The air around them trembled with the weight of words left unsaid. Shu Yao's fingers clutched the clipboard too tightly, the pen pressed so hard it left a faint groove against the paper without writing a thing. His knuckles whitened, his chest rose in shallow breaths, and though he forced himself upright, there was a trembling in his steps that betrayed him. Fear was a shadow that would not unclasp its grip from him—it threaded through his veins like cold iron, stubborn and merciless.
George stood near, his gaze half-turned, half-averted, both drawn toward the boy and hesitant to hold him in sight too long. For every second he allowed his eyes to linger, Shu Yao's fragility seemed to deepen, like porcelain hairline cracks spreading under invisible pressure. George feared that if he stared too directly, too persistently, the boy would simply fracture before him. So he watched cautiously, as though his very attention could wound.
Shu Yao rose from the courtyard bench, clipboard held to his chest like a fragile shield. His footsteps, though steady in outward appearance, carried the soundless tremor of flight. He walked toward the tall glass doors that whispered of retreat and enclosure, and George's eyes followed.
He did not follow himself.
Something within George—something deep, instinctive, as if carved in bone—held him back. Every time he tried to close the distance between them, every time he reached across that quiet void, something strange intervened. Like an unseen hand of fate, pulling Shu Yao further from his reach. Like Niklas's sudden call, sending Shu Yao away at the exact moment George intended to speak. The world itself seemed to conspire to keep him at arm's length.
The doors slid open in silence. For a heartbeat, Shu Yao's slim frame was caught between courtyard light and the sterile gleam inside, his profile delicate, almost spectral, before the doors closed again. He was gone—swallowed by the glass and its reflection.
George stood in the stillness left behind, his hands drifting to his coat. The long folds of German wool swayed with a weight of authority, concealing the storm beneath his ribs. From its pocket, he drew a black-and-gold case. Sobranie cigarettes, slender and extravagant, a habit as meticulous as it was destructive. One tapped against his palm, as if measuring his patience, before he drew the lighter—silver, sleek, gleaming briefly in the half-light. The flame flared, a momentary sun, then bent to kiss the cigarette's end.
The smoke curled upward, pale ribbons dissolving into the courtyard air. It rose, dispersed, and was gone—vanishing the way Shu Yao had just moments before. George exhaled slowly, his breath carrying more than smoke: resignation, restraint, a quiet vow pressed into the air with every grey coil.
His fingers, long and deft, pinched the cigarette between them—two fingers only, elegant, precise. The gesture was careless and deliberate at once. At his height, nearly two meters, he seemed almost a structure rather than a man, a tower carved from golden stone, unmoved by wind yet gnawed by storms within. His hair—sunlight trapped in strands—fell forward, catching the faint gleam of dusk as he pushed it back with one restless hand.
He thought of Shu Yao. Not just of his fragile movements, not just of his fear, but of the boy's silence—of how silence itself seemed to wrap around him like an extra layer of skin. George's own silence mirrored it now, though inside his chest words struck against the walls of his heart, desperate for release.
He does not trust me.
The thought fell heavy, though George had known it long before. Shu Yao kept his distance with the same desperation of a man clinging to the last inches of safety. George had seen that kind of retreat before, in places where survival meant looking down, locking doors, never turning your back to the night. Shu Yao lived in that posture still.
George lifted the cigarette again, the taste bitter, elegant, unnecessary. The smoke uncoiled like memory. He thought—perhaps, if he could stand steadier, more reliable, the boy might one day step closer. Perhaps strength was not only in his stature, not only in the force of his presence, but in the quiet constancy of being there when the other finally dared to look.
The courtyard wind swept against his coat, pressing it to his frame like a cloak of command. Somewhere within those walls beyond the glass, Shu Yao walked alone, and George did not follow. But his thoughts shadowed him—relentless, unyielding, a guardian from afar.
He imagined Shu Yao's trembling hand scribbling against the clipboard, words pressed onto paper the way fear pressed into his bones. He imagined the boy pausing under fluorescent light, eyes flickering not to people but to corners, ceilings, windows—measuring escape routes more than he measured faces. George's chest tightened at the thought.
How long could someone live like that? With fear stitched into every gesture, stitched so tight it became indistinguishable from the self?
George's smoke thinned into the evening, dissolving into nothing. He stared into the empty air it left behind, his jaw set, his shoulders squared against the ache in his chest. The boy was still afraid. Still retreating. Still holding his clipboard like a shield.
And George—standing tall, cigarette pinched between fingers that seemed made to wield something heavier—could only vow silently: I will become the kind of man he can turn to. The kind who can bear the weight he refuses to let anyone else touch.
Above him, the last light of the day dimmed. The courtyard shadows stretched long, swallowing the edges of stone and glass. Within them, George stood like an unmoving sentinel, dashing in form, conflicted in soul, waiting—always waiting—for the moment Shu Yao's fear might break enough to let trust slip in.
"Back to shu Yao"
Shu Yao's fingers trembled faintly as they grazed over the cold metal panel, each button glowing like a constellation in a private night sky. He chose the highest star—the top floor—where power lived and decisions were carved into marble. His thumb lingered against the circle of light as though by holding it down he might halt the inevitable ascent, yet the elevator obeyed none of his secret wishes.
The doors slid shut behind him with the finality of a sealed fate, a hush swallowing him whole. Within the mirrored walls he caught sight of himself: the clipboard clutched like a shield in one hand, the other pressed stiff against his side as if to keep his own ribs from splitting beneath the thud of his heartbeat. Fear was not a passing visitor—it was a parasite nesting in his chest, feeding off the softest parts of him.
As the lift stirred to life, it carried him upward floor by floor, each ding a slow toll of an unseen bell. The sound reverberated through his bones, and with it his thoughts spiraled into darker shapes. Had he faltered at work? Misplaced a detail? Allowed some unseen flaw to crawl unnoticed across his duties? His mind became a jury and executioner, whispering guilty verdicts he could not silence.
The air inside was immaculate, perfumed faintly with steel and polish, yet to him it tasted like confinement. His lungs filled too shallowly, each breath weighed down by the gravity of speculation. Still, Shu Yao did not outwardly waver. He stood upright, shoulders squared with the desperate dignity of a man who refuses to bend even under invisible chains.
Numbers lit and faded above the door, a slow countdown to his confrontation. Seven. Six. Five. Each digit carved into him like a chisel striking marble. His pulse hammered against his throat, a relentless drumbeat urging surrender, yet he clung to composure, the way sailors cling to rigging in a storm.
And so the elevator climbed, carrying both his body and his dread, an iron vessel rising through invisible tides. The silence pressed closer, thick as velvet, while the weight of his imagination crushed him more thoroughly than any real accusation. When at last the glowing numeral of the top floor neared, Shu Yao stood motionless, carved from fear and resolve alike—a statue awaiting judgment, heart still thundering in secret beneath stone.
The elevator's hum, the soft echo of Shu Yao's racing pulse, faded into silence as the scene drifted elsewhere—into the broad corridors of Rothenberg Industries, where steel and ambition reigned in equal measure.
Bai Qi walked with a languid ease, one arm slung across Armin's shoulders as though Armin were a brother to be guided, claimed, perhaps even possessed. His touch was casual, yet the weight of it pressed like an unspoken tether. The air carried the faint metallic tang of machinery, the clipped rhythm of workers moving with rehearsed precision—each footstep in this place a note in his family's symphony of power.
"Here," Bai Qi said, sweeping his free hand through the air as if to unveil a kingdom. His voice bore the echo of pride, though beneath it lay a sharpness, like a blade hidden in silk. "This is where it began. Our father—cold, precise, a man carved from stone—commanded every inch of this place. Look at them." His chin tilted toward the rows of laborers whose spines stiffened at the mere mention of authority. "He didn't need words to rule. Just his eyes. One glance, and they obeyed. Terrified."
He chuckled, a low ripple, mockery wrapped in memory. "That same face? He tried it on me. The stare, the silence, the weight of his shadow. But it never worked. Not once." Bai Qi's grin flashed, daring, youthful, as though recounting his triumph against the iron will of the man who made him. "See? His ghost still lingers in the walls, but it cannot touch me."
Armin's head turned away, his profile cut in marble, the refusal to meet his brother's gaze sharper than words could ever be. He moved like one walking through a dream he wished to wake from, unresponsive, untouchable.
Bai Qi frowned, the playful curl of his mouth faltering. His hand lifted, and with a peculiar tenderness disguised as annoyance, he pressed a finger into Armin's cheek, trying to break the mask of silence.
"You're always so silent," he murmured, almost chiding, almost pleading. "Can't you understand a single joke?"
The words hung, suspended between them like a thread of fragile glass.
Armin only nodded. No smile, no answer—just the soundless affirmation of someone who had long since buried his voice.
Bai Qi's laughter died in his throat. The emptiness in his brother's silence pressed harder than any command their father had ever given.
The elevator shuddered to a halt with a sound like the last breath of some caged beast, metal groaning against metal. Shu Yao felt his pulse hammering in his throat, a steady drumbeat that seemed louder than the grinding machinery. For a suspended moment, he stood still, as though his shoes had melted into the floor, but the doors slid apart with a quiet sigh, and hesitation became impossible.
He stepped forward.
The air outside was sharp with cologne and polish, as if even the atmosphere of Rothenberg Industries had been lacquered to perfection. Each footfall echoed faintly across the corridor's marble veins—black and white stone split like frozen rivers, their gleam swallowing the thin shadow of his body. At the end, the door loomed. tall, carved, and far too fine for human hands to appear harmless upon.
He drew in one slow breath, shallow and trembling, then let it escape him in a hush of surrender. The muscles in his hand stilled, the bones taut with indecision, before he finally raised his knuckles and knocked.
A silence. Then—
"Enter."
The voice that answered was unmistakable, cold yet not without its weight of courtesy. Niklas Rothenberg never raised his tone. He did not need to. Authority, in his mouth, was not a sound but a law.
Shu Yao's throat constricted. Still, he obeyed.
The door yielded beneath his hand with a soft groan, and he slipped through the opening like a man slipping into the maw of the sea. His gaze fell, as it always did, to the floor first—the marble in here deeper, richer, veins of gold stitched through it like lightning caught and frozen mid-strike. Beneath his eyes lay a carpet, woven in hues of dark crimson and ash, German craftsmanship coiled in patterns that seemed to move if one stared too long.
He closed the door behind him, and the soft click rang far louder in his ears than it ought to have.
Shu Yao advanced. Not too far—never too far. His body betrayed him with its quiet tremor, though he tried to walk in measured paces, his spine stiff, his hands obediently clutching the clipboard. Fear was a ghost lodged inside his chest, and though invisible, it pressed so heavily against his ribs that it stole his air.
"Sir," he managed, his voice lower than the floor itself. "You summoned me."
Niklas's eyes lifted to him from across the desk, cool as slate, dark as stormwater. For an instant, he simply observed. Then—
"You."
The single word was a blade unsheathed. Shu Yao flinched, a quiver running up his spine like the sting of a whip, but he forced the muscles of his body back into stillness.
"Shall we turn now to the matter of the offer I extended?"
The question coiled around the room like smoke. Shu Yao's head dipped further, as if he could hide within the angle of his own neck. His eyes widened despite him.
"Do I understand correctly that you are declining the offer I presented?"
The air seemed thinner suddenly, as though the walls themselves had closed in to listen. Shu Yao's lips parted, but the words did not come. His mind wrestled itself into knots. If he said yes, he would be surrendering the last fragments of self he still clung to. If he said no, he risked the boss's wrath—an invisible hammer poised above his livelihood, ready to shatter the fragile glass of his position.
He could not say yes. He would not say yes. To stand before crowds, a spectacle in branded cloth, reduced to a painted ornament—it was suffocating, like being lowered into a coffin with the lid nailed shut. But to refuse outright? That was a darkness of another kind.
Niklas leaned back in his chair, an empire of leather and steel behind him. For the first time, his voice shed its cutting edge. He exhaled, the sound closer to a sigh than a command, though even that sigh seemed sharp enough to cleave bone.
"If you would prefer otherwise, I shall not press the matter."
The words fell soft, yet each syllable struck Shu Yao like cold rain upon bare skin.
But the silence that followed was heavier than permission.