Shu Yao smiled.
Not the kind that curved lips or touched eyes—but the kind that lived nowhere. A phantom expression, stitched to survive. He stood still beside the elevator now, where Bai Qi's teasing words still hung like cobwebs from the ceiling, translucent and suffocating.
"I bet she left a mark or two," Bai Qi had joked, grinning like the night hadn't shattered something delicate.
But Shu Yao felt it—that invisible splinter just beneath the skin, the one Bai Qi's words kept digging toward. Not playful. Not harmless. Each syllable like a salt-tipped arrow shot into already-broken ground.
His lungs refused to work properly.
Not because he was tired.
But because he was drowning.
And the water—was silence.
Bai Qi's voice—warm, amused, entirely oblivious—wrapped around him like barbed wire hidden in silk.
"There's no shame, Shu Yao," he'd said. "You're a man, not a monk."
But what Shu Yao carried wasn't sacred. Nor sinful. It was simply unwanted.
The elevator doors opened with a mechanical hush, light pouring out like it had no idea what it was illuminating. Shu Yao stepped in, slow as a shadow, while Bai Qi lingered outside with his hands in his pockets and his laugh still echoing like bad perfume in a cold room.
The doors closed.
And for one glorious second—Shu Yao was alone.
But pain doesn't vanish with isolation.
No—it grows louder when no one else is there to talk over it.
He leaned back against the wall, pressing his spine to the chill of steel, as if the cold could leech something out of him. As if it could pull last night from his skin. His eyes closed.
But memory did not.
It came back, unbidden.
The pale-eyed man.
Breath that reeked of control. Fingers that held, not touched. The press of a mouth against his until it became a bruise, a brand. Shu Yao hadn't said yes. He hadn't said no, either—his voice had been gone long before then, tucked beneath obedience and fear and the cruel echo of the word please said once, too softly.
It wasn't desire.
It was damage wearing the clothes of intimacy.
And now—Bai Qi had mistaken that damage for romance. For lust.
Shu Yao's throat closed around a sob that never came.
Instead, he swallowed.
Hard.
Like he could push every memory, every bruise, every trembling breath down into the hollow of his chest and seal it with silence.
He stared at his reflection in the mirrored elevator wall.
He hated it.
The boy in the glass wore dignity like patchwork. Too many seams. Too many near-tears turned into stillness. His white shirt was crisp, his hair neatly parted, his collarbone a smooth line of bone and effort.
But none of that mattered.
Not when his soul looked wrinkled beneath it.
The sky above had turned a deeper bruise, the kind of violet that whispered the sun was gone for good—and night, that velvet predator, had taken its place.
Shu Yao didn't walk this time.
He couldn't.
The weight of yesterday still clung to his skin like invisible tar—thick, suffocating, and unseen to everyone but him. The alleyways held ghosts too recent. The sidewalks were made of memory now, and each one hummed with the threat of recognition.
So he stood beneath the hollow orange glow of a rusted streetlamp and called for a cab.
His hands trembled as he dialed.
Not from cold.
But from memory.
From the feeling of breath he didn't ask for, fingers that didn't belong, a mouth pressed against his until he vanished inside himself like a boy trapped in his own body.
The app blinked confirmation on his screen.
"Driver arriving in five minutes."
Five minutes.
Eternity.
He waited like prey.
Back straight, arms crossed, trying not to seem vulnerable—even though every part of him was trembling beneath the illusion of composure. His collar was stiff, his sleeves uncreased, but inside—he was wreckage dressed in linen.
Around him, the city thrummed, indifferent. People laughed down the block. A couple kissed at the corner. The world, as always, remained painfully normal.
Only Shu Yao had changed.
Then—
headlights curled down the road.
A soft purr of tires against wet asphalt.
The cab slowed as it approached, its headlights brushing Shu Yao like the gaze of something vast and gentle. For a moment, he didn't move. His body screamed retreat, his ribs curled inward like pages trying to fold themselves shut.
But he took a breath—shallow, but his.
And stepped forward.
The door opened with a sigh, and Shu Yao slipped inside like a secret trying not to be heard. The car smelled of citrus and vinyl, the kind of scent that clung to cheap cologne and long hours.
"Where to?" the driver asked, voice neutral.
Shu Yao answered with the address he always gave—but this time, it felt like a prayer. A plea wrapped in syllables.
The cab pulled away from the curb, gentle as a lullaby.
Streetlights smeared gold across the windows, each one a heartbeat passing by. The city receded behind him like a closing wound.
And for the first time that day—
he exhaled.
Not completely.
Not freely.
But enough.
The world outside kept spinning. Towers blinked. Billboards glowed. Lives unfolded in neon. But in the backseat of that car, Shu Yao felt the slightest shimmer of safety. The kind of safety born not from freedom—but distance.
Each block between him and that office was a stitch in the fabric of his fear.
He leaned his head against the cool windowpane.
Closed his eyes.
And let the silence cradle him—not the cold kind, not the punishing kind—but the soft hush of motion. The kind that, just for tonight, meant he would make it home alive.
The car moved through the city like a shadow threading a needle—quiet, deliberate, stitched between traffic lights and puddled reflections. Rain hadn't fallen, but the streets glistened as if the city had wept in secret while no one was watching.
Shu Yao sat in the backseat, spine straight despite the ache curling beneath his skin. The seatbelt cut a diagonal across his chest like a sash of silence—restraining, comforting, both.
Outside, the world blurred.
Glass towers whispered by, their windows lit like constellations drawn by hands that didn't know his name. Neon flickered in cursive, shopfronts bled advertisements in every color, and people passed as silhouettes with no weight—figures behind curtains he couldn't touch.
He was moving—but not toward safety.
Not quite.
Just toward a pause.
And sometimes, a pause was enough.
Shu Yao's hands were folded in his lap, too neatly, fingers wrapped around one another like they didn't trust themselves apart. The cab driver said nothing. The radio murmured faint jazz, thin and warbled, the sound of an old soul trying to remember how to breathe.
Each turn of the wheel was a heartbeat.
Each street crossed, a whisper from fate: you're not there yet… but you're not back there either.
He blinked slowly, watching buildings pass like strangers with secrets. His reflection stared back from the window—faint, flickering, unreal. The boy in the glass looked older than he had that morning. Not by years, but by ruin.
The bruise on his lip still pulsed.
His ribs ached in silence.
His throat—dry, tight, untouched by sound—burned with everything he hadn't said.
But still the car moved.
A steel carriage guided by tired hands and the promise of destination. No magic. No miracle. Just forward.
And tonight, forward was the only direction Shu Yao had the strength to believe in.
Somewhere far ahead, his neighbor hood is nearing and waiting.
Small. Quiet. Unassuming.
But his.
The only place where he could take off this mask of stillness and allow the cracks to breathe.
The city roared around the cab.
But inside—
there was only him.
And the hum of motion, soft as a lullaby he didn't trust but needed anyway.
The engine gave one last murmuring sigh and then fell silent, like a tired animal curling into itself. The cab rolled to a gentle stop at the edge of Shang Street, where the road narrowed into quiet and the city's voice dimmed into whispers.
Shu Yao opened the door with careful fingers, as if even the metal might bruise him now. The night air met his skin like a cool cloth—too late to soothe, too soft to undo. He stepped out.
The pavement here was uneven, worn by time and footsteps more ordinary than his. Streetlights draped golden veils over the quiet buildings, and the wind stirred with the scent of old stone, jasmine, and dusk.
He walked slowly.
Each step like the turning of a page he didn't want to read.
His home waited at the end of the path—not grand, not distant—just there, its outline familiar in the kind of way that could only belong to places where one once believed in safety.
He reached the gate. The bell was cool beneath his finger.
It chimed once. Softly.
Like a question.
And then—footsteps.
A voice, gentle and bright as sunrise breaking through fog: "Coming!"
The door opened with a click, and Qing Yue stood there, framed in the soft yellow of the hallway lamp, her hair pulled into a loose braid, her smile ready and warm like she'd been saving it just for him.
"Gege! You didn't really say anything last night. I thought you—"
But Shu Yao didn't answer.
He didn't even look up properly.
He just passed her.
Like wind through curtains.
His steps were slow, too careful, as though the floor beneath him might collapse if he moved too quickly. He didn't shrug off his coat. Didn't speak. Didn't offer even the courtesy of I'm back.
Just silence. Measured and heavy.
Qing Yue blinked, caught mid-greeting, her smile faltering.
"Gege… what happened to you?"
He paused halfway up the first step, fingers brushing the wooden banister, his back still turned to her.
"I'm just… tired," he said.
His voice was quiet. Uninflected. Frayed at the edges like a page dog-eared too many times.
"I need some rest."
And that was all.
No drama.
No tears.
Just a man so hollowed by the world that even his exhaustion had lost its shape.
Qing Yue watched him ascend the stairs.
She didn't stop him.
Didn't follow.
Something in her stilled—the way silence stills before thunder. She felt it in her chest, that quiet dissonance. A note struck too deep to name.
Upstairs, Shu Yao entered his room and shut the door behind him with the gentleness of someone closing a coffin.
The lock did not click.
But he may as well have sealed the world out.
The soft click of the lock echoed like a vow.
Not loud—but final. A small sound swallowed by walls that had heard more silence than song.
Shu Yao stood there for a moment, just inside his own sanctuary, the familiar dimness wrapping around him like a blanket woven from shadows and routine. His fingers lingered on the doorknob, pale and trembling slightly, as if unsure whether to hold on or let go.
He let go.
Turned slowly.
Each step toward the bed felt like a procession. Not of joy. Not of triumph. But of survival—an unspoken ritual performed by someone who had made it through the fire but hadn't come out clean.
The room was quiet. Not the soft kind—but the kind that rings in your ears when you've forgotten how to cry.
His bed waited. Still, unmade, loyal. The pillow dented faintly from the night before, as if it still remembered the shape of his restlessness. He approached it with something close to reverence—like a believer returning to the altar not to pray, but to collapse.
Shu Yao sat at the edge first, his limbs folding like paper. Then, slowly, he lowered himself, one vertebra at a time, until the side of his face pressed against the sheets.
Cool. Familiar. Indifferent.
His breath caught.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
But memory did not obey.
It clung to him like perfume spilled on skin, invisible but everywhere—burning in the places no one could see.
The pale-eyed man.
The forced closeness.
The hands that had taken and the voice that had coaxed obedience with menace dressed in silk.
Shu Yao pressed his face deeper into the fabric, as if the cotton could absorb it all—every image, every sound, every wrong.
He didn't cry.
Tears would have been mercy.
Instead, he lay still.
Like stone beneath snowfall.
Wishing that if he was quiet enough, maybe the past would forget him.