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Portrait of Obsession

Nirvanika
7
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The average realized release rate over the past 30 days is 7 chs / week.
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Chapter 1 - Smoke and Shadows

The lanterns in the teahouse bled a dull red light onto the smoke-thick air. The year was 1923, and Shanghai, swollen with restless artists and political pamphleteers, buzzed with the hum of half-drunken voices. The city was alive, yet strangled—opium dens hid behind curtained doors, revolution whispered from corners, and the press machines ran with more lies than truth.

Yibo sat near the back, his coat collar turned up, notebook open, fountain pen trembling between his fingers. He was twenty, still carrying the fragile awkwardness of youth, though the sharp set of his jaw suggested ambition too large for his frame. He had been invited by his mentor, an older dramatist, to this clandestine gathering of writers, actors, and painters—those bold enough to test the limits of art under a government that silenced more than it allowed.

He scribbled a line of poetry—half-formed, disjointed—then stopped when the room shifted. A hush spread, not absolute, but heavy enough to draw notice.

He looked up.

Through the archway stepped a man whose presence bent the air around him. He was tall, dressed in a long black changshan that caught the light like wet ink. His face—sharp, luminous—seemed carved by some cruel god determined to tempt mortals into ruin. Eyes that smoldered even in the dimness swept the room as if he owned it.

"Zhan," someone whispered reverently, lifting a hand in greeting.

Yibo had heard the name before, murmured among art students: Zhan, the painter whose canvases were said to capture the soul, not just the form; Zhan, whose charm could ignite entire salons into obsession. Yet no description prepared him for the weight of seeing him in the flesh.

Yibo's chest tightened. His pen rolled from his fingers.

Zhan drifted into the circle of chairs at the room's center, accepting a cigarette from a poetess with a smile that seemed to unspool her very sense of self. He lit it with a deliberate grace, inhaled, exhaled a ribbon of smoke that curled upward as though obeying him alone. His voice, when he finally spoke, was smooth, a touch too careful.

"Art is not truth," he said, and his eyes glinted like steel under candlelight. "It is a lie more honest than truth could ever dare to be."

The gathering erupted in murmurs. Some nodded eagerly, others frowned at the boldness.

Yibo could not move. He could only stare as his mind whispered, I must know him.

Later, during the break, Yibo forced himself to approach. His legs felt unsteady, as though the floorboards beneath him carried waves rather than solidity. He rehearsed words in his head—questions, compliments, fragments of conversation—but the moment he neared, Zhan's gaze caught him like a knife at the throat.

"You were watching me," Zhan said, not a question but an accusation laced with amusement.

Yibo swallowed. "I—yes. I was listening."

"Listening with your eyes." Zhan's lips curved. "What do you write?"

"Plays," Yibo answered, too quickly. "I try to."

"Try?" Zhan tilted his head. "Then you are still searching for a voice."

Yibo flushed. "And you? You already have yours."

Zhan took another drag from his cigarette, eyes narrowing. "A voice is not always a blessing. Sometimes it is a curse. But you will learn that in time."

The words should have sounded dismissive, but they struck Yibo as intimate, even prophetic, as though Zhan had peeled away his defenses with casual cruelty.

"May I see your work?" Zhan asked suddenly.

Yibo's hand shot to his notebook protectively. "It isn't finished."

"Nothing worth reading ever is." Zhan leaned closer, his breath tinged with smoke and clove. "Bring it to me. Tomorrow night. Here."

Before Yibo could reply, Zhan had already turned, engulfed by admirers. The room swallowed him, and Yibo was left with the hollow ache of longing.

That night, Yibo could not sleep. He lay in his rented room, the yellow streetlamp outside casting fractured light through paper-thin curtains. He opened his notebook and stared at his half-written lines, but Zhan's face kept rising in the ink.

Who was he really? A prodigy? A fraud? A seducer of souls? There was a cruelty beneath the beauty, Yibo had felt it in the deliberate sharpness of his words.

Whispers surfaced in his memory—rumors he had overheard: Zhan's patrons who disappeared, a model found weeping on the Bund, a painting sold for a fortune that no one ever saw again. They called him dangerous, but in tones tinged with admiration.

Dangerous or not, Yibo's obsession was already sealed.

The following evening, he returned to the teahouse. Rain had slicked the cobblestones, and the city smelled of coal smoke and wet earth. He clutched his notebook under his coat, heart pounding.

Zhan was there, waiting at a table by the window. The sight of him—the effortless poise, the hands resting like pale birds on the wooden surface—pulled Yibo forward like a tether.

"You came," Zhan said softly.

"I said I would." Yibo placed the notebook down, though his fingers hesitated before letting go.

Zhan opened it without asking permission, eyes scanning quickly. His expression revealed nothing. Finally, he looked up.

"You write as if you are searching for salvation," Zhan murmured. "But salvation does not exist. Only hunger."

Yibo felt his throat tighten. "And what do you hunger for?"

Zhan's smile was faint, unreadable. "Everything."

The word sank into Yibo like a stone dropped in water. He wanted to ask more, but Zhan closed the notebook and slid it back across the table.

"You are interesting," Zhan said. "But interest can be dangerous. Do you understand?"

Yibo shook his head. "No. But I want to."

Zhan's eyes glimmered in the lamplight, dark as ink, bottomless as a well. "Then perhaps you will. If you are brave enough to see."

Outside, the rain thickened. The city groaned with the sounds of trams and distant shouts. Inside, Yibo felt the first coil of obsession tighten around his heart. He knew, in that moment, his life had shifted.

He would follow Zhan into the depths, no matter the cruelty that awaited.

And somewhere beneath Zhan's elegant surface, Yibo sensed it already: a secret festering like rot beneath silk, waiting to be uncovered.

A secret that could consume them both.