The sun was folding itself into the horizon, streaking the courtyard with molten amber and bruised violet. Each ray caught the edges of the glass towers, fracturing across the polished stone like a scattering of golden knives. Shu Yao sat hunched on a bench at the periphery, his body humming with exhaustion. Muscles ached in slow, relentless pulses from hours of work, each movement he had made since dawn etched into the core of him. His hands rested on the clipboard across his lap, but it was useless now — the pen long stilled, the paper meaningless to eyes too weary to read.
From somewhere beyond the benches, laughter floated — light, unrestrained, irrepressible. Qing Yue and Bai Qi. The sound seemed to ripple across the courtyard, bouncing from the reflective glass of Rothenberg Industries, carried over the ornamental fountain's soft hiss, and threading its way through the last lingering beams of sunlight. Shu Yao's chest constricted, not in envy but in the ache of absence. They were luminous, untouchable in their own orbit, and he was merely a shadow sitting at the edge.
The courtyard was vast, too vast, teeming with more people than usual — assistants, photographers, stylists, onlookers. It was a stage as much as it was a plaza, and Shu Yao's form seemed inconsequential against the sprawling expanse. Bai Qi, preoccupied with orchestrating the retreat and attending to his mother and Qing Yue, he did not glance shu Yao way. Yet someone else had noticed.
The younger Rothenberg's gaze had lingered longer than necessary. Throughout the day, he had observed the boy whose loyalty never faltered, whose steps never wavered, whose hands did not pause even for the meager comfort of food or rest. And now, as the crowd thinned and the last notes of laughter faded into murmurs, George allowed himself the audacity to approach.
Shu Yao did not stir when the footsteps neared. He was cocooned in the memory of a rose — red, fragile, defiant — curling inside him like a flame he could neither extinguish nor claim. His eyes, dimmed from the day's labor, stared at the stone beneath his feet, tracing cracks like a cartographer mapping the ruins of an abandoned kingdom.
Bai Qi's mother rose from the crescent of chairs, her movements precise, a quiet command in every tilt of her posture. She approached Bai Qi first, her eyes softening as she reached him. "Bend a little, Qi," she instructed, her tone gentle but absolute. Bai Qi inclined just enough, the movement smooth and practiced, and her fingers found the curve of his cheek, pinching it with a mixture of fondness and maternal authority. His lips twitched in a restrained smile, a fleeting surrender to the affection she demanded of him.
Turning next to Armin, she repeated the ritual, her delicate hand pinching the younger man's cheek with the same exacting care. Armin's face remained a perfect mask, expressionboard-still, yet in the quiet twitch of his jaw, there was a flicker the smallest acknowledgment that her touch had landed, that her presence had reached him.
The two men, poised heirs to legacies of steel and glass, bent under her touch not in submission but in the silent choreography of a family accustomed to ritual, respect, and the subtle warmth that threaded through authority. Even in the midst of the bustling courtyard, with photographers capturing every calculated movement, the gesture lingered — small, intimate, and utterly theirs.
The expensive cars waited beyond the grand driveway, engines humming like restrained beasts. One by one, the figures departed. Qing Yue followed Bai Qi's mother, leaving the courtyard stripped of warmth and laughter. Bai Qi, bound by inheritance, lingered — the second heir of Rothenberg Industries, tied to the pulse of the company as inexorably as roots to earth. Niklas, Armin, and Bai Qi eventually turned toward the glass tower, their reflections fracturing in the mirrored façade as they entered, leaving the courtyard quieter than it had been since morning.
"George point of view"
George paused at the threshold of Shu Yao's solitude. For a moment, he simply looked, as if the boy's presence demanded caution. His chest felt impossibly tight; the delicate planes of Shu Yao's face unsettled him with every glance. George had no idea why, but his mind melted at the sight — the curve of his jaw, the faint arch of his brows, the way his lips pressed together as if hiding an ocean of thought. And yet, words seemed suddenly too heavy, too intimate, to spill across the distance between them.
"...You've been working all day," George finally murmured, voice soft enough to tremble. The syllables were almost carried away by the evening breeze, yet they hung between them, suspended like a fragile note of music.
Shu Yao's head tilted slightly, the pen long gone from his grasp. The weight in his chest, the ache in his muscles, the lingering scent of roses in memory — none of it mattered enough to distract him from the soft intrusion of the voice. He looked at George, really looked, though the faintest distance remained. The bench beneath him was a threshold he had built, and stepping across it was not something he could do lightly.
George's hands flexed at his sides, restless as the ornamental grasses bending in the gentle wind. The sun had sunk lower now, streaking the courtyard in deep gold and the faintest hint of amethyst, and the mirrored walls of Rothenberg Industries captured the sky's reflection in a thousand glinting fragments. Each reflection seemed to catch George's anxiety, folding it into the architecture of light and shadow.
"You didn't need to shoulder everything alone," he said at last, his voice low and measured, as if even the gentlest sound might disturb the fragile stillness. "You may allow yourself to rest."
Shu Yao's lips curved, a fraction, imperceptible to anyone but George. The rose lingered in his chest like an heirloom of memory, a stubborn proof that beauty could exist in secrecy. And somewhere in the soft dimming of the day, George realized that what he felt — the pull of that delicate presence — was not admiration. It was something more primal, more fragile, more disarming.
And yet Shu Yao remained there, on the bench, the world around him dissolving into the quiet pulse of memory and longing. The sun dipped lower, the courtyard stretching into shadow, and George, rooted in his own unspoken turmoil, simply watched — captivated, hesitant, and wholly undone.
The office of Rothenberg Industries was a vault of polished ambition, every surface gleaming like a testament to precision and power. Niklas reclined in his high-backed chair, the molten light from the setting sun cascading through the floor-to-ceiling windows, catching his golden hair in glimmers that seemed almost liquid. His ice-blue eyes, sharp and unyielding, traced the empty space where Bai Qi and Armin should have been, yet were not.
He knew the boy was showing Armin the ropes, guiding him through nuances and subtleties without being asked, yet Niklas's mind had wandered elsewhere. It drifted, like a leaf on a slow river, to the simple worker whose skillfulness had quietly impressed him — Shu Yao. The boy had a dexterity in everything he touched, a silent mastery that even made Bai Qi shine brighter in front of the cameras. Niklas allowed himself a moment of acknowledgment: the worker deserved more, far more than he had been offered. Yet Shu Yao, with the stubborn grace of his own convictions, had refused Niklas's proposal. Instead, he had directed Bai Qi, making the heir's movements effortless, almost magical, as though the brand itself had bent to his will.
A faint exhale left Niklas, deliberate and quiet, as his hands pressed onto the wide mahogany desk before him. The surface was cool beneath his palms, veins of rich wood whispering wealth and authority, a silent reminder that everything within this room was meticulously arranged — except, perhaps, for the thoughts lingering at the edges of his mind.
He leaned forward slightly, the light catching the sharp planes of his face, etching shadows along his cheekbones. The glow seemed to set him aflame from within, illuminating the ice and gold of his features, casting him simultaneously as monarch and observer. He could almost see the boy now, seated somewhere distant, clipboard in hand, lost in his own universe of careful labor and cherished memory. A pang of recognition — admiration, even — tightened at Niklas's chest.
Releasing a measured breath, he lifted a hand, drawing his phone from its resting place on the polished desk. The metal glinted like a shard of sunlight trapped in glass. With a precise motion, he tapped the screen and held it to his ear.
George's phone vibrated in his palm, a persistent tremor that sliced through the rare quiet of the Rothenberg courtyard. Every time he bent a little closer to Shu Yao, offering a soft word or a fleeting smile, the device demanded attention with mechanical insistence. George's lips pressed into a thin line; he hissed under his breath, a sharp punctuation of irritation, before lifting the receiver to his ear.
"George," came the smooth, commanding voice of Niklas, carried with the weight of inevitability.
George's shoulders tensed. He had known, deep down, that it would be something to do with Bai Qi — that restless, precise whirlwind of a son who seemed to bend the world around him without ever asking. "What did he do this time?" George muttered, exhaling in a soft, almost invisible groan. The words barely left his lips before Niklas cut him off.
"Bring Shu Yao to my office immediately," Niklas said, each word sharp and deliberate, leaving no room for hesitation or negotiation. There was a pause, a weight that pressed through the line, and George could feel the unspoken urgency behind it.
George blinked, caught between surprise and a flicker of apprehension. He glanced down at Shu Yao, seated on the bench beneath the fading sun, his body angled toward the late light, shoulders squared in quiet composure. The clipboard rested in his lap, fingers lightly gripping the edges, a silent testament to diligence and endurance. In that moment, George felt the pull of something fragile, unspoken — the vulnerability masked beneath the boy's meticulous attention to detail.
"Yes… yes, of course," George said finally, voice steadying despite the tremor of uncertainty threading through it. He allowed his gaze to linger on Shu Yao for a heartbeat longer, observing the way the light caught the pale curve of his cheek, how his hair framed a face that seemed carved with careful precision. There was a strange, almost imperceptible warmth that welled up in George's chest, but it was tempered by hesitation.
George ended the call, the click of the receiver sharp against the muted murmur of the courtyard. He exhaled slowly, letting the tension in his shoulders ease, though only slightly. He turned his gaze toward Shu Yao, who still sat rigid on the bench, fingers grazing the edge of the clipboard as if it could anchor him to some unshakable reality.
"Boss wants to see you," George said, voice low, steady, but carrying an unspoken weight that made Shu Yao startle.
The words landed like sudden rain against glass. Shu Yao's body jolted upright, the bench creaking under the quick shift of weight. His pen wobbled for a heartbeat before he set it down, a small, hesitant gesture, as if that one motion could hold back the tide of anxiety already rising in his chest.
"W-what…?" Shu Yao stammered, voice barely a whisper, as a chill of uncertainty traced his spine. His mind spun, a carousel of doubt and self-accusation. "Did… did I… make a mistake?" He swallowed hard, throat dry, chest tightening with the slow burn of imagined failure.
George's eyes softened, but he said nothing. He let Shu Yao's worry fill the space, aware of how deeply the boy internalized the weight of responsibility, how effortlessly he bore the invisible burdens of a world that seemed always one step ahead.