The tavern's shadows seemed to press closer as the silence stretched between them. The flickering light from the half-dead torches painted Kuangren's crimson eyes in deeper shades of blood. He leaned back again, his broad shoulders sinking into the rotting wood behind him, but his aura never softened.
Zhu Zhuqing remained across from him, posture straight, golden eyes fixed. He could feel her gaze like a blade against his throat — cautious, sharp, unwilling to yield.
He liked that.
Most eyes dulled after a few seconds beneath his stare. Some trembled. Some broke entirely. She did not.
Kuangren exhaled slowly, the sound almost like a sigh. His gaze drifted upward, toward the ceiling blackened with soot and stains.
"Do you know," he began, his voice low, steady, "the first time I killed?"
Zhu Zhuqing said nothing. Her silence was an answer.
Kuangren's crimson eyes unfocused slightly, caught not on the tavern but on a memory buried in the marrow of his bones.
"I was six. Maybe younger. The days blur together when you're hungry all the time. My stomach hurt so bad I couldn't sleep. I remember walking the alleys, searching for scraps. A bone. A crust. Anything."
His jaw tightened.
"There was an older boy. Maybe twelve. He caught me with a half-rotten piece of bread I'd scavenged from the trash. He wanted it. Bigger than me. Stronger than me. He hit me, knocked me down. Kicked me until I couldn't breathe."
Kuangren's hand flexed slowly on the table, fingers curling into claws.
"I begged," he admitted, his voice turning harsh, bitter. "I begged like a dog. He laughed. Spat on me. Took the bread."
His crimson eyes flicked back to Zhu Zhuqing, catching the faint flicker in her golden ones.
"But he made a mistake."
Kuangren leaned forward, elbows on the table, his voice dropping lower, deeper.
"He turned his back. Thought I was beaten. Thought I'd crawl away and die in some gutter. But my hand closed around a rock. A jagged one, sharp as broken glass. I don't remember deciding. I just… did it."
He mimed the motion with one massive hand — sharp, brutal, driving down.
"I hit the back of his head. Again. Again. Again. He screamed once. Then he stopped. By the time I let go, there wasn't much of a head left."
The tavern seemed colder suddenly, though nothing had changed. Even the barkeep had frozen in his slow shuffle, his empty eyes flicking once toward Kuangren before darting away.
Kuangren's lips curled upward, a grin that was half-smirk, half-snarl.
"You know what I felt? Not fear. Not regret. Not guilt. Relief. And then—" his crimson eyes glowed brighter, his voice nearly trembling with the intensity of memory, "pleasure. Like fire in my veins. Like something that had been sleeping inside me finally opened its eyes."
He leaned back slowly, the wood creaking beneath his massive frame.
"I ate the bread while his blood was still warm."
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Zhu Zhuqing's golden eyes hadn't left him once, though her hands beneath the table clenched, the knuckles white. Not from fear — at least, not entirely. But from something deeper, more complicated.
She could feel the weight of his words. The raw honesty of them. In her world, death was familiar — her clan, her family, all taught that strength was survival, weakness was death. But Kuangren… he wasn't shaped by law or clan or expectation. He was shaped by blood.
And he didn't flinch from it.
"You were a child," she said finally, her voice quieter than before.
Kuangren tilted his head, his grin fading into something sharper. "And children kill rats when they're hungry. I just killed a bigger one."
For a long moment, neither spoke.
The torchlight hissed. The barkeep retreated. Somewhere outside, a scream echoed faintly, cut off suddenly, swallowed by the city.
Kuangren finally broke the silence.
"Does it disgust you?" His voice was almost taunting, daring her. "Hearing me say it like that?"
Zhu Zhuqing met his crimson gaze without flinching. "…No."
His grin returned, wider this time, genuine. "Good."
In that moment, something unspoken settled between them.
Not trust. Not affection. Not yet.
But recognition.
Predator to predator.
And though neither admitted it, both felt the same thought stir deep inside:
This one is dangerous.
And I can't look away.