The night was closing in on Rothenberg Industries like a velvet noose—tightening slow, soft, and inevitable. Glass panes reflected the dying light like a thousand black mirrors, and somewhere in the distance, the hum of electricity sighed like a restless ghost.
Inside, Shu Yao moved in silence.
He stood by his desk—an island of dim lamplight in the vast ocean of an otherwise darkened floor. His fingers, slender and pale, gathered scattered papers with mechanical precision, as though order could save him from the hour. The edges of the files rasped against each other like whispers exchanged at a wake.
He didn't like the night. No—he feared it in a way that curled beneath the skin. It reminded him of stillness that pressed too long. Of things that stared back. He had been working far too late again, the clock mocking him in hush-toned digits: 20:10, a quiet betrayal.
His eyes flicked toward the three bottles of sleeping pills he kept carefully tucked in the drawer—rituals in amber glass. He didn't forget them tonight. He couldn't afford to. Not when the silence of his room felt like it might swallow him whole. He needed the pills—not to sleep, but to hold his hand as he drifted toward it, like a lullaby with teeth.
Just as he was reaching for them, the door creaked open behind him.
A sound so soft, yet it struck him like the sharp edge of ice cracking beneath his feet.
His spine straightened. Breath caught mid-exit.
Slowly, he turned.
And there—leaning lazily against the doorframe as though he were the devil who'd been invited—stood the same man from earlier that afternoon. The one he had collided with in the hallway like a poorly written fate. Gone was the startled confusion; in its place was something far worse: a slow-burning smirk that stretched across his lips like sin made flesh.
His gaze roved across the room as if he already owned every square inch of it. His expression suggested not curiosity, but confirmation. As though he hadn't found Shu Yao's office by accident—but by inevitability.
How did he know where this was?
Shu Yao's fingers curled tightly around the bottle in his hand, hidden beneath the shadow of his desk. He could feel his pulse ticking behind his ears, fast and fluttering like a bird against a glass window.
And still, the stranger stared at him—not with hunger, nor with cruelty—but with the fascinated stillness of a man who'd finally found a toy he wasn't allowed to break… yet.
Shu Yao had known the taste of fear before.
He had worn it like a second skin in his younger years—stitched from rough hands and cruel whispers, woven tight by night that had no end and mornings that came too late. There were shadows in his past that didn't just follow—they clung. Bruised memories in elegant clothing.
But not here.
Not now.
Not in this polished hell of glass and steel where he had clawed his way up floor by floor, burying his trembles beneath perfect posture and precisely chosen words. Rothenberg was his cage, but he had made it golden. And tonight, he would not be hunted inside it.
He took a breath—shallow at first, then deeper, slow as molasses pouring down porcelain. His chest rose as if he were inhaling armor.
Then his gaze lifted. Brownish eyes met the intruder's without flinching, no longer afraid, but flat—an unreadable sea beneath an unmoving sky.
"What do you want… at this hour?" His voice was low, clipped. Not fragile, but tempered—like steel cooled too fast.
The man didn't answer.
He simply stepped inside.
The door clicked shut behind him like a judgment passed.
There was no rush in his movements—only the sort of deliberate grace that spoke of danger hidden beneath tailored fabric. The same smirk remained on his lips, but it had sharpened. Less amused, more… possessive.
Shu Yao felt his breath hitch. Just a fraction. Just enough.
He took a step back. Then another.
But the man followed—fluid and assured, like a tide determined to touch every shore.
Something flickered across the stranger's face.
Displeasure.
Not at Shu Yao's retreat—but at the very notion of it. As if evasion were an insult. As if fear, now, were the wrong currency.
The space between them shrank, and with it, the air grew heavier. Not warm. Not cold. But thick with something unsaid.
Shu Yao's back brushed the edge of his desk, and still he refused to look away. His hand, hidden behind him, curled around the bottle in his pocket like a secret he wasn't ready to use.
The man paused only a breath away—close enough to invade, not close enough to touch. His eyes were unblinking.
And Shu Yao, though every nerve begged to flee, held his ground.
This time, he would not be broken like fine china.
Not here.
Not again.
Shu Yao remained still. Rigid, like a marionette left mid-performance, forgotten by the puppeteer. The air had thinned around him, as if the walls themselves were holding their breath.
The stranger finally spoke.
His voice spilled like velvet oil across the tension. "Why are you so afraid?" he asked, his smile coiling at the edges. "Haven't you seen someone dashing before?"
Shu Yao did not answer. His silence wasn't shyness—it was disdain carved in stillness. His gaze, however momentary, carried a flicker of disgust before retreating into cold indifference.
Handsome? There were too many of them in this world—men born from mirrors and made for lust. Shu Yao had seen them all. None of them mattered. None of them were Bai Qi.
The stranger, emboldened by Shu Yao's stillness, let his eyes trail brazenly from head to toe, as if reading a menu he couldn't afford but intended to steal.
"You know," he began, his tone slick with self-satisfaction, "I've met a thousand beauties like you. Darlings who looked carved from silk and perfume. I played with them all. They were... fun."
Shu Yao's breath hitched. The knot in his chest tightened like the strings of an old violin, creaking under pressure. Another one, he thought. Another damn pervert with a polished smile and rotting intentions.
"But you," the man whispered as he took a step closer, "you're different. You're too pretty to break."
His gaze gleamed with something vile and hungry. "These soft brown strands... these lashes that look like painted feathers... lips so thin they'd vanish beneath mine..." He licked his teeth, something predatory in the gesture. "And that body of yours—ahh, it drives me mad. Haven't you ever been told how agonizingly beautiful you are?"
His voice dropped lower, threading itself into the silence like a slow drip of poison.
"Too hot to ignore. I can make you a deal," he said with mock charm, "I'll pay you—if you'll sleep with me."
Shu Yao turned his head—not in shyness, but in revulsion, like a rose recoiling from a filthy hand.
How dare he.
That shameless bastard.
Disgust bloomed in Shu Yao's chest, sour and thick, rising to his throat like bile. The stranger's words hung in the air like smoke from a dirty fire—impossible to breathe, impossible to ignore.
But the young lord was not finished. No, the gleam in his eyes—those shimmering, venom-laced sapphires—told a story of a man who never learned to accept silence as rejection.
He took another step.
Boots echoing like slow thunder across the polished floor, he stopped at the desk where Shu Yao back is pressing to it, too hollowed by disgust to flee, too proud to cower.
With calculated ease, the man placed his hands on either side of the desk, caging Shu Yao between his arms like prey caught in a golden trap.
The space between them was small enough to burn.
Then, he leaned in—so close that Shu Yao could taste the arrogance bleeding from his breath.
"yes or No?" the stranger murmured, his smile curving like a blade. "hmm no let me rephrase... Again yes or yes?"
The words dripped with mockery, each syllable a poisoned thorn pressed against already bruised skin.
Shu Yao's ears rang with the weight of it, his stomach turning cold with disbelief. The world spun, not from fear—but from fury, from the helplessness of being reduced to a choice between two chains.
What should he do?
What could he do in this miserable state—surrounded by silk and shadow, hunted by men who mistook beauty for consent?
He clenched his hands beneath the desk, his nails biting half-moons into his palms. Inside him, something trembled—not his strength, not his pride—but that last brittle shard of hope that maybe someone, someday, would see him as more than a thing to devour.
His voice did not rise yet.
But his silence?
It was louder than any scream.
Shu Yao lifted his gaze at last—slowly, like a storm drawing back its veil of mist to reveal the eye within.
His eyes glistened—not with tears, but with fury finely crystallized into something beautiful. Twin pools of molten brown, lined with lashes so long they could sweep dust from the soul, stared into the man before him with all the weight of a cathedral's silence. His beauty in that moment was a blade sheathed in moonlight.
And the young lord—oh, poor thing—
He froze.
As if caught beneath a cathedral bell just before it tolls, he stood breathless, his arrogance crumbling into color across his cheeks.
God, he thought, almost aloud, what is this creature?
A doll, yes—but not the kind perched on velvet cushions, waiting for play. No, this one walked, breathed, glared. This doll had bones of porcelain and fire in his marrow.
How could a thing so divine be allowed to roam the world unsupervised?
Surely, someone would steal him—
Snatch him away like a precious painting left in a storm.
The man's throat bobbed as he leaned in, the scent of his expensive cologne crushed beneath the silence between them.
"I—I—I promise," he stammered, voice trembling like candlelight in a draft, "I won't do anything. Just… please…"
He reached—not touching, but yearning. His fingers hovered near the edge of Shu Yao's hair, enchanted by those strands that shimmered like mahogany spun through honey.
"Just… may I touch your beautiful strands?"
But Shu Yao did not move.
Did not blink.
Did not soften.
Only glared.
A stillness like winter's heart clung to his figure, and his glare was not loud—it was final. A wordless refusal more cutting than a thousand shouted no's.
The space between them turned cold. Not with fear. But with disappointment.
This was not a doll to touch.
This was a relic behind glass, and the fool had tried to reach through.
The man didn't reach to touch—not quite.
But he leaned in like a sinner nearing the incense smoke of a sacred altar, his breath hitching as he tilted his face toward Shu Yao's hair.
He only wanted a breath.
A scent.
What would divinity smell like if it ever walked among men?
Perhaps like rain pressed into silk.
Or like crushed magnolia petals under moonlight.
Or maybe the softest echo of amber and sandalwood, threaded through parchment and poetry.
Whatever it was, he needed to know it.
His nose drew closer to the delicate strands falling over Shu Yao's shoulder—those glistening, weightless locks that shimmered with the color of forgotten sepia. He was one breath away from reverence when—
Creeeeak.
The office door yawned open, slow as judgment, and a voice—calm, controlled, and unmistakably German—cut through the velvet tension like the blade of winter.
"Guten Tag."
So serenely spoken.
So terrifyingly restrained.
The doorframe filled with the tall, hawkish figure of George, and the moment his pale eyes fell upon the sight—that man, hunched too close to Shu Yao—his face turned to marble. Sharp. Icy. Absolute.
The air seemed to contract.
Shu Yao's suitor—bold just a second ago—snapped backward like a marionette whose strings had been sliced. Panic crossed his features in sharp, visible strokes.
Because everyone feared the Germans.
It wasn't their height. Or their voices.
It was the certainty in their stare.
The terrifying efficiency of it.
George didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to.
The intruder staggered away from Shu Yao like he'd touched a sleeping lion and lived to regret it, mumbling something incoherent as his feet scrambled to obey a silent command that was never spoken.
Shu Yao did not speak either.
He didn't lift his head, nor chase the silence with explanation.
His slender arms curled around himself, a porcelain doll too exhausted to resist anymore, folded like parchment soaked in midnight. His lashes were too long, too still, too tired—and the black crescents beneath his eyes spoke of sleepless nights no perfume could hide.
He looked small.
He looked breakable.
He looked like something sacred left out in the rain.
George's eyes flicked down to him, and something in his jaw ticked—tight with protectiveness, but silent. Always silent.
He didn't scold.
He didn't ask.
He simply stepped forward, like a curtain closing on a play that had run far too long.
And behind him, the door creaked shut again.