The morning air met him like a sigh—warm, indifferent, already humming with a world that had moved on without him.
Shu Yao stepped out of the house slowly, one foot after the other, as if each movement threatened to shatter something invisible inside him. He wore his pressed suit like armor, his ribbon-tied hair brushing the collar gently, his polished shoes clicking against the pavement like the ticking of an old clock—soft, steady, mournful.
He didn't look up.
The sky was too bright. The world too loud. And he—he was too fragile for both.
His steps carried him down the narrow street, past the sleepy houses and the murmuring trees, until he turned the corner and reached the small storefront—the kind of place people didn't notice unless they needed it. The sign above was chipped and humming faintly in the morning light.
A mobile shop.
Not a grand one. Just a modest space with glass counters, cheap keychains hanging beside USB cords, and walls that smelled faintly of solder and plastic.
Inside, the shopkeeper—a man with tired eyes and a shirt two sizes too big—looked up and gave a brief nod of recognition.
"Ah, you're here," he muttered, disappearing beneath the counter.
Shu Yao said nothing. His voice still felt tucked somewhere behind his bruised ribs.
The man reappeared with the phone, wiped once with the hem of his sleeve. "It's fixed. Battery issue mostly. Replaced the port too. Should work fine now."
Shu Yao nodded.
He reached into his wallet, fingers trembling slightly—not from nerves, but from the cold that hadn't quite left his bones since that night. He handed over the folded notes in silence.
The shopkeeper counted once, twice, nodded again. "You need a new case. That one's cracked."
But Shu Yao was already turning away.
The repaired phone, warm from someone else's hands, now rested in his palm like a small weight of normalcy. He stepped out of the shop without another word, the door chime jingling faintly behind him like a forgotten lullaby.
On the sidewalk, under the pale spill of sunlight, he paused.
Then he tapped the screen gently—once, twice—before pulling up the number he always used for cabs.
A few days ago, his phone had simply stopped responding. As if it, too, had grown tired. As if even machines could give up under the weight of silence.
And now it was back in his hand. Working. Silent. Loyal.
Unlike people.
As he waited for the line to connect, Shu Yao stood still at the edge of the street, the wind lifting the edges of his jacket, the scent of early pastries from a nearby stall brushing past him like kindness meant for someone else.
He didn't speak as the call connected.
He only gave the address in a voice so soft it almost broke the signal.
And then he waited—one more fragile figure among the noise of a world that hadn't noticed his heart had been broken and stitched together again with trembling hands.
He waited.
Ten minutes. Then fifteen. Then twenty.
Each passing second pulled tight around him like thread winding around bone—thin, silent, patient.
Shu Yao stood with his hands gently folded before him, his figure still and slight beside the curb. He didn't shift his weight. He didn't check the time. He simply existed there—like a figure in a painting that no one had the heart to frame.
The sun crept higher, brushing soft gold against his ribbon-bound hair. A breeze stirred the edges of his suit. He didn't flinch. He'd become far too skilled at stillness.
And then, at last, a cab slowed beside him with a hiss of brakes and the muted sound of some far-off radio murmuring a love song that didn't belong in this story.
Shu Yao stepped forward. His shoes made barely a sound on the pavement. He opened the door carefully, like someone entering a memory, and eased himself inside.
The seatbelt clicked as he fastened it across his chest—an action so small, yet the weight of it sat heavy on his sternum. He kept his gaze down. The leather interior was clean. The faint scent of citrus and cologne lingered in the air, almost like an apology.
The driver was older, calm-faced, his greying hair tucked under a cap that had seen better years. He adjusted his rearview mirror once, out of habit, then paused.
His eyes caught something.
The boy in the backseat wasn't loud, wasn't strange—just too quiet. And quiet, in the way Shu Yao wore it, was never peaceful. It was the quiet of someone who'd learned to shrink.
And there—there was the bruise.
Faint, but cruel in its placement. Painted just beneath the curve of Shu Yao's lower lip, like a secret the skin had refused to keep.
The driver didn't speak right away.
He simply sighed. Not heavily. Not judgmentally. Just a soft breath, carried like the wind—gentle, almost parental.
"Kids these days," he murmured, not really to Shu Yao. More to the road. More to the space between thoughts. "So unreadable."
He didn't look back again.
He didn't ask.
And Shu Yao, wrapped in the silence of bruise-colored thoughts and half-healed ache, said nothing either. He stared out the window, watching buildings pass like strangers who would never know the weight of the boy they ignored.
The engine purred.
The city moved.
And inside the car, two people drove on—one with eyes on the road, the other lost in the places mirrors couldn't reach.
Shu Yao leaned back against the seat.
The leather felt too smooth beneath him, too impersonal—like something meant for people who didn't bruise so easily, who didn't carry silence like a second skin. But he didn't shift. He just let himself sink into it, like a boy slipping beneath the surface of water that no longer remembered warmth.
His lashes fluttered once.
Then again.
He closed his eyes—not because rest awaited him, but because the world outside them had nothing left to offer.
A yawn escaped him, soft and silent, the kind that shivered out of a throat too used to swallowing things unspoken. His breath caught halfway through it, like even exhaustion didn't know how to finish inside him anymore.
The city outside moved.
But inside the car, time slowed.
The bruises beneath his eyes—dark petals blooming against pale skin—had deepened overnight, inked by sleepless hours and dreams that felt more like hauntings. Shadows clung to his face not with artistry, but with accusation, as though they knew the weight of every tear he hadn't been allowed to shed in daylight.
He didn't sleep.
Not really.
But he let the world blur behind closed lids, let the hum of the cab and the rhythm of the streetlights lull him into something close to stillness. The kind of stillness that doesn't heal—but hides.
And for a moment, he looked like a boy who'd simply drifted off.
But the seatbelt pressing against his ribs still ached. The bruise beneath his lip still whispered. And beneath the quiet rise and fall of his chest— his heart was still waiting to be forgotten.
The car kept moving.
And so did the ache.
The cab slowed to a hush near the curb, its tires whispering against the polished stone of the corporate driveway. Before them rose the building—tall, glass-skinned, too clean for the dirt the world often left behind. It stood like a monument to ambition, with mirrored panels that caught the morning light and flung it back down at the people below like a silent dare.
"Kid," the driver said gently, eyes flicking through the rearview. "We're here."
Shu Yao blinked awake.
His lashes parted slow, as if sleep had crusted over them, though no real sleep had ever touched him. His eyes were still red-rimmed, the skin beneath them painted in fatigue—like the bruises of too many nights spent fighting battles in silence. They glistened faintly in the light, not with tears, but with something heavier: the sheen of a boy who'd forgotten how to rest.
He exhaled, low and steady, as if bracing himself for something worse than gravity.
Then moved.
One foot outside the cab.
Then the other.
The sunlight hit him like memory—too bright, too real. His shirt was perfectly buttoned to the collar, his suit crisp and proper, a pale ribbon wrapped neatly in his brushed brown hair. He looked... immaculate. Respectable.
Untouched.
And yet every step carried the ghost of bruises that lived beneath his clothes—on his ribs, his throat, his hips, his heart.
He paid the fare with a quiet thank you, not looking up, and the car drifted away behind him like a past that refused to stop watching.
The glass doors of the building stood before him like gates to a world that demanded composure.
And Shu Yao—he gave it.
They parted automatically as he approached, swallowing him in silence and soft climate-controlled air. No one noticed the way his fingers twitched at his sides. No one asked why his gaze didn't quite meet the world.
He stepped inside.
A boy whose body still remembered pain. A boy pretending to be part of a world that never asked what it cost to stay polite. A boy who had been undone only hours before—and now wore professionalism like armor stitched with trembling hands.
He passed the lobby.
Each step soft. Each breath borrowed.
No one saw him.
Not truly.
He reached his desk.
The same as it had been yesterday. Neat. Quiet. His name in small silver letters beside a monitor that blinked awake with obedient light.
He pulled out the chair and sat.
Slowly.
Carefully.
Like he might crack if the floor spoke too loudly beneath him.
His back straightened. His fingers hovered above the keyboard. His lips pressed together, swallowing the ache that had followed him from the night.
And he began to work.
Not because he was healed.
Not because he was ready.
But because that's what people did after pain when no one gave them permission to stop.
They continued.
Silently.
Beautifully broken.
And completely unseen.
The morning slipped by in soft ticks of the office clock, each second folding into the next like pages Shu Yao didn't want to read. He sat still, a ghost stitched into his own routine—typing slowly, answering emails, sorting files with a delicacy that belonged more to heartbreak than to professionalism. His screen glowed faintly against the low-lit glass walls, but his eyes barely focused. He moved like someone trying not to be noticed by his own thoughts.
And then—
the air shifted.
The silence broke.
He didn't need to look up to know who had arrived.
The sound came first: polished shoes brushing against marble tile, purposeful and slow, like the entrance of someone used to being seen. A slight murmur passed through the floor—an unspoken ripple of awe or curiosity. And then the scent. That unmistakable cologne, sharp and expensive, the kind of fragrance that clung not to the skin, but to memory. It smelled like control. Like power bottled in glass.
Bai Qi had entered.
As always, he walked with the ease of someone who had never been doubted. His presence folded over the room like a shadow wearing velvet. His tousled black hair gleamed under the office lights, combed back but still rebelliously soft at the edges. His suit today was midnight black—tailored, merciless, whispered into being by wealth itself. Every thread spoke fluently in luxury.
And on his hand…
On that graceful, slender hand—
the engagement ring.
It shimmered with an unforgiving clarity, like it had already begun writing his future. Gold warmed by the morning sun. A promise made permanent. A vow wrapped in a perfect circle.
Shu Yao's gaze flickered—just briefly.
Not to Bai Qi's face.
Not to the lips that had once smiled so freely at him in passing. Not to the eyes that had, at times, held him in kindness and confusion.
But to the hand.
To that damnable ring.
It was the smallest glance. The kind of glance a person makes when they're trying to convince themselves they're not looking at all. His eyes dropped quickly, like they had touched a flame.
And oh—
how it burned.
There was no scream in him, no collapse. Only that quiet, invisible recoil—the kind of ache that folds itself into a breath and hides there. It bloomed across his chest, slow and patient. Not a stab, but a tightening. As if someone had taken a ribbon and wrapped it around his heart… and kept pulling.
Bai Qi didn't notice.
He never did.
He passed by Shu Yao's desk with the poise of someone walking toward destiny, not destruction. His cologne left a trace in the air, a trail of scent Shu Yao would pretend not to follow.
Still, Shu Yao kept typing.
Still, he didn't look up.
Because when shame wraps itself around you at midnight, it doesn't uncoil just because the sun has risen. And the cruelest thing about morning light is how it lets you see everything you wish you hadn't.