Some stains are not meant to be seen.
They are meant to be carried.
Some truths, once noticed, do not fade.
They press against the ribs,whisper at the edge of reason,
refusing silence no matter how tightly one closes their eyes.
That was why the footsteps outside the door
felt heavier than chains.
"Wàngjī… you're back?" Sūjīn's voice, gentle and frayed with worry, bled through the wood of the door.
Wùji flinched. He was scrubbing his skin raw under the icy water, nails leaving pink trails. The water at his feet swirled rust-red before vanishing down the drain. "Y… yes, Gēge. Showering," he called back, forcing his voice flat. Steady. Normal.
Too quick. Too tight.
"Will you be late?"
"Yes. I'm… covered in sweat. I need to be fresh." The lie tasted like ash.
A sigh of relief from the other side. "Then I'll see you later. Zhú fù… he wishes to speak with you tomorrow morning." Sūjīn's tone held a thoughtful pause, a shared uncertainty. "He didn't say why."
Wùji's heart, already a frantic bird in his chest, froze mid-beat.
Now? What does he know? What did he sense?
"As you wish,"he managed, the obedient son's refrain.
"Good night." The words were a soft benediction. Then, the merciful sound of retreating footsteps.
Wùji slumped against the cool wall, the strength leaving his legs. The weight of the night—the voice, the coffin, the blood—settled on his shoulders, a mantle of lead. "Gods save me…" The prayer was a breath against the windowpane.
A shadow shifted beyond the glass.
Wùji's breath seized.
A figure stood at the washroom window, backlit by the moon. White servant's robes. A familiar, unsettling silhouette.
Not again. Not now.
The shock was a cold slap. It stole the air from his lungs, locked his muscles. The damp cloth he'd been using fell from nerveless fingers, landing with a soft, wet slap on the stone floor, the last of his blood blooming dark against the grey.
"Who's there?!" The demand was a strangled thing, trapped in the cage of his throat.
Moonlight carved the intruder's face into sharp relief.
Mìng Yào.
The low-born servant with the unsettling, molten-gold eyes that always seemed to linger a moment too long. The one whose casual proximity felt like an affront to Wùji's birthright.
"I—! Pardon me, Wùji Kùmsūn! I was merely—" Mìng Yào's gaze, sharp and gleaming, dropped—but not before sweeping over him: the loose collar of his sleep robe, the pale line of a collarbone glistening with water, the dark cascade of hair plastered to his neck. A faint, unnatural blush stained the servant's cheeks.
The sight of that blush ignited something volatile in Wùji's gut. Humiliation and rage fused into a white-hot spike.
"Is this the hour to skulk outside windows?!" Wùji hissed, his voice a low, venomous whisper meant for these walls alone. His own cheeks burned.
Mìng Yào's shoulders stiffened, his head bowing in apparent submission. But his eyes, when they flickered up, held no apology. They were wide, dark pools of something more—a confusion that looked dangerously like hunger.
Wùji's control, already cracked from the forest, shattered. The fear, the frustration, the sheer indignity of it all poured out in a corrosive stream.
"You dare watch me? Again? I will have Zhú fù cast you from these walls! You have no right to stand here! No right to stand anywhere near me! DO YOU UNDERSTAND?!"
Something in Mìng Yào's expression snapped.
The subservient mask peeled away. His golden eyes widened, the pupils swallowing the light, becoming bloodshot, glassy. It wasn't just hurt. It was something fractured and raw—wounded pride, yes, but beneath it, a bottomless, seething want.
Wùji didn't care to decipher it. He saw only challenge. Disrespect to the future Dàozǔ.
"Lower your eyes," Wùji commanded, each word a shard of ice. "And get out of my sight. That is your last warning." The poison of the night was on his tongue, bitter and potent.
Mìng Yào didn't lower his eyes. He drank Wùji in—the vulnerable drape of violet silk, the water-slick skin, the defiant, trembling anger. It was a gaze that felt like a physical touch, stripping him bare.
Wùji tilted his head, a flicker of bewildered disgust cutting through his fury. The audacity. The sheer, crawling shamelessness.
"Have you lost your ears as well as your sense?"He snapped his fingers, a sharp, dismissive crack in the humid air.
Their eyes locked.
"I said leave." The words were flat. Final.
Mìng Yào moved.
Not away, but forward. He pushed the window open and stepped inside, closing the distance between them with a terrifying, deliberate calm. The scent of night air and something subtly metallic—like ozone after a strike—clung to him.
His voice, when it came, was quiet. Confident. A blade slipped between the ribs.
"The coffin in the forest. The one that holds the Tearstone System."
A pause, letting the horror take root.
"It reacted to your blood tonight."
The world dropped out from under Wùji.
How? How could he know? Was he there? Did he hear me with Lǐhán? Is he a spy? A ghost?
His mind raced, scrabbling for purchase. Denial was a crumbling wall. This… this creature he despised was now holding the blade of his annihilation.
The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on. Wùji's hand twitched toward where his sword leaned against the wall. A violent, clear fantasy flashed: a quick slash, a silenced throat, a body left for the forest yào. A clean, desperate solution.
Mìng Yào's lips curved, reading the murder in his eyes.
"One wrong move from you," he purred, the sound vibrating in the intimate space between them, "and the mighty Hàngwō clan collapses into the grave it dug. The choice, Kùmsūn, is now yours."
Terror, cold and absolute, washed over Wùji. He backed up until the cold stone wall bit into his spine. His hand closed around the hilt of his sword, the familiar weight a feeble comfort.
"S… Stay back," he warned, voice wavering with the storm inside him. "I said STAY. BACK. Or… I will kill you." The threat ended in a hard swallow, his Adam's apple bobbing traitorously.
But they both knew the truth. He couldn't. Not over this. To kill to hide this secret would be to dishonor everything his clan stood for. He was trapped by the very legacy he was meant to uphold.
Mìng Yào showed no fear. Only that deep, unsettling hunger. He took another step, then another, until the space between them vanished.
He swallowed softly, mirroring Wùji's nervous gesture—a mockery, an intimacy. His hot breath fanned against Wùji's ear as he reached out. His hand closed, not on Wùji's throat, but over the hand clenched on the sword.
The air turned viscous, charged with something forbidden.
Wùji's heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat of panic. "L-Let go of me," he hissed, struggling. But the fight was weak, drained by blood loss and spiraling dread. His body felt leaden; his head spun.
His feeble resistance was extinguished with shocking ease. Mìng Yào pressed him fully against the wall, his body a firm, unyielding line of heat. With a careless motion, he plucked the sword from Wùji's grasp and tossed it aside. It clattered on the stone, a sound of finality.
Then, bold as a thief claiming treasure, one hand wrapped around Wùji's waist, possessive and tight. The other pinned Wùji's wrist above his head against the cold stone.
Their foreheads touched. Wùji could see every fleck in those burning golden eyes, could feel the frantic beat of his own pulse where their skin met.
"What are you doing?!" Wùji's voice was a thin, anxious thread. "Get your hands off me!" His skin burned where he was touched, a shameful, traitorous fire.
Mìng Yào didn't answer with words.
He answered with a nip at Wùji's earlobe—sharp, shocking, intimate.
He answered with asqueeze at his waist—claiming, punishing.
The humiliation of it was a different kind of violence, deeper than any forest terror. Wùji's eyes stung, going glassy. He bit down on the whimper that rose in his throat, turning it into a choked gasp.
His thoughts burned: Is this his revenge? To torture me with my own secret?
"S-Stop… please." The plea was a shattered whisper, torn from a place of utter defeat. He had begged the forest creatures for mercy. Now he was begging his servant.
Mìng Yào's lips brushed the shell of his ear. The voice that emerged was rough, thick with an emotion so raw it was almost painful to hear.
"Not when you have never once looked at me," he breathed, the words scraping out,
"while I have been losing my mind just looking at you."
The confession hung in the steam-filled air, more terrifying than any threat.
Wùji swallowed. His throat was desert-dry.
The world rearranged itself with a sickening lurch.
The disgust.The anger. The fear.
It all spiraled around a new, confused way : This lunatic what..? No..
The realization left Wùji speechless. He didn't know how to digest it, not while the entire incident from the forest night was still stuck in his throat.
And now this new blackmail? It was made infinitely worse by the forbidden intimacy from a servant he had barely ever looked at.
A man? That very person who was poison to his eyes… was obsessed with him?
Unacceptable.
Especially not when he was a lowly servant, born beneath notice.
***