The elevator gave a soft sigh as it opened on the seventh floor—like a reluctant secret letting itself be told.
Shu Yao stepped out, the echo of his boots tapping against the polished tiles like a heartbeat trying too hard not to feel. The sterile lighting above didn't flatter anyone; it painted everything too honestly—especially the boy walking a few feet ahead of him.
Bai Qi.
Back turned. Hands in his pockets. Searching.
Not for a thing. For someone.
Shu Yao stopped, just outside the fold of his breath, and then—remembering how to perform again—he cleared his throat gently, the sound catching like a thread pulled too tight between them.
Bai Qi flinched, turned, and upon seeing him, released a laugh too sharp to be joy.
> "God, don't scare me like that," he said, eyes flickering like faulty bulbs—bright, then distant again.
Shu Yao, trying not to smile too tenderly, gave a small nod and said,
> "Your father… he wants you to shoot. Why are you refusing?"
It was a necessary question, spoken like it wasn't cracking him apart.
Bai Qi rolled his eyes. That cocksure smirk curled back onto his lips like a mask that fit a little too well.
> "Come on, Shu Yao," he said, dragging out the syllables like he was tasting them.
"Are you seriously taking my father's side now?"
Shu Yao didn't answer. He just stood there—silent, gentle, breakable.
Bai Qi turned again, voice growing louder as if trying to convince someone even he couldn't see.
> "He wants me to pose for his brand. To be the face of something I never believed in. Isn't that betrayal?"
The word struck Shu Yao like a wine glass thrown at a wall—pretty, quiet, final.
Still, he spoke.
> "That's not what it looks like."
Bai Qi looked over his shoulder, suspicion threading through the corner of his glance.
> "No way," he said, bitterly amused.
"I already belong to someone. I have myself only for Qing Yue. No one else."
The sentence had the decency to not shatter Shu Yao out loud.
Instead, he swallowed the silence.
His voice, when it came, was soft. But it held something trembling beneath the silk of it.
> "That's what I'm talking about."
Bai Qi blinked. Confused. Caught.
> "What?"
Shu Yao let out a breath like something escaping a cracked porcelain teacup.
> "What if… you and Qing Yue do it together? The shoot."
Now Bai Qi stared at him, eyes slowly opening—like he was watching something catch fire and not sure whether to fan it or run.
> "Huh," he said, tilting his head.
"I never thought of that."
Shu Yao, gathering his wreckage like pearls in shaking hands, kept going.
> "If both of you do it… everyone will see. A strong couple. Still engaged. Still shining. They'll adore you. Your father will calm down. And… you'll be obeying without giving up anything you don't want to."
He smiled. A strange, soft little thing.
Bai Qi was still in a daze, eyes growing wider by the second.
> "I… I really didn't think of that before," he whispered.
"She'll love it. Me and her—everywhere. Magazines. Billboards. Just us…"
Shu Yao didn't interrupt.
He just nodded, very slowly, as if blessing it.
Even as something inside him was being folded up and shelved somewhere cold. Somewhere far away. Somewhere called "Not Me."
Bai Qi, all too thrilled now—almost electrified by the idea Shu Yao had so delicately laid before him—exclaimed something breathless and half-formed. The words didn't matter. The ecstasy did.
Without looking, without waiting, he stepped forward. His long limbs careless with excitement, his breath uneven like a man who's glimpsed the horizon of a dream he thought buried.
And Shu Yao—still evading his gaze, still folding himself small to stay out of the glare of those eyes he loved—didn't move.
Didn't speak.
Didn't breathe.
Bai Qi's hands clutched around him, gripping his delicate frame like he'd caught something fragile mid-fall. Too tight. Almost reverent. Almost possessive. As if he didn't know whether to hold him or crush him with joy.
And Shu Yao—dear, trembling Shu Yao—felt his soul leave his ribs for a moment.
As if it had been yanked out through his throat.
As if the pain was not in the hold but in how much he wanted it.
How much he wished that grip meant something more than a celebration meant for someone else.
The sunlight spilled through the window like melted gold, painting the room in aching warmth. It touched them both—two silhouettes suspended in fragile closeness, caught in the cusp of something that might've been love if only the script were kinder.
Bai Qi stood with his eyes closed, a blush smudged across his face like a secret he couldn't hide. His arms were still wrapped around Shu Yao, possessive without intention, gentle without trying. His black hair shimmered beneath the sunlight—silken and windswept, like a shadow spun from daybreak.
And Shu Yao—
Eyes wide, lips trembling—
His breath caught somewhere between fear and longing. Through the corners of his tired, worn eyes, he looked at Bai Qi—really looked—and saw a man who could shatter him without ever meaning to. The light found his brownish hair and turned it soft gold, catching on the strands like it, too, wanted to stay. His eyes were heavy with the moment, so heavy it threatened to collapse inside him.
He wanted to melt into that embrace.
He wanted to believe in it.
But somewhere deeper—beneath the marrow and memory—his heart whispered, This isn't real.
And just when he might have given in, just when his hands twitched forward, reaching to wrap around Bai Qi's ribs and hold him like a truth he finally dared to touch—
Bai Qi pulled away.
Slowly. Carefully. As if to say don't mistake this.
His hand rose, not to linger, but to tap Shu Yao's head with a gesture light as wind. Familiar. Platonic. That cursed, cruel mimicry of brotherhood. Of friendship.
Then Bai Qi dug his fingers into his pocket—seeking composure, perhaps—and looked at Shu Yao with an earnest softness that hurt more than any cruelty could.
"You," Bai Qi said, voice low, almost reverent,
"are the one friend I never had to doubt."
His eyes didn't shine, but something in them flickered—something real.
"You never fail me.
Not once. Not even when I deserved it."
A bitter breath followed, curling between them like smoke.
"You stand by me through everything...
and I—"
He paused, as if swallowing glass.
"I've given you nothing in return.
The usual smirk was gone. Stripped away.
What remained were only his words—bare, solemn things. And the other side of Bai Qi, the quieter self he never let live in the light. The part that, maybe, still longed to protect Shu Yao…
…but only in the ways Shu Yao never wanted.
And then—
Bai Qi's hand rose, slowly, almost uncertainly,
before settling upon Shu Yao's slender shoulder like a quiet vow.
It wasn't heavy.
It wasn't possessive.
It simply rested there—warm, steady, like a lighthouse in fog.
His voice came softer than the wind between autumn reeds.
"When you need me…" he began,
pausing as if waiting for the weight of the words to catch up to him,
"I'll be there."
No bargains.
No blood oaths.
No expectations folded in shadow.
Just that—
a promise without a price.
And he asked nothing in return,
only stood there beside Shu Yao,
as if presence alone was the most sacred offering he could give.
And Shu Yao stood there—still, breath trembling like a thread caught in the wind—
his heart slow to process the echo of Bai Qi's words.
Did he mean them?
Did he understand what they cost?
Each syllable had struck him like the softest knife: not enough to kill, but sharp enough to bleed dreams dry.
He didn't blame Bai Qi.
How could he?
The fault wasn't in the words spoken—but in the love left unsaid.
A love Shu Yao had buried so deeply,
it had grown roots in silence and bloomed in darkness—
ugly, tender, uninvited.
Bai Qi would never know what it felt like.
Never know how it ached.
Never know that every friendly gesture was a needle threading hope into a heart that no longer knew how to beat honestly.
Then came the farewell.
Bai Qi turned, his steps steady, his posture untouched by turmoil.
He lifted two fingers in a quiet salute—brushed them lightly at the corner of his eye like dusting off sentiment—
his other hand sinking into the pocket of his coat.
And just like that, he was gone.
No door slam. No dramatic pause. Just the sound of footsteps fading into absence.
What remained behind
was not Shu Yao.
Not truly.
Only pieces—
cracks laced with longing,
a soft ruin of a boy whose love had no name,
no voice,
no ending.
And nothing he could build from those fragments
would ever feel whole again.
Shu Yao's lips curved into a smile—
but not the kind known by any language,
not joy, not relief,
but something lonelier,
a shape born from ache,
as if sorrow itself had sculpted it.
His mouth trembled, quivering as though caught between confession and collapse.
And then—he couldn't stop it.
Not the salt, not the swell.
His eyes betrayed him first—
those gentle rivers, held back for too long,
spilled quietly down his cheeks, glistening with exhaustion,
with a love too deep, too silent, too patient to ever be safe.
His fingers twitched at his sides,
as though unsure if they should reach out for something that had already gone.
Then came the sob—
soft as a confession inside a cathedral,
the kind that steals your breath rather than gives it back.
One hand lifted slowly,
desperately,
pressing against his mouth to dam the sound—
to trap the truth inside before it shattered the world outside.
His eyes blinked, heavier now,
weighted not only by exhaustion but by a grief so intimate it wore his name.
It hurt—
not like a wound that bleeds,
but like one that never healed.
A pain that curled into the spine and sat there like a secret.
Unspoken.
Unshared.
And in that moment,
he wasn't a boy.
He was all the things love had broken,
and none of the things it had saved.
Slowly, as if gravity itself mourned with him, Shu Yao reached for the edge of his chair—
his limbs moving like memory,
each motion heavy with the echo of what had just been said and what could never be unsaid.
He sat,
not to rest,
but to survive.
A silent ritual followed.
His hand reached for the tissue box—
a small, unremarkable thing now carrying the burden of unseen grief.
He tried to wipe the tears away,
but the more he pressed them back,
the more they came—
not like a storm, but like a spring newly cracked open beneath skin.
Each word Bai Qi had spoken was still rooted in his chest,
planted like seeds in the soil of an old wound.
And like all seeds, they grew—
but what bloomed was not comfort,
it was ache.
Heavy, tangled vines of longing and confusion,
winding around his ribs.
The tissue dampened quickly,
yet his tears did not tire.
They slid down his face in silent lines,
not asking for pity,
only release.
Now his tears no longer held meaning—
no syllables,
no cries,
no begging for someone to notice.
They simply were.
A language of their own.
A sorrow with no punctuation.
A silence that refused to end.
And still he sat,
weeping like only those who loved in secret could—
quietly,
completely,
alone.
Nearly ten minutes had slipped by—
a hush of time that held no comfort.
The tears had stopped,
yes—
but only because his body could no longer offer them.
His soul, however, still wept in ways the skin could not.
Shu Yao's eyes told a different story—
not of relief, but of ruin.
They looked raw now,
as if someone had taken a match to the very edges of them.
That soft, autumn-burnished gaze—once so gentle,
so still—
was now rimmed in red,
a quiet warzone of pressed pain.
He had pressed the tissue too hard,
too often,
as if scrubbing sorrow away could make it disappear.
His long lashes clung together,
wet and trembling,
like feathers caught in a downpour.
And his eyes—dear gods, his eyes—
looked like they hadn't closed in a lifetime.
Haunted.
Held open by memory.
He hiccuped softly,
a frail sound from a boy undone.
Then his hand, unsteady but obedient, reached for the glass of water nearby.
It trembled in his grip—
a simple gesture turned sacred by grief.
He drank.
The water met his throat like glass—
burning.
As if the crying had scorched him from the inside,
left his throat raw with unspoken words,
with all the "please don't go"s
that never made it to the air.
And still, he sat.
Not healed.
Only emptied.
And that, sometimes,
hurts even more.