He knew exactly what was happening in Room 43.
He knew the psychology of the Saint better than Shu Yao knew himself.
"Let him wait," Bai Qi thought, the coffee's bitterness matching the cold satisfaction in his chest. "Let the guilt fester. Let him drown in the silence I've created."
To Bai Qi, the slap George had delivered was not an insult—it was an opportunity. By vanishing, he had turned himself into a martyr in Shu Yao's eyes. He had shifted the narrative so that he was the victim of George's violence and Shu Yao's "unprotected" status.
He wouldn't go back to the hospital. To visit would be a gesture of concern, a sign of weakness that the Monarch could not afford. He didn't need to chase the bird; he simply had to wait for the bird to realize that the cage was the only place it knew how to breathe.
"You'll come back," Bai Qi murmured into the rim of his cup, his voice a low, lethal purr. "Once the doctors clear you, once your body is whole again, the guilt will drive you straight to my feet. You won't just walk back, Shu Yao. You will crawl."
He set the coffee down and turned his chair toward the floor-to-ceiling window. Below, the city was a sprawling map of light and shadow, and somewhere in that labyrinth, a boy was crying for a man who was intentionally starving him of hope.
Bai Qi's smirk deepened. Power wasn't just about presence; it was about the agony of absence. And as the weeks turned, he knew he was winning the war for Shu Yao's soul without firing a single shot.
Back in the hospital, the sun began to set, casting long, bloody streaks of orange across the floor of the room.
Shu Yao felt his eyelids grow heavy, his body finally succumbing to the exhaustion of a vigil that yielded nothing. His hand remained curled around the phone, the metal cool against his palm.
"Bai Qi..." he breathed, the name a prayer before sleep.
He didn't see the way George watched him from the shadows of the corner, the "Avenging Angel" looking on with a heart that was breaking for a boy who only wanted to be broken by someone else.
But Miles away inside the apartment that had once been a shrine to the House of Rothenberg had transformed into a cage of quiet, vibrating terror.
The guard sat in the same worn sofa, but the television was dark. The magazines were no longer treasures; they were indictments. Across from him, Shen Haoxuan leaned against the doorframe, his presence a toxic vapor that seemed to bleach the color from the room.
Shen had unearthed the guard's dark secret—a buried sin from a previous life that even the police had missed—and had used it to forge a leash of absolute subjugation
"He doesn't have to like me," Shen murmured, his voice a smooth, melodic threat. "He only has to observe. Every word that slips past Shu Yao's lips, every visitor who lingers too long, every flicker of his eyes... you will record it. You will be the silent witness to his decay."
The guard, a pathetic, trembling shell of a man, nodded with a frantic, jerky motion. He swallowed the bile in his throat. "Anything... anything you want, Mr. Shen. Just... please, keep that file closed."
Shen smirked, his grey eyes cold as river stones. "Then return to your post. And remember: if you fail to hear even a single sob, you'll be the one crying in a cell."
While the guard returned to the hospital to play his part as a double-agent, a different kind of alchemy was being performed in a penthouse overlooking the frozen city.
Ming Su sat on her velvet chaise longue, her legs crossed with the effortless elegance of a high-society predator. She looked like a masterpiece of mourning beauty, her hair pinned back in the exact, delicate style that used to make Bai Qi's heart stop.
Across from her, Shen Haoxuan paced the length of the room, his smirk a permanent fixture on his sharp features.
"I am doing my best to remain beyond reproach," Ming Su began, her voice a flute-like melody of calculated innocence.
"Bai Qi is... vulnerable. He is so desperate to see her in me that he ignores the cracks in the mask. I want to gain every ounce of his trust so I can strike when he least expects it."
Shen paused, looking out at the skyline. "Trust is a fragile foundation, Ming Su. It's not enough to build on. We need to dismantle the alternative."
Ming Su arched a perfectly manicured eyebrow. "You mean Shu Yao? He's already broken. He's a ghost in a hospital bed."
"He's a ghost that still haunts Bai Qi's conscience," Shen countered, his voice dropping to a low, predatory register. "All we need is a little bit of... privacy of him."
Ming Su frowned, a flash of genuine confusion crossing her face. "His privacy? Why? You've already bruised him, Shen. What more can you take?"
Shen Haoxuan let out a soft, dark chuckle that didn't reach his eyes. "You don't understand, my dear. I have an epic plan—a blueprint for a masterpiece of destruction."
He leaned in closer, his shadow falling over Ming Su's lap. "If I simply tell Bai Qi that Shu Yao is a traitor, he might doubt me. But if I frame Shu Yao for what I did to him that night..."
Ming Su's expression shifted. A flicker of disgust, brief but visible, crossed her features as she recalled the vague, brutal rumors of the night Shen had intercepted the Saint.
"Bai Qi wouldn't believe a verbal accusation," Shen continued, his smirk widening into something truly demonic. "But there should be at least a little evidence of that night's wreckage. A staged confession. A piece of 'truth' left behind in the struggle. I want Bai Qi to believe that Shu Yao and I... shared something that night. Something that would make the Monarch's blood boil with a jealousy he can't control."
Ming Su leaned back, her mind racing. "So... that's how you're going to make your next step? You're going to use his trauma against Bai qi?"
"Indeed," Shen breathed. "Deep down, I have a strange feeling that a disaster is still locked somewhere inside that boy. A secret he's too afraid to tell even himself. I will find it. I will drag it out and hang it around his neck like a noose."
Ming Su let out a short, sharp chuckle, though her eyes remained cold. "If you try that—if you threaten Shu Yao with the wreckage of that night—I don't think he'll back up easily. He's a martyr, Shen. Martyrs don't break; they burn."
"Let him burn," Shen replied with a shrug of his elegant shoulders. "Isn't the real tragedy that Bai Qi is the one holding the match? The Monarch is shattering the only person who is working so hard to protect him. What a beautiful, pathetic shame."
They shared a look of mutual, poisoned understanding. To them, Shu Yao was not a person; he was a piece on a board, a pawn to be sacrificed so the King could be checkmated.
As the days turned into a second week, the trap began to close with a sickening, golden precision.
Gaining Bai Qi's trust had been a monumental task, but Ming Su was performing the role of a lifetime. She didn't push. She didn't demand. She simply existed in his space, a quiet, floral-scented ghost that whispered of a past that never truly was.
Bai Qi, fueled by a mixture of guilt over the slap and a desperate need to feel "human" again, fell foolishly into the trap. He began to take Ming Su everywhere. They were seen at exclusive restaurants where the waiters bowed like servants to an emperor and his empress. They were spotted in fancy, private cinemas where the movies were only a background to their hushed, staged conversations.
But the worst of it—the ultimate betrayal—was the Rothenberg Villa.
Bai Qi sat across from her, his obsidian eyes clouded by a strange, frantic pride. He looked at her and saw a "Saint" who forgave him. He didn't see the viper beneath the dove-grey wool. He didn't see the strings being pulled from the darkness.
He was the Monarch of a kingdom of glass, and he was currently inviting the hammer inside.
And there sterile silence of the hospital corridor was an antiseptic weight, a vacuum where time seemed to stagnate. George stood as a monolithic sentinel before the frosted glass of Room 43, his blonde hair gleaming like a crown of cold gold under the fluorescent hum of the ceiling lights.
His emerald eyes were fixed on the far end of the hallway, narrow and predatory. He was waiting for the world to challenge him.
He didn't expect the challenge to come in the form of a ghost he had already exorcised.
A shadow lengthened across the linoleum—a heavy, familiar gait that hesitated with every step.
George's posture shifted, his muscles coiling with a sudden, lethal tension. Out of the dimness stepped the Guard. He looked disheveled, his uniform slightly rumpled, his face a landscape of sweat and feigned humility.
"You," George hissed, the word a jagged sliver of ice.
The guard stopped dead, his hands rising in a pathetic, placating gesture. "Mr. George... I... I didn't know where else to go. I am sorry. Profoundly sorry. I was... I was just getting away for a moment. To clear my head. To process the... the occasion."
George felt his blood begin to boil, a visceral heat that threatened to crack his crystalline composure. He stepped forward, his height looming over the man like an impending judgment.
"Isn't Bai Qi a big enough occasion for you?" George's German accent sharpened his words into razors. "You left your post. You left a dying boy unprotected so you could worship at the altar of a man who doesn't even know your name.
The guard lowered his head, beads of cold sweat trickling down his neck. He was a master of the pathetic act, a role Shen had commanded him to play with absolute precision. "I felt the weight of my failure, sir. My conscience... it wouldn't let me stay away."
"Conscience?" George scoffed, a sound like breaking glass. "You don't have a conscience. You have a fan-club membership."
Before George could deliver the final, crushing blow to the man's dignity, a sharp, authoritative chime erupted from his pocket.
He reached for his phone, his eyes never leaving the trembling guard. The caller ID made his heart do a violent, heavy thud against his ribs.
Niklas.
The "Lion" was calling from across the borders of China, his presence felt even through the digital static. George straightened his back, a Pavlovian response to the patriarch's power.
"George," Niklas's voice came through the line, a deep, mahogany rumble that vibrated with a simmering, subterranean fury. "Are you even paying attention to my children? Or have you been blinded by the lights of that city?"
George frowned, his emerald eyes flickering with confusion. "I am paying attention, brother. Armin is quite obedient"
"And what of the one who is currently making a spectacle of our legacy?" Niklas snapped.
On the other end of the line, George could hear the sound of Niklas grabbing the bridge of his nose, a gesture of profound exasperation. "What is that strange girl doing with Bai Qi? Who is she?"
George felt a cold prickle of dread. "Girl? What girl?"
"Don't play the fool, George," Niklas barked. "It's all over the international wire.
Bai Qi is being seen everywhere with a woman who looks like a resurrected ghost.
She is at his side in the restaurants, the galleries... she is everywhere on the Rothenberg image."
George's mind raced. The "Ice Monarch" had truly lost his mind. He was parading the viper in public.
"It... it must be Ming Su," George muttered, his voice tightening. "I will talk to you later, brother. I know who she is. She is just... a friend. A distraction. I will handle it."
"Handle it quickly," Niklas warned, the line going dead with a finality that felt like a closing cell door.
George lowered the phone, his face a mask of jagged, blonde fury. He cursed under his breath, a string of sharp German epithets that made the guard flinch.
"What the hell is Bai Qi causing again?" George growled, more to himself than anyone else.
The guard, sensing an opening to prove his "usefulness," cleared his throat and spoke in a low, conspiratorial whisper. "Haven't you seen the new catalog, Mr. George? The winter campaign? Mr. Bai took his... friend... to the shoot. He's been introducing her to everyone."