The atmosphere inside the ICU was thick with the sterile scent of ozone and the rhythmic, mocking hiss of the ventilator. Bai Qi remained anchored to the floor, his frame a jagged outline of exhaustion. His eyes, swollen and bloodshot, were fixed on Shu Yao's hand—a delicate, pale thing resting atop the white linens like a fallen lily.
His own hand hovered just inches away, trembling with a violent, seismic force. He wanted to touch him. He craved the contact with a primal, starving desperation. But the moment his fingers drew near, a wave of visceral nausea hit him.
He felt like a contagion. He felt as though his very skin was composed of the same poison that was currently liquefying Shu Yao's internal organs.
To touch Shu Yao now felt profane. It felt like a final act of desecration.
Outside the heavy double doors, the silence of the corridor was shattered. A nurse stood near the nurses' station, her face a mask of escalating anxiety. In her hand, a smartphone vibrated relentlessly, its screen illuminating her worried features with a harsh, rhythmic glow.
She spotted George, who was leaning against the wall like a man waiting for his own execution. She hurried toward him, her footsteps a frantic staccato on the linoleum.
"Sir," she whispered, her voice tight. "The patient's phone... it hasn't stopped ringing. It's been minutes."
George straightened, his emerald eyes dull with fatigue. He looked at the device, his heart plummeting as he read the caller ID.
"Mother."
The word was a physical blow. Somewhere in a small, quiet home, a woman was waiting for her son to return from the gala. She was likely holding a plate of food and a Christmas gift, unaware that her "son" was currently a hollowed-out vessel hooked to a machine.
George looked at the phone, then at the closed door of the ICU. A sudden, cold clarity washed over him. He didn't just feel grief; he felt a protective, murderous rage.
George didn't knock. He surged into the room, his shadow falling long and dark over the kneeling Bai Qi.
Bai Qi didn't even turn his head. His lips were moving in a silent, incoherent prayer, his eyes still locked on Shu Yao's motionless form.
George didn't offer a word of comfort. He reached down and seized Bai Qi by the back of his expensive midnight-wool coat. With a strength born of pure adrenaline and loathing, he hauled the younger man to his feet.
"Wait—what, are you doing!" Bai Qi gasped, his equilibrium shattered.
George didn't listen. He dragged Bai Qi toward the exit, ignoring the way the billionaire's heels skidded across the floor. He shoved Bai Qi out into the hallway, the force of the movement sending the "Monarch" stumbling backward until he hit the opposite wall.
The nurse gasped, recoiling as the tension in the hallway reached a boiling point.
Bai Qi scrambled forward, his hands outstretched toward the closing door as if he could grab the air Shu Yao was breathing.
"Wait!, If I stay... if I talk to him, he'll open his eyes!" Bai Qi's voice was a fractured wail, devoid of all dignity. "He needs me, Uncle!He needs me!"
"Enough!, He needs to survive you!" George snarled, his eyes flashing with a terrifying intensity.
"I won't let you have another minute of standing over him like a vulture. You've taken enough. You've taken his blood, his dignity, and now his breath. You are finished."
Bai Qi collapsed against the wall, the tears carving clean tracks through the grime on his face. He didn't care who saw him. He didn't care that the nurses were staring or that his reputation was dissolving in real-time.
"Please, Uncle," he sobbed, his voice dropping to a hollow whisper. "I'm so sorry... I know what I've done. Just don't stop me from seeing him. I'll die if I can't be near him."
George's jaw remained a block of granite. He looked at his nephew—the man he had he saw raised, the man who was supposed to be the pride of the Rothenberg name—but he, felt nothing only a cold, echoing void.
"Then die somewhere else," George said, the words hitting like a guillotine. "Not here. Not while he is fighting for the very life you tried to take out."
George turned and stepped back into the ICU, the door clicking shut with a finality that felt like a tomb being sealed.
Bai Qi remained where he was, his head bowed, his shoulders racking with violent, silent tremors. He felt the weight of his sins as a physical pressure, a mountain of iron pressing into him.
The nurse, moved by a sudden, inexplicable pity for the ruined man, stepped forward. The phone in her hand began to chime again—the same cheerful, repetitive ringtone that now sounded like a funeral dirge.
"Sir?" she whispered.
Bai Qi looked up, his eyes so red they looked like open wounds. He looked at the phone in her hand.
And suddenly Memory surged, unbidden and cruel. He remembered buying that phone for Shu Yao. He hadn't done it out of kindness.
He had done it because he was annoyed that Shu Yao's old device was slow. He had handed it to him in a cold, sterile box and told him to "be more efficient."
He hadn't looked at Shu Yao's face. He hadn't seen the way the boy had clutched the gift like it was a holy relic.
Bai Qi snatched the phone from the nurse's hand with a frantic, desperate motion. The nurse startled, bowing her head before hurrying away to escape the aura of desolation radiating from him.
Bai Qi stared at the screen.
"Mother- 12 Missed Calls."
The screen flickered, and a photo appeared—a wallpaper he had never seen before. It wasn't a photo of a celebrity or a landscape. It was a candid, blurry shot of Bai Qi himself,
Shu Yao had carried his executioner in his pocket every single day.
"I am sorry," Bai Qi choked out, clutching the phone to his chest so hard the casing groaned. "I never cared... not once. After Qing Yue died, I turned you into a target. I fed on your silence. I grew strong on your suffering."
He pressed his forehead against the cold wood of the ICU door, his body folding in on itself.
"I always humiliated you... and you never said a word. Because you loved me. You loved a monster who didn't even know your favorite color."
The phone vibrated again. The name "Mother" flashed across the screen once more.
Bai Qi's breath hitched. He looked at the caller ID, and for the first time in his life, he felt a fear that surpassed his own death.
How could he answer? What could he say to the woman who had raised a inoccent boy, only to have him returned to her as a comatose shell?
"I ruined everything," he whispered into the doorframe, his voice a ragged thread of sound.
"Shu Yao, please... don't leave me alone with what I've done. I know I'm the worst. I know I never trusted you.
But please... just this once... hear me."
He slid down the door until he was sitting on the floor, the ringing phone a constant, accusing presence in his hand. He was the King of an empire, the master of a billion-dollar legacy, but as he sat in the hallway of a public hospital, he realized he was the poorest man alive.
But there, The festive warmth of the shen household was a farce, a colorful veneer plastered over a foundation of simmering resentment and cold machinations. While the rest of the city celebrated the birth of light, the rooms within this penthouse were shrouded in an encroaching, monochrome shadow.
Inside his private quarters, Shen stood like a silhouette carved from obsidian. The air around him felt ionized, thick with the scent of expensive bourbon and the sulfur of a scorched ego. He stared out the window, his eyes not seeing the city lights, but the ghostly replay of a gala that had gone horribly wrong.
"I planned everything so perfectly," Shen hissed, his voice a low, serrated edge. He didn't turn to acknowledge Lu Zeyan, who stood near the door, a silent witness to his step brother's unraveling.
Shen's fingers tightened around the crystal glass in his hand. "Every variable, every pawn was in place. But that boy... that Shu Yao." The name came out as a snarl. "He is a persistent stain. A glitch in an otherwise flawless sequence. He always ruins my ideas."
He turned, his face a distorted mask of aristocratic fury. He had wanted to witness the tectonic collapse of Bai Qi Rothenberg. Instead, he was left with the bitter dregs of a thwarted ambition.
"I should have been celebrating his end tonight!" Shen roared. With a violent flick of his wrist, he hurled the glass against the floor.
The sound of the impact was like a gunshot. Shards of crystalline disappointment sprayed across the rug, catching the dim light. Lu Zeyan flinched, his heart hammering.
"Ge, calm down," Zeyan pleaded, taking a cautious step forward. "You'll hurt yourself. Please, the glass..."
Shen didn't hear the concern; he only felt the insult of being comforted. He leveled a glacial glare at Zeyan, his eyes burning with a volatile light. Zeyan immediately lowered his gaze.
Downstairs, the atmosphere was deceptively serene. Ms. Violet sat on the plush velvet couch, the soft glow of the Christmas tree reflecting in the polished surfaces of the room. Across from her, ten-year-old Chen was a portrait of intellectual isolation.
Chen's delicate blue eyes were hidden behind the glint of his glasses, his focus entirely consumed by the geometric puzzle in his hands.
The click-clack of the Rubik's cube was the only rhythmic pulse in the room. He was a small, sapphire-eyed island of calm in a house of storms.
Violet looked at the door, her brow furrowed with a maternal anxiety. She had called for Zeyan minutes ago, but the silence from the upper floor was deafening.
Suddenly, the door upstairs clicked. Lu Zeyan emerged, closing the door behind him with a softness that spoke of a deep-seated fear. He paused at the top of the stairs, smoothing his hair and adjusting his expression until he had rebuilt the facade of a composed son.
"Zeyan?" Violet's voice drifted up, laced with a weary suspicion. "Where were you?"
Zeyan descended the stairs, his footsteps echoing in the hollow hallway. "I was working, Mother. Just finishing some reports."
Violet stood, her silk gown whispering against the floor as she approached her second son. She reached out, her eyes searching his face for the cracks Shen always left behind.
"What happened, Zeyan?" she asked softly. "Was it Shen again? Did he say something to you?"
Zeyan's gaze flickered momentarily toward his brother's closed door. "No, Mom. He didn't. He's just... stressed.
Violet sighed, a heavy, soulful sound. "What else can I expect from him? He is always aloof, always locked away in that coldness. And in his aloofness, he has almost hurt you twice. He is a danger to himself, and to you."
"No, he isn't," Zeyan interrupted, his voice cracking with a sudden, desperate loyalty. "He's just sad. He has no one, Mom. He is lonely. That's why he acts this way."
Violet turned away, her gaze falling on Chen, who was still meticulously unraveling the geometry of the cube, oblivious to the emotional carnage above him.
"Zeyan, it's Christmas," Violet said, her tone shifting to one of elegant frustration. "It is foolish to spend tonight hiding behind closed doors. Your father is taking everyone to the sapphire restaurant in the city center. A fancy dinner, music, light—won't you join us?"
Zeyan looked down at the polished floor. He thought of Shen, alone in that dark room with the shattered glass and the murderous thoughts. He knew that if he left, the darkness in Shen would only deepen.
"We're fine, Mom," Zeyan whispered. "You take Chen. Go and enjoy the dinner. I... I think I should stay here."
Violet looked at Zeyan, a mixture of pity and anger crossing her features. She saw the cycle repeating—the younger brother sacrificing his own light to feed the darkness of the elder.
"Whatever you say, dear," she said, her voice turning brittle. "But be careful. Staying with him tonight... it will be like living underwater. Do not make him angry, Zeyan. I cannot protect you if you choose to stay in the line of fire."
Zeyan nodded, his jaw set in a grim, sacrificial line. "I know."