Shu Yao looked down.
His lashes, still damp from earlier silence, cast soft shadows on his cheeks. The light from the hallway spilled onto his bare feet like a confession—it said he hadn't moved in a while. He stood there like a statue made not of marble, but of moments too heavy to name.
Qing Yue stepped in slowly, expecting warmth, a greeting, a question about the night.
But before her mouth could shape a word—
"Lock the door," Shu Yao said quietly, his voice hollow as a church after a funeral.
"And go to sleep. You must be tired from your newly engagement."
It was not sarcasm.
Not quite bitterness.
Just a sentence left to die between them,
spoken not with malice,
but with the gentle violence of someone
who no longer knew how to ask for anything
without choking on it.
Qing Yue's breath caught.
Her fingers curled around the phone instinctively,
as if it could offer comfort or explanation.
But Shu Yao didn't wait to see her answer.
He turned.
And ascended the stairs.
Step by step, like someone carrying an invisible coffin.
Not a body.
Not even love.
But something heavier.
Grief still breathing.
He didn't say goodnight.
Didn't glance back.
Because there were no words left to offer.
Only that thick line of ache curling inside him
a red thread pulled too tight
between the ribs,
between the memory of someone else's smile
and the reflection he couldn't look at anymore.
The stairs creaked beneath his bare feet—
each groan of wood like an exhale
from a house too tired of witnessing.
And still, he climbed.
At the top, he paused.
Not because he was unsure.
But because the silence at the edge of his door
was somehow louder than the silence downstairs.
He stepped into his room.
Closed the door softly,
like tucking a ghost in for the night.
Outside, Qing Yue stood frozen.
The lock clicked under her fingers.
Not like safety.
But like finality.
She didn't call after him.
Didn't follow.
Because even she could feel it now—
that Shu Yao had vanished somewhere inside himself,
and no staircase could lead to where he'd gone.
Upstairs, Shu Yao leaned against the door
before taking another breath.
It tasted like moonlight and dust.
Like the last words in a letter never sent.
He didn't cry.
He simply walked to the window,
parted the curtain,
and looked up.
The moon was still there.
Unmoved.
Unbothered.
But something in him had shifted.
Not healed.
Not broken further.
Just… accepted.
That love had gone to someone else's doorstep.
That his name had never been written
on the inside of Bai Qi's heart.
And so—
he let go.
Not all at once.
But in the way his shoulders sagged.
In the way his hands fell open.
In the way his breath—finally—didn't try to hold anything in.
He stepped back.
And slid into bed without ceremony.
No dreams waited.
Only the ache.
Lying beside him like an old lover,
familiar, silent,
tender in the way pain sometimes is
when it has nowhere else to go.
His body curled toward the wall.
And slowly—
without triumph, without peace—
he drifted toward sleep.
Not because he wanted to.
But because even sorrow must rest
when the heart grows too tired to carry it anymore.
And beneath the hush of a house
where everyone else had been kissed tonight—
Shu Yao slept with his silence.
And no one noticed
how sacred
his endurance truly was.
Qing Yue stepped into her room on softened heels, the door sighing closed behind her like a secret too tired to keep whispering.
She didn't turn on the light right away.
Instead, she stood in the hush, letting the night wrap around her for one last moment—like the lingering touch of Bai Qi's fingers still ghosting her waist. Her cheeks warmed at the memory. A smile curled her lips. Small. Private.
Then—click.
The golden light blinked to life.
And there, curled like a content cat in the center of the bed, was Juju, her little ball of fluff, dreaming with all four paws tucked in, ears twitching gently as if chasing butterflies through slumber.
Qing Yue's eyes softened. She reached down to stroke the cat's back, and Juju stirred just enough to purr.
The moon caught her eye through the parted window.
It was high now—white and round, like a coin tossed by the gods, heads or tails, fate or freedom. Its glow spilled across the room, brushing the corners of her vanity, glancing off the petals of the roses Bai Qi had given her.
And then she saw it.
The ring.
It shimmered on her hand as she lifted it toward the moonlight, each facet catching the pale beams until it looked lit from within—not by fire, but by fortune.
A piece of eternity forged into a circle, small enough to sit on a finger, yet heavy enough to shift the weight of someone's world.
She blushed again—softly this time, like rosewater seeping into skin. Her eyes shimmered with quiet pride. This ring was not just beautiful. It meant something. A future. A promise.
But the blush faded.
Slowly.
As if carried away by a wind she hadn't invited.
Because she remembered Shu Yao's face.
Not the way it had always looked—composed, quiet, lovely like a poem pressed between pages—but the way it had looked tonight.
Faint. Tired. Folded inwards.
Like a letter returned unopened.
He had turned away too quickly.
Left without a word that made sense.
There had been something bruised in the way he moved, like a boy walking barefoot over shards of things no one else could see.
Qing Yue sat on the edge of her bed, ringed hand resting in her lap, and tried to shake the feeling that maybe—
maybe she had missed something.
And then the thought crept in, uninvited but stubborn:
Did he want to be engaged, too?
It was logical. Shu Yao had always longed for closeness, hadn't he? For something soft and enduring. But… this ache didn't feel like longing for a ring.
It felt like something more forbidden.
Something unspoken.
Something guarded behind glass.
Qing Yue tilted her head, frowning faintly, her fingers playing with the edge of the blanket.
But the thing's never swing's that way—
Not that he wanted to be engaged.
But that he had already loved someone.
And that someone had not loved him back.
No—worse.
That someone had chosen her.
The man who held her tonight.
The man who kissed her, who whispered "my princess"
without hesitation,
without knowing that his words might've shattered something in someone else.
Bai Qi.
Her heart dropped just a little in her chest. Not out of guilt—
but out of sorrow.
For the boy who had stood at the door, holding it open not like a brother,
but like someone who had already closed every other door behind him.
Shu Yao.
She closed her eyes. His face floated behind her lids.
Too pale. Too quiet. Too… resigned.
He hadn't left early because he was tired.
Or cold.
Or impatient for sleep.
He had left because it hurt to stay.
Because watching the man you love fall in love with someone else—
that kind of ache couldn't be carried around polite company.
And so, he had taken it upstairs.
Where no one could see it.
Where no one would ask.
Because if they did—
they might laugh.
Or worse, they might pity him.
Or find him disgusting for the shape his heart had taken.
And so he buried it.
Not because it was wrong.
But because the world had never been kind
to boys who loved in the wrong direction.
Qing Yue opened her eyes.
The ring shimmered again.
But now—
its beauty felt a little colder.
A little too bright.
Because even wealth couldn't explain why something could shine so hard it made others turn away.
She reached out, switched off the light.
And in the darkness, only the moon kept watching,
while somewhere in the house,
a boy was trying to sleep
with a heart too full of silence.
Bai Qi sat quietly in the backseat of his black car, the leather cool against his back, the world slipping by in streaks of streetlights and shadow. His driver maneuvered through Bangalore's sleeping roads, careful and wordless, letting the city breathe around them.
The window was rolled halfway down, and the wind combed its long fingers through Bai Qi's dark hair. He was still in his engagement suit—grey and elegant, now slightly undone. The top button of his shirt had been loosened, and his tie hung lazily, like even it had grown tired of ceremony. The ring on his finger shimmered faintly in the moonlight, curled like a serpent around his long, slender hand.
And he was tired.
Not just in body, but in a way that whispered from deeper places. His limbs ached with celebration. His smile—practiced for hours—was now gone, leaving only silence to stretch across his face like a second skin.
But even in that stillness, he was warm.
Because when he closed his eyes—
He saw her.
Qing Yue. Laughing. Spinning beneath the lights. Her dress like a petal caught in wind, her lips soft with affection. Her eyes had followed him all night—sweet, like autumn, full of things he was sure he could learn to deserve.
His mouth curled faintly at the memory.
A blush touched the edges of his cheek.
And yet—
Before the warmth could fully root itself, another shadow crept in. Quiet. Uninvited.
Shu Yao.
Like a smudge on glass you can't unsee.
Bai Qi blinked, shifting in his seat.
Why now?
Why always like this?
He hadn't spoken to Shu Yao properly in weeks. There had been distance—gentle at first, like fog between two mountains. But tonight, in the hush after celebration, in the lull between affection and exhaustion, Shu Yao had returned to him—involuntarily—as if memory itself was protesting its dismissal.
Bai Qi exhaled, turning his face toward the wind, but it did nothing to scatter the image.
He saw him again.
Not smiling.
Not even facing him.
A dream.
No—
A nightmare.
The one that visited more often than it should. The one he never told anyone about.
Shu Yao standing in a pool of blood.
His brown hair matted to his temples. His brown eyes dimmed—not from fear, but from resignation. His body—so slight, so elegant—was knelt in red, his white shirt soaked and clinging like regret.
He didn't speak.
He simply held something in his hands.
His own heart.
Still beating.
Fragile. Raw.
Offered forward like it was the only language he had left.
And Bai Qi—frozen, breathless, horrified—could not move.
The Shu Yao in the dream never wept loudly.
He cried in silence.
Red tears sliding down his cheeks like petals burning on descent. His lips moved, shaping Bai Qi's name like prayer, like confession, like surrender.
"Please," he mouthed.
But Bai Qi never took the heart.
He never moved in time.
And the heart fell.
Dropped from trembling hands.
Landed with a sound so soft it was unbearable.
Shu Yao followed—body folding in on itself like silk collapsing in fire. Eyes still open. Mouth still forming his name.
Bai Qi's hands clenched now, real and trembling in the car.
He opened his eyes.
The ring on his finger caught the streetlight like a cruel wink.
The same finger Shu Yao had once bandaged after a fencing match. The same hand Shu Yao used to hold when no one was looking—gently, fearfully, like holding the wing of something too precious to speak of.
Bai Qi sat straighter.
Swallowed hard.
He told himself it was just a dream.
A ridiculous dream.
But it wasn't fading.
And the worst part?
The worst part was that whenever he was with Qing Yue, when her smile reached for him, when her fingers teased his ear, when her voice painted futures around them—
he didn't remember the dream.
Only in the silence afterward, when he was alone, when the celebration dimmed and the ribbon was untied—only then did Shu Yao return.
Not with bitterness.
But with that same expression.
That soft, sorrowful face.
Those brown eyes like wilted flowers that had waited too long for sun.
Bai Qi pressed his hand to his temple, trying to chase away the ghost.
The driver glanced up in the rearview mirror.
"Sir? Are you alright?"
Bai Qi nodded once.
"Just tired."
But it wasn't the kind of tired that could be solved with sleep.
It was the ache of having left something behind and not knowing where.
The ache of a dream that refused to die.
The ache of a boy who had once offered him everything—
—and whom he never had the courage to reach for.
Outside, the streets passed quietly, indifferent.
And inside the car, Bai Qi sat in his undone suit, a ring on his finger, and a name he could not speak clinging like smoke to the back of his throat.