me... why did I do it?"
He buried his face in his hands, his shoulders racking with violent sobs. George looked down at his nephew and, for the first time in his life, saw someone he didn't recognize. Gone was the arrogant heir, the cold strategist, the obsidian-hearted King.
In his place was a broken spirit, a man kneeling in the wreckage of his own hubris.
"What's gotten into you?" George asked, his voice losing its sharp edge, replaced by a hollow, tragic wonder.
He slumped against the wall, a wretched figure stripped of all royal pretension. Then, a sound escaped him—not a sob, but a laugh.
It was a jagged, hysterical sound that sliced through the hushed murmurs of the hospital. It was the rictus of a mind snapping under the sheer, impossible weight of its own hypocrisy.
He pulled his hands back from the floor and stared at them as if they were alien appendages, his eyes wide and glazed with a terrifying, manic clarity.
"I let him be ruined," Bai Qi whispered, his voice rising into that unsettling, insane smile. "By these hands. These disgusting, filthy hands."
Suddenly, he swung his fist downward, slamming it against the hard hospital tile with a sickening thud. Then again. And again. The dull sound of bone striking stone echoed through the hallway.
"Insane... he's gone insane," a passing nurse whispered, clutching her chart and quickening her pace.
"What the hell are you doing?!" George roared, lunging forward to seize Bai Qi's wrists. He pinned the younger man's bloodied hands against his chest, his own breathing coming in frantic gasps. "Stop it! Bai Qi, look at me! Come to your senses!"
Bai Qi looked up, and for a moment, George saw the hollowed-out wreckage of a human being. The smile remained, but it was a mask of pure, unadulterated agony.
"I hurt him, Uncle," Bai Qi croaked, his voice cracking like dry parchment. "I don't deserve anything.
George's grip slackened slightly as he saw the genuine, visceral horror in his nephew's eyes. He had spent days resenting the boy's coldness, but this—this was the total incineration of the Monarch's ego.
In the vacuum of his mind, a memory surged forward, as vivid and sharp as a surgeon's blade.
Bai Qi remembered the day he had truly broken Shu Yao's spirit long before the poison touched his lips. He remembered the rain-slicked pavement, the sound of a bone snapping—a sound he had dismissed with a foolish shrug. He remembered the way Shu Yao had looked up at him, his eyes filled with a mute, agonizing devotion even as pain wracked his body.
And then, the ultimate cruelty.
He saw himself standing there, his eyes briefly catching the sight of Shu Yao—shivering, broken, and small against the harsh backdrop of the street. For a heartbeat, Bai Qi's feet felt heavy, anchored by a sudden, desperate urge to reach out. But the world was moving too fast.
Qing Yue didn't give him that second. She was already moving, her stride quick and purposeful, pulling him along in her wake. Before Bai Qi could find his voice or break the momentum, she was there, closing the distance between them.
"He was there, broken, and I... I kissed someone else in his presence. I killed him while he was still alive, didn't I? I murdered his soul before his heart ever stopped."
George closed his eyes, a heavy, sorrowful sigh escaping him. He understood now. Bai Qi wasn't just grieving a mistake; he was finally seeing the monstrous architecture of his own life.
Bai Qi swayed backward, his body feeling as though it were made of lead and glass. He looked at the heavy double doors, his lips moving in a silent, desperate rhythm.
Please, God, his mind screamed into the void. If there is any mercy left in the universe for a creature as wretched as I am... don't let anything happen to him.
The "Monarch" who had never bowed his head to anyone was now a beggar in the hallway of a public hospital. His tears were relentless, hot rivers of salt that tracked on his cheeks.
"Don't let anything happen to my beloved Shu Yao," he whispered, the words a jagged prayer. "Don't let anything happen to my only home. He is the only place I have ever truly belonged, and I... I set the house on fire."
"I beg of you, God... take my filthy, sinful soul. Trade it. Just give me back my Shu Yao. Give him back."
The 'In Use' light flickered and died. The silence that followed was more terrifying than any scream. A lead doctor stepped out, his surgical mask hanging around his neck, his forehead beaded with the sweat of a long, desperate battle.