The Rothenberg villa was a mausoleum of cold stone and echoes. Bai Qi moved through the foyer like a specter, his frame hunched, eyes fixed on the floor. He ignored the servants who scurried out of his path; he ignored the suffocating silence of the hallways. He was a man drowning on dry land.
He reached his suite and threw the doors open. The room was dark, the only light coming from the bruised, purple sky outside. His gaze snapped to the bed.
It lay where he had left it earlier, unassuming book that held the weight of a decade's worth of betrayal. He strided forward, his movements frantic and uncoordinated. He snatched the leather-bound volume and collapsed onto the cushions, pulling it so close to his face he could smell the faint, lingering scent of Shu Yao—vanilla and old paper.
His eyes were bloodshot, the obsidian depths murky with salt and exhaustion. With trembling fingers, he began to flip the pages. He knew this would destroy him. He wanted it to.
The handwriting was neat, slanted, and infinitely gentle.
Bai Qi came into our class today. He is so young, yet he is already so tall... I felt a secret pang of shame. I am older than him, yet I feel so small when he walks by. He is like a Prince from a storybook I wasn't meant to read.
Bai Qi gripped the edges of the paper, his knuckles turning a ghostly white.
When he looks at me, he smiles. My heart stops. I have to look away because I am terrified he will see the truth in my eyes. He only smiles because he knows Qing Yue is my sister. I know he cares for her... but sometimes, I let myself pretend he cares for me, too.
A jagged sob ripped from Bai Qi's throat.
"I never care," he whispered to the empty room. "I was always looking past you. I just didn't know it was you."
He turned the page, his tears blurring the ink.
I cannot stand the thought of him loving her. When we first met—that day in the hospital—he looked at me with such wonder. I wish we could just spend time together, but I am a coward. Whenever our eyes meet, the air leaves my lungs. It is too much. Being near him is like standing too close to the sun.
Bai Qi's breath hitched. The day in where he kiss shu Yao forehead. Memory fractured his mind. He saw a child in the bed, a small figure too fragile, a face blurred by time, For years, he had convinced himself that the child who he saw was —the one he had vowed to protect—was Qing Yue.
"It was you," Bai Qi gasped, his forehead hitting the journal. "It was always you. I mistook my own lover."
The realization was a guillotine. He had spent years punishing the person he should have been worshipping. He had "killed" the boy in the past by ignoring him, and he had "killed" the man tonight with a cup of poison.
"Forgive me, Shu Yao," he wailed, the sound muffled by the pillows. "Please... don't leave me. The boy on that bed... Was you it was always you."
He cried until the darkness of the room felt like a physical weight, pressing him down into the mattress. Exhaustion finally claimed him—a heavy, dreamless sleep that offered no peace, only a temporary cessation of the agony.
In the opposite wing of the villa, the atmosphere was a stark contrast of warmth and desperate relief.
Armin sat on the edge of his bed, his stature curved around the boy in his arms.
He held Florian as if the boy were made of spun glass, his face buried in the crook of the boy's neck.
He could feel the pulse beneath Florian's skin—a miracle he still couldn't logically process.
Florian sat stiffly at first, his olive eyes darting around the room. He looked down at his own hands, then up at the man holding him.
"Sir..." Florian began, his voice hesitant.
Armin flinched at the title. He pulled back just enough to look Florian in the eye, his own ice-blue gaze swimming with unshed tears.
"Don't," Armin whispered, his voice thick. "Don't call me 'Sir.' Not ever again."
Florian blinked, a tear tracing a path down his pale cheek. "But why? I am... I was just—"
"Armin," the elder Rothenberg corrected, his hands moving to cup Florian's face. "Call me Armin. Please."
Florian's lower lip trembled. "But back then... you... you never wanted someone like me. I was just a subordinate.
Armin didn't let him finish. He surged forward, crushing Florian back into a hug that was almost painful in its intensity.
"You never knew how I suffered," Armin choked out. "The logic, the business, the money... it was all nothing compared to you. Every day you weren't by my side was a year of winter. I felt like half a man walking through a world of ghosts."
Florian gasped, his small hands coming up to clutch at Armin's shirt.
"Don't cry," Florian whispered, his voice a soft melody. He reached up, his thumb brushing away a stray tear from Armin's cheek. "It does not suit a Rothenberg to weep."
Armin leaned into the touch, closing his eyes. The "Statue" had finally crumbled. "I don't care about being a Rothenberg. I only care about you."
He broke the embrace slightly, his eyes searching Florian's with a raw, terrifying vulnerability. "Promise me. Promise me you will never leave me again. I don't care how you came back. I don't care what I have to pay. Just... stay."
"I promise," Florian said, his voice steady for the first time. "I won't leave you.
Armin let out a shaky breath, a smile—real and radiant—breaking across his face. "You matter to me more than you could ever know."
"I know," Florian replied, leaning his forehead against Armin's. "I can feel it. And Armin?"
"I love you, too."
And slowly The winter sun bled through the heavy velvet curtains, casting long, pale shafts of light across the mahogany floor. It was morning. The festive cheer of the previous night had evaporated, leaving the Rothenberg villa in a state of hollow silence.
Bai Mingzhu walked down the corridor, the silk of her robe whispering against the floor. She stopped at Bai Qi's door. He hadn't joined them for the early morning tea. She knocked, a soft, rhythmic sound. No answer.
With a maternal sigh, she turned the handle. "Is my darling still sleeping?" she murmured, stepping into the room.
She froze. Her son was not tucked under the silken sheets. He was sprawled across the top of the bed, still wearing his rumpled Christmas suit. He was curled into a tight, defensive fetal position, clutching a weathered diary to his chest so fiercely his knuckles were white.
A bittersweet smile touched her lips. She retrieved her phone, capturing the moment. To her, he looked like the little boy he once was. Another memory for the album, she thought.
She leaned down, brushing a stray lock of hair from his forehead. "Come, son. The sun is high. Don't you want to have breakfast with us?"
Her smile faltered as she felt the heat radiating from his skin. His face was not peaceful; it was a mask of exhaustion and lingering grief.
Bai Qi's eyelids flickered. When they opened, his eyes were a map of red veins and raw trauma. He flinched at the sight of his mother, immediately averting his gaze to the floor.
"What is this?" Mingzhu asked, her voice sharpening with concern. She took his chin in her hand, forcing him to meet her eyes. "You look as though you've been through a war. What happened last night?"
Bai Qi remained silent, his throat working as he swallowed hard.
"You were out late," she continued, her voice softening. "Did someone insult you? Did someone dare to speak against you?"
Bai Qi shook his head slowly.
"Then what is troubling my son? What has stolen your peace?"
Without warning, Bai Qi lunged forward, throwing his arms around his mother's waist. He buried his face in her lap and began to sob. The sound was guttural, a release years of suppressed guilt and newfound horror.
"My dear! What is wrong? You're frightening me," Mingzhu flinch, her hands hovering over his shaking shoulders before pulling him close. "Tell me what happened."
"I am sorry, Mom," he gasped between ragged breaths. "I am so sorry."
Why are you sorry? You have done nothing wrong dear."
Bai Qi pulled back, his face stained with tears. He clutched the diary until the leather groaned. "Do you remember... when we visited China? When I was a child?"
Mingzhu nodded slowly. "Of course. Your first time there. Your father nearly lost his mind when you disappeared from the hospital."
"I told you... when I came back... that I had seen a pretty girl. That she was the reason I wandered off."
"Yes," Mingzhu smiled sadly. "You wouldn't stop talking about Qing Yue. You insisted she was the most beautiful thing you'd ever seen."
Bai Qi shook his head violently. "No, Mom. It wasn't her."
Mingzhu's obsidian eyes blinked in confusion. "Then who? Who was it?"
"It wasn't a girl," Bai Qi whispered, his voice trembling with the weight of the truth. "It was a boy."
Mingzhu froze, the words dying in her throat. Before she could process the revelation, the heavy oak door creaked open further.
Niklas Rothenberg entered. He was a vision of cold, structured power in a midnight blue suit. His shoes clicked with surgical precision against the floor. He looked at his wife, then down at the broken state of his heir.
"Darling," Mingzhu said, her voice wavering. "Could you verify something? Bai Qi is speaking of that day in China. He says the child he met... it wasn't a girl."
Niklas walked toward them, his presence chilling the air. He looked down at Bai Qi, his expression unreadable—a mask of granite.
"It was a boy," Niklas said, his voice a low, resonant baritone. "And that boy was Shu Yao."
The silence that followed was deafening. Mingzhu was left speechless, her hand flying to her mouth. Bai Qi's head snapped up, his eyes wide with a mix of shock and betrayal as he stared at his father's frozen face.
"You knew?" Bai Qi lunged to his feet, the diary falling to the rug. "You knew it was him all this time? Why didn't you tell me?"
Niklas looked at his son with a gaze as sharp as a scalpel. "You had already created enough problems that day, Bai Qi.
Bai Qi's breath hitched, the sound catching in his throat like a shard of glass.
"The reason I hired Shu Yao," Niklas continued, his eyes devoid of sentiment, "was simple. I owed his father. He protected you during that chaos in China. Before he died, he spoke of his son—a boy who had been bullied, pushed into a fountain by a group of children."
Bai Mingzhu felt the air in the room shift. The pieces of a decade-long puzzle were falling into place with a terrifying click. She looked at her husband's stern face, then back at the shattered remains of her son.
"Does that mean..." Mingzhu whispered, her obsidian eyes shimmering with a sudden, piercing clarity. "All this time, my Bai Qi was in love with Shu Yao?"
Bai Qi's head snapped away, his gaze fixing on a shadowed corner of the room. He couldn't bear the weight of her discovery.
Niklas's expression hardened, his jaw tightening as if he were preparing to deliver a lecture on the futility of such emotions.
Mingzhu saw the reprimand forming on her husband's lips. She stepped forward, pressing her palm against the midnight blue silk over Niklas's heart.
"No," she said softly but firmly. "Don't."
She turned back to Bai Qi. She reached out, her fingers gentle as they tilted his chin upward. His skin was cold, his pulse erratic.
"No one told me," Bai Qi rasped, his voice breaking. "No one told me the 'girl' from the hospital was the boy standing in my shadow."
Mingzhu shook her head, a serene, almost ethereal smile blooming on her face. "If my boy is truly in love with Shu Yao, then let it be."
The declaration struck the room like a physical force. Niklas recoiled slightly, his eyes narrowing in surprise. Even Bai Qi froze, his wide, bloodshot eyes searching his mother's face for a trace of a joke or a trap.
"Is it true?" Bai Qi whispered.
"I still remember the way you used to hide in your room, trying to draw the face of the person you loved," Mingzhu said, her voice a warm caress.
"You mistook him for a girl, yes. But the soul doesn't care about the silhouette, Bai Qi. If it is Shu Yao you love, then it is okay."
She moved her hand from his chin to his chest, pressing her palm directly over his frantic heart.
"I only want to see my boys happy," she said, her voice ringing with a maternal authority that even Niklas could not override. "That is all that matters to me now. Follow your heart, Bai Qi. Not your mind."
Niklas flinched. The words were a ghost. Decades ago, in a garden far from the weight of the Rothenberg crown, he had whispered those exact words to her.
Follow your heart, not your mind. Hearing them now was like being struck by a mirror reflecting his younger, softer self.
Mingzhu turned her gaze toward her husband. She didn't say anything, but her smile was a quiet challenge—a reminder of the love that had once defied the very empire they now ruled.