The courtyard air met him like a quiet hand pressed to his chest — cool, deliberate, as if testing the steadiness of his breath. Shu Yao paused at the automatic door, letting the pale light spill over him in fractured waves. It was a light without warmth, diffused through a sky the color of unpolished steel, yet it clung to the slate beneath his feet and the brittle edges of the ornamental grasses swaying like tired dancers in the wind.
His neck ached — a slow, needling pain that had been stalking him since morning — and the dull throb behind his eyes pulsed with every heartbeat. Still, he pushed forward, clipboard in hand, the faint bite of the metal clip against his palm reminding him he was here to work, not to linger in the weight of his own thoughts.
But the courtyard was not empty.
At the far end, an arrangement of chairs curved in a crescent around the open space, their occupants scattered like figures in a painter's study. His mother sat among them, her posture the very image of composed grace, her smile softened at the edges as though lit from within. Beside her, Niklas — upright, polished, almost regal in the way he held himself. And next to him, his younger brother George, whose gaze flickered like restless light, as if nothing could quite hold it for long.
The last in their line was a stranger.
Armin Volker von Rothenberg.
The name had the weight of old stone and older money, but the man himself seemed carved from something colder. He sat apart without moving, his profile drawn in angles, his eyes distant — not in disdain exactly, but in that subtle way of someone for whom beauty and spectacle had long since dulled. The faintest shift of his jaw betrayed that he was enduring this moment rather than inhabiting it.
And between them — no, before them — stood Bai Qi.
The sight hit Shu Yao with the quiet violence of a tide returning too fast.
Bai Qi stood beneath the diffuse light as if it had been designed to find him. The morning breeze touched his wolfcut hair, turning the deep obsidian strands into ribbons of shadow that shimmered with each movement. His eyes, black as polished jet, held the same unflinching clarity as a night without stars — beautiful in its depth, merciless in its reach.
The black tailored suit cut to perfection, the lines of it crisp enough to slice through the soft air, and beneath it, a violet vest that caught the light like the bruised petals of a rare flower. The cameras loved him — their flashes fell across his face in bursts, sketching him in light and shadow, each click of the shutter like a heartbeat captured and preserved.
And in that moment, to Shu Yao, he looked untouchable.
A man drawn from the marrow of a divine design, standing where the world could see him, where the world was invited to want him.
Shu Yao's breath stuttered. The space between them felt too vast, yet far too dangerous to cross. He swallowed hard, the sound loud in the silence of his own mind.
Bai Qi turned, the corner of his mouth lifting in a smile that could have commanded oceans — not toward Shu Yao, but toward the flashing lights. And then, with the unhurried grace of someone who understood the art of being seen, he raised his hand.
The silver band around his finger caught the light.
It glimmered. Cold. Absolute.
The engagement ring.
Shu Yao's gaze caught on it just long enough for the pain to settle deep. That simple curve of metal was more than a ring — it was a lock, a seal, a declaration that whatever he might dream in the quiet hours belonged, irrevocably, to someone else.
He turned his face away, the movement sharp enough to feel. The ache in his neck flared, but it was nothing compared to the ache in his chest.
The clipboard shifted in his hand, its weight pulling him back into the role he had to play. Work first. Always work.
He began moving, weaving through the courtyard with the precise, economical steps of someone unwilling to disturb the geometry of the scene. Each motion was deliberate, the kind that hides exhaustion behind the mask of efficiency. The back of his neck burned. His temples throbbed. Yet his grip never loosened.
And beneath it all, there was the rose.
The memory lingered, stubborn as perfume caught in fabric. He could still see its rich red curve, feel the moment when he had reached for it, not knowing if he meant to accept it or preserve it. It had been beautiful — not in the way of grand gestures, but in the quiet defiance of a thing grown without thorns, meant for hands unused to pain.
That moment — brief, dangerous, unrepeatable — belonged to him alone. No one would know what it meant. No one would hear the thought that had crossed his mind then, or how the sight of it had unsettled the stillness inside him.
Even now, as the pain gnawed at the base of his skull, as his head pulsed with the heaviness of too many unspoken things, a blush ghosted across his cheekbones. Not from the cameras. Not from Bai Qi's impossible beauty. But from the memory of that rose — and the truth he would never give it away.
He bent his head, made a note on the top sheet of the clipboard. The sound of his pen scratching paper was quiet, almost reverent, like the turning of a page in a library no one else had entered in years.
And so he worked.
The wind shifted, carrying with it the faint echo of laughter from the far side of the courtyard. Shu Yao did not look up. The rose stayed in his chest like a locked drawer, and his hands moved over the clipboard as though nothing at all had changed.
And there the courtyard was an open stage, framed by the glass-and-steel grandeur of Rothenberg Industries. The building's mirrored façade caught every shard of light, scattering it back into the air like a thousand silent flashbulbs. Sunlight poured in slanted sheets across the polished stone floor, glinting off the chrome rails and the carefully arranged floral centerpieces lining the walkway. Somewhere, water hissed from an ornamental fountain, its voice lost beneath the staccato rhythm of cameras clicking.
Bai Qi stood at the heart of it all.
For years, he had been taught how to stand — where the weight of his body should rest, how to hold his chin so it caught the light without arrogance, how to let the corners of his mouth curve into something that seemed effortless. Today, it felt different. Today, he almost liked it.
The black tailored suit felt like an exoskeleton of confidence; the violet vest beneath caught the light like hidden amethyst. His hair — a wolfcut as sharp and deliberate as a blade — moved faintly in the wind, each strand holding the depthless shade of obsidian. He could feel the collective gaze of the courtyard resting on him, and in that moment, it didn't feel heavy. It felt… alive.
Beside him, Qing Yue radiated a different kind of presence — softer, but no less magnetic. She wore her smile like a piece of fine jewelry, polished and precise, and yet there was a glimmer beneath it that no rehearsal could teach. Bai Qi caught it in the way her eyes flickered toward him between camera flashes, a spark that made the edges of his own composure blur.
When the photographer gestured for them to shift, they moved as one. Not lovers, not in the sense the public might imagine, but brand embodiments — silhouettes engineered for elegance. His shoulder angled toward hers, her hand resting near the curve of his arm, their gazes locked for the frame as if the world beyond the lens didn't exist. The image would sell perfection, and in that instant, Bai Qi almost believed it himself.
And yet — he also knew. Without her beside him, the façade would crack. Qing Yue was the counterweight to his precision, the reason the smiles felt genuine instead of carved from marble. With her there, he wasn't just posing. He was something worth looking at.
Qing Yue, for her part, was more than radiant — she was alive. Each flash seemed to give her more breath, more color. It wasn't simply the clothes, or the way the diamond in her engagement ring caught the sun, sending sparks into the air. It was Bai Qi. Being beside him made her feel human in a way she didn't understand, as if her pulse found a rhythm only when matched to his. She had been in beautiful places before, but never like this — never in a moment that seemed to remake her.
The courtyard hummed with this quiet symbiosis. The stylists whispered to one another on the edges of the scene, adjusting a hem here, smoothing a strand of hair there. The PR team hovered near the fountain, checking their watches. Above, the glass tower rose, a monolith that seemed to hold the sky itself.
And then there was Shu Yao.
He did not belong to the scene, though he existed within it. Clipboard in hand, shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows, he was a figure in motion, threading the periphery like a shadow that refused to dissolve in the light. From his vantage, the pair in the center might have seemed carved from the same luminous stone the building was made of — too perfect, too polished, too far away.
Sometimes, as his pen scratched notes into the page, he allowed himself the faintest spark of warmth at the sight of Bai Qi alive and thriving in this rarefied air. But more often, it hurt. It hurt in quiet, unbearable ways — the ring glinting like a shard of ice; the subtle shift of Bai Qi's posture toward Qing Yue; the fraction of a moment when the cameras caught them leaning in just enough to suggest intimacy, even if no such thing passed between them.
These were not his moments. They belonged to the world, to the brand, to a reality that had no room for him.
And yet, Shu Yao could not look away.
The memory of the rose still lingered — not just the sight of it, but the way it had felt to nearly take it, to almost claim something beautiful before it was gone. That moment had been his alone, but here, in the open glare of the courtyard, beauty belonged to everyone but him.
Then — one by one — the cameras fell silent. Not abruptly, but like rain easing into a drizzle, the sound thinning, retreating. The courtyard seemed to listen to itself, and in that hush, the fountain's voice returned — steady, patient, as if it had been speaking all along and no one had noticed.
The photographer gave a quiet nod. Someone murmured "That's a wrap" from the edge of the set.
Bai Qi's gaze lingered on the far horizon of the mirrored façade, watching how the clouds bent across its surface, how his own reflection dissolved and reformed between them. Only then did he shift his weight back, the deliberate movement of a man stepping away from a stage he had been both prisoner and king.
Bai Qi shifted subtly, he takes some Steps ahead then Qing Yue, ever in step with him, glanced up and caught the micro-expression — that flash of relief he thought he hid well.
"You looked like you were enjoying yourself a little too much," she murmured, her lips barely moving, eyes still on the polished glass façade ahead.
He smirked, leaning slightly toward her. "What can I say? The cameras likes me. Too much" Then, after a beat, softer, more honest: "But they don't make me feel as tall as when you're next to me."
Qing Yue's laugh was small, caught between disbelief and warmth. "You really are insufferable sometimes."
"Only sometimes?" He tilted his head, feigning surprise.