Lingyuan City — Old District, Mei's Tranquil Teas — 1:47 a.m.
The narrow wooden stairs groaned beneath Zhao Ming's deliberate steps as he ascended to the second floor. Bruised ribs sent sharp protests through his torso with every movement, but pain was merely secondary data irrelevant noise to be catalogued and ignored.
The door to the small upstairs room stood slightly ajar. A warm stripe of lamplight leaked into the shadowed corridor like an unwitting invitation.
He pushed it inward.
Lin Mei sat at the small square table; slender fingers curled around a cold porcelain cup long since abandoned. The single hanging bulb above her painted everything in soft, forgiving gold.
She was breathtaking.
Long ink-black hair swept up into an elegant yet slightly dishevelled bun, secured by a simple red camellia hairpin that gleamed like fresh blood against the darkness. Stray tendrils clung to porcelain-pale skin, framing a face that should have belonged to a goddess forced into mortal exile. Her eyes—large, almond-shaped, the deep crimson of aged wine under the low light—lifted the instant he entered.
Those eyes widened.
"Ming'er…"
Her voice was soft velvet torn at the edges worry, exhaustion, and something deeper that she herself had never dared name.
She rose in one fluid motion, the black silk qipao she wore for late-night inventory shifting against her body. The fabric was sheer in places, embroidered with delicate dark plum blossoms that bloomed across her shoulders and trailed down the graceful line of her back, leaving a daring open expanse from nape to waist. The high collar framed her slender neck like a claim waiting to be made; the side slits revealed the smooth length of her legs with every hurried step.
She reached him before he could speak.
Gentle fingertips touched his jaw, turned his face into the light, traced the drying blood at the corner of his mouth. Her breath hitched audibly.
"Again…" The single word carried more pain than any blow he'd taken in the cage tonight. "Why do you keep doing this to yourself? To me?"
Zhao Ming stood motionless, allowing her examination.
And in that suspended heartbeat, something inside him the cold, analytical machine that had ruled his twenty-eight years on Earth shattered open like glass under pressure.
He had seen countless beautiful women. Models on billboards. Actresses at galas. Calculated conquests in five-star suites.
None had ever struck him like this.
Lin Mei was not merely beautiful. She was ruinous.
The way worry etched fragile lines beside those blood-red eyes, the way her full lips trembled with restrained fear, the quiet strength in her posture despite the exhaustion that clung to her like fog everything about her spoke directly to the darkest, most possessive core of his being.
This was not affection. This was obsession at first sight.
A slow, consuming heat bloomed behind his sternum, spreading downward, tightening low in his abdomen. He wanted to own that worry. He wanted to be the only one permitted to cause it, the only one allowed to soothe it. He wanted his hands on that exposed back, fingers tracing every plum blossom until the silk tore and she begged for more.
But he hid it. Perfectly.
His face remained calm, almost gentle. His voice stayed low and steady.
"I'm fine, Mother."
The word 'Mother' tasted different now dangerous, forbidden, intoxicating. It rolled across his tongue like the first sip of a poison he intended to drink to the dregs.
Lin Mei's crimson gaze searched his face, troubled. "You look… strange tonight. Different. Did they hurt your head?"
"I won," he said simply, holding out the envelope. "9,200 yuan."
Her eyes flicked to the money, then back to him. Hope flickered beneath the worry, fragile as a moth's wing.
"That's… enough for the medicine. And the back rent." Her voice cracked. "Ming'er…"
He set the envelope on the table and stepped closer close enough to breathe in her scent: jasmine tea, faint medicinal salve, the clean warmth of her skin.
"I'm going to fix everything," he told her, voice quiet but absolute. "The shop. The debts. The university. All of it."
She looked up at him, startled by the iron certainty in his tone.
Their gazes locked.
For a heartbeat the air between them thickened, charged with something neither of them yet named.
Lin Mei's throat moved in a delicate swallow.
"You always promise when you come home hurt," she whispered. "But tonight… you really mean it, don't you?"
Zhao Ming didn't trust himself to speak.
He only nodded once.
Then he moved past her to the kitchenette slow, controlled picked up her cold cup, refilled the thermos with hot water, measured exactly three scoops of her private jasmine blend, steeped it for ninety seconds. Muscle memory from this body blended with the cold precision of the other life.
When he placed the steaming cup before her, she stared at it as though he had handed her a star.
"You remembered…" she breathed.
"I remember everything," Zhao Ming said softly.
Everything.
How her shoulders always relaxed when someone took care of her. How her crimson eyes softened when she thought no one was looking. How badly he suddenly wanted to be the reason those eyes looked at him with something far beyond maternal concern.
The dark heat inside him coiled tighter.
Not yet.
He would wait. He would plan. He would take everything slowly, inevitably, completely.
But for now, he turned away before she could read the hunger in his gaze.
"Go to sleep, Mother. I'll clean up."
Lin Mei hesitated, then gave a small, tired nod.
At the doorway to her bedroom, she paused.
"Ming'er?"
He looked back.
"Thank you," she said quietly, voice almost too soft to hear. "For coming home to me."
The door closed with a gentle click.
Zhao Ming stood alone in the dim room.
He exhaled once long, controlled.
Then he stepped to the cracked mirror above the dresser.
The reflection stared back: young, sharp-featured, bruised, powerful.
And in those dark eyes burned something new.
Two lives. One mind. One body. One woman he intended to claim completely.
He smiled thin, patient, predatory.
"Soon," he whispered to the empty room.
Outside, Lingyuan's fog swallowed the city whole.
Inside Zhao Ming, the obsession had already taken root.
Deep. Absolute. Irrevocable.
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