The morning was far too bright for how hollow Shu Yao felt inside. A sunlight that spilled like spilt milk across the pavements, sticky with the noise of commuters, horns, and hurry. Yet none of it reached him. The light didn't warm, didn't heal—it only made his shadows more visible.
His black shoes tapped against the sidewalk with a restraint that mimicked reverence, like he was walking into a church, not a cab. He moved with an odd stillness, the stiffness of someone dressed properly in his tailored business suit—charcoal grey with a soft inner lining—but who had forgotten how to breathe beneath it. His fingers clutched a thin paper bag with the quiet terror of someone carrying poison disguised as cure: three bottles of sleeping pills rattled softly inside.
When he opened the car door, he did it carefully, as if too quick a motion would shatter the illusion that today was just another workday. The interior of the cab smelled of dust and plastic polish. He slid into the backseat and exhaled, head sinking back against the leather, spine straight as a reed too proud to bend—even in breaking.
The driver didn't ask questions. Good. Shu Yao wouldn't have known how to answer anyway.
The car pulled into motion, the city passing by in languid strokes outside the window. He turned his head to watch it—glass towers, asphalt veins, pedestrians dancing the choreography of their rituals—but in Shu Yao's tired, bloodshot eyes, none of it meant anything. The vibrancy of the world had been bleached to grayscale. Everything looked like a photograph faded by grief.
And in that blur of movement, his memory betrayed him again.
Bai Qi.
Not the man who was polite in public, but the man he had known—warm, chaotic, ruthless in love without realizing it. Shu Yao still remembered the first time he saw him: tall and unbothered, laughing without looking back, his eyes never once stopping on Qing yue's even though Shu Yao had felt his own breath catch, like a bird stilled mid-flight.
Back then, Bai Qi had a graze on his elbow from the basketball tournament. Shu Yao had rushed in without thinking, crouched in front of him like a prayer, pressing gauze to the wound.
"Hold still," he had murmured.
But Bai Qi's gaze had gone past him—toward Qing Yue. Always Qing Yue. A name like a scar carved into Shu Yao's inner lip.
He had treated Bai Qi's wounds, mended small hurts with trembling fingers, brewed tea when headaches struck, memorized his schedules like scripture—yet Bai Qi never noticed him in the way that mattered. Never once looked at him with the same eyes he reserved for Qing Yue, never let his name slip from his lips like something cherished.
It wasn't unrequited love. It was unseen love. And that was worse.
The car hit a speed bump and Shu Yao blinked, almost startled. The bottles in his bag knocked together again with that dry, cynical sound.
He glanced at them briefly, then looked away.
To someone else, those pills might have been a surrender. But to Shu Yao, they were armor. A mercy from the gods of pharmaceutical silence. He had tried everything else—reading, walking, herbal teas from expensive stores with lavender names. Nothing stopped the dreams. Nothing made the nights bearable.
The pills would not kill him. He wasn't that dramatic. He just wanted sleep that didn't echo with the sound of Bai Qi's voice whispering someone else's name. Sleep that didn't tear his soul open with memories he never volunteered for. If he had to lose consciousness to forget, then so be it.
He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his phone—not to message anyone, because no one was left—but to stare at the home screen.
No new messages.
Not even from Bai Qi.
Of course not.
The cab passed by the city park where cherry blossoms once bloomed—he remembered walking there with Bai Qi once, petals falling like tiny suicides from the branches. Shu Yao had wanted to take a photo of him, the way the light touched his hair like devotion, but Bai Qi had said, "Not now. Maybe later."
Later never came.
He clutched the bag tighter.
"Sir?" the driver's voice broke in, gentle. "We're almost at the office. Five minutes."
Shu Yao nodded, then cleared his throat. "Thank you."
That was all. Two words. But they hurt like a blade pressing gently into the side of the throat—enough to feel, not enough to kill.
Outside the window, the buildings grew taller, colder. The company was close now—a polished cage where he performed like a ghost still pretending to have ambitions.
But today, he didn't feel ambitious. He felt tired.
Not the kind of tired that sleep could cure, but the kind that seeps into your spine like rot.
He closed his eyes, the pills in the bag whispering promises.
And yet, he would walk in. He always did. Dressed to perfection, collar straight, tie knotted just right, the kind of man who smiled in meetings and kept his desk immaculately clean. No one would guess that the person beside them, so poised, so efficient—was disintegrating in beautiful silence.
That was his specialty.
And perhaps, if he took one pill tonight. Just one. He could sleep a little. He wouldn't dream of Bai Qi walking away. He wouldn't hear the laughter meant for someone else. He wouldn't remember the gentle way Bai Qi held Qing Yue's wrist after the injury during training, a touch more tender than any Shu Yao ever received.
The city blurred again. People moved like ants, determined and oblivious. The car turned the final corner.
Shu Yao took a breath. Straightened his cuffs. His reflection stared back from the tinted glass window—exhausted, exquisite, and entirely unreadable.
Maybe that was how he survived.
He didn't need to be loved back.
He just needed the world to stop hurting so much when he remembered.
And maybe, just maybe, tonight's sleep would be dreamless.
The cab pulled away with a hiss of tired tires and an exhale of city breath, leaving Shu Yao standing alone at the mouth of Rothenberg Industries. The glass tower clawed the sky like a monument to men who counted worth in numbers and power, not bruised souls or sleepless nights. Its mirrored walls reflected the sun too brightly for his bloodshot eyes, and for a second, he stood there, three concealed bottles of sleep in his paper bag, his suit is clinging to him like armor after war.
It was not nighttime. It was morning—an indifferent, blue-sky kind of morning where everyone else seemed to have somewhere important to be. Shu Yao did too. The building's entrance—framed in silver steel and polished pride—greeted him with automated grace. The doors parted soundlessly, not for him, not because he mattered, but because that was their function: to open for anyone who dared enter.
He stepped in like a ghost returning to its grave.
The lobby buzzed with quiet urgency. Heels clicked, suits brushed past, papers rustled, voices murmured over coffee steam and ambition. No one looked at him, and he looked at no one. They were strangers, all of them—hollow eyes in expensive frames, briefcases and deadlines. He walked through them like mist, unseen, untouched, uninvited.
He didn't belong to this world. Not really. He was a mid-level employee, one of the many bricks that kept the Rothenberg empire standing, though no one would notice if his brick cracked or crumbled. He took the elevator with a few others who never spoke. Their reflections stood around him in the polished metal walls, all of them pretending not to exist.
When the doors opened again on the seventh floor—far below the penthouse where power reigned and Bai Qi's family cast long shadows—Shu Yao stepped out into his usual corridor. Lights hummed above him like indifferent stars. The air carried the faint scent of toner and overbrewed coffee. A corner of the floor still hadn't been fixed where someone had spilled last month's numbers in ink and rage.
He reached his desk. It was tucked between two cubicles like a bookmark someone had forgotten to remove from an old story. He sat with slow movements, the way one lowers themselves into water after a wound. The chair creaked familiarly beneath him, and without a sound, he opened the drawer on his right.
There, like something shameful and sacred, he placed the three small bottles inside.
Sleeping pills. Softly capped silences. Each one a promise that tonight—or any night—could be survived by surrendering completely. Not dreams, just void. No dreams of Bai Qi. No eyes, no hands, no biting voice, no memory of a shoulder that once welcomed his head like a secret kept warm.
He shut the drawer quietly, sealing away the evidence of weakness. No one must see. Especially not Bai Qi.
Especially not the man who once touched him like a fire touches paper: cruelly, beautifully, irreversibly.
A stack of documents waited on his desk, pretending to be urgent. A blinking email icon on his computer whispered of deadlines. He blinked back the ache in his eyes and started reading the first page, though the words slid over his thoughts like rain on a window. He was here, he was working, he was surviving. That was enough, wasn't it?
Somewhere above, on a floor he would never step foot on, Bai Qi might be sipping coffee in a conference room designed to make lesser men feel small. Or he might be yelling at a boardroom full of executives who feared his silence more than his voice. Or—perhaps—he might be nowhere at all.
Shu Yao didn't know anymore.
He reached for his pen. The morning wore on.
The office was not empty.
Behind a wall of floor-to-ceiling glass that framed the daytime skyline like an indifferent painting, Bai Qi sat—not like a prince, not like a model, not like the heir to Rothenberg Industries—but like a storm sealed in flesh, sharp-tongued and shining. The sun bent itself over the high-rise towers outside, casting lattices of pale gold across his desk, his skin, the air—yet none of it softened him.
"I told you," he muttered, his voice low but laced with venom, "I don't want to be seen by anyone else. I'm not going to pose. Not for your campaign. Not for their cameras. Not for their cheap fantasy."
He didn't raise his eyes. They were fixed on something invisible—a name that clung to his throat like a perfume he couldn't wash off.
Qing Yue.
The name moved like a ghost through the room, unsaid but known. It glittered on his left hand, the engagement ring catching a shard of sunlight and throwing it across the desk like a blade. The silver band was thin, but its presence on Bai Qi's finger burned like an oath. He twirled it absently, then clutched it as if the world might rip it from him if he didn't.
His father stood a few feet away, trying—unsuccessfully—not to sigh again. The older man's hand rose to his face, pinching the bridge of his nose as if the headache could be pressed out through sheer force. His golden hair, slicked back with discipline, caught no light—only the weight of legacy. Blue eyes, colder than most German lakes in winter, bore into his son with practiced restraint and the exhaustion of a man whose empire was built not just on power, but control.
"Bai Qi," his father said slowly, voice simmering with a tired authority, "this isn't about your emotions. This is business. Your face is the future of our brand. You know that."
"I don't care."
"You should."
"I only want her eyes on me." Bai Qi's mouth curved into something sly, cruel, almost boyish. "Qing Yue doesn't look at me like a poster. She looks at me like I'm real."
His father's jaw twitched.
And still, Bai Qi sat there—arrogant, fragrant, carved from some perfume-drenched marble, his wolf-cut black hair slicked back with the sort of negligent grace only wealth could afford. The strands gleamed like midnight oil, some still falling rebelliously over his temple, casting shadows that made him look more dangerous than photogenic. He smelled like cedarwood and blood-orange, like things not meant for offices, like someone who might kiss you just to taste your defiance.
The glass walls couldn't contain him. His presence pushed against them like sound against silence.
"You think love exempts you from obligation?" his father asked, stepping closer. "This isn't about art. Or poetry. This is Rothenberg. This is your name."
Bai Qi finally looked up. There was something wild in his eyes—something that hadn't been tamed even after years of inheritance, legacy, boarding schools, and bodyguards. His voice was softer this time, like a blade being sheathed.
"I'm not your product," he said. "And I'm not theirs either."
The ring glimmered again as he flexed his fingers. A few days ago, they had announced the engagement surprisingly. Bai Qi and Qing Yue beneath a pale lantern moon. Her voice trembling as she said yes, his fingers trembling as he slid on the ring. The memory throbbed in his chest like a secret heartbeat.
His father was silent for a long moment.
Outside the glass wall, the city moved with indifference. Cars streamed like silent rivers, people scurried like ants. Inside, the silence was electric.
"You look like your mother when you argue," the elder Rothenberg finally muttered, almost to himself. "Same mouth. Same fire."
Bai Qi did not smile. But something behind his eyes dimmed a little.
"I don't argue," he said. "I tell the truth."
He leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers together behind his head, long legs crossed, gaze unfazed. The light kissed the curve of his cheekbone, the cut of his jaw. He was unbearable, and he knew it.
"Then the truth is," his father said, voice clipped, "I'll find someone else."
"Good luck." Bai Qi smirked. "But no one else is me."
His father turned away with a sharp breath, adjusting his cufflinks like he was tightening shackles. "If you weren't so infuriating, you'd be extraordinary."
"I'm both," Bai Qi said, unapologetically.
And in that moment, despite the tension thrumming in the room like violin strings pulled too tight, despite the perfume and the pinstriped wrath, despite the ache of love that made him defiant, Bai Qi looked like something eternal. Not an heir. Not a model. Not even a man.
He looked like a storm in silk, dressed in memory, smelling of someone who never quite left the bed.
And the ring on his finger caught the light one last time—flashing a silent vow that no lens could capture, and no stranger could ever deserve.