The air in the St. Jude's High parking lot was thick with the scent of pine needles and impending doom. Lin Xia was not just arriving; she was making a logistics-heavy statement.
As the sleek black transport van pulled up to the curb, the back doors swung open to reveal a sight that made Gary drop his mop in pure confusion. It was stacked, floor-to-ceiling, with crates of the finest, most expensive strawberry milk the Asian continent could produce.
Behind the crates stood two men who looked like they had aged a decade in a matter of months. They were the Young Lords of the Zhao and Sun clans—the very suitors Chen Feng had utterly humiliated during his initial rise. Once arrogant warriors, they now wore humble delivery uniforms, their faces twitching with the trauma of their "Daily Milk Debt."
"One thousand liters," the Zhao heir muttered, his eyes vacant. "As per the Sovereign's decree. Every day... for eternity... the milk must flow."
"He told us if a single carton was warm, he'd turn our family's mountain retreat into a public petting zoo," the Sun heir whimpered, handing a clipboard to a horrified Gary.
Inside the school, Chen Feng was standing by the drama room window, his heart doing something it hadn't done in several millennia: it was jittering.
Why am I nervous? he wondered, adjusting his pashmina scarf for the fourteenth time. I have faced the heat death of a thousand suns. I have looked into the maw of the Eternal Void and told it to 'keep it down.' So why do I feel like a freshman about to fail a pop quiz?
Being a Salted Fish was supposed to mean being unbothered. But as he watched Xia march toward the entrance, trailing a line of broken noblemen carrying crates of dairy, Chen Feng realized that his "saltiness" was being washed away by a very specific, very human wave of guilt and longing.
The silence that followed when Xia pushed open the heavy oak doors of the drama room was so heavy it felt like a physical weight. Chen Feng froze, a prop skull in one hand and a mocha in the other.
Their eyes met, and the air between them shimmered.
In Xia's eyes: A storm of "How dare you leave me," "I missed your stupid face," and "Why are there three female faculty members circling you like vultures?"
In Chen Feng's eyes: A panicked mix of "Oh no, she's here," "She looks radiant," and "I really should have texted her back in Prague."
Then came the unexplainable body reactions. Chen Feng's Sovereign power, usually under perfect control, flickered. The stage lights above them turned a soft, romantic rose-gold without him even thinking about it. His hands began to tingle with a static charge that made his hair stand up in a slightly ridiculous, electrified crown.
Xia wasn't immune either. Her skin felt like it was humming at a frequency that only Chen Feng could hear. Her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird, and despite her fury, her knees felt strangely like the very jelly he used to eat for breakfast.
"You," Xia said, her voice a low tremble that carried the weight of every ignored message
.
"Me," Chen Feng replied, his voice cracking just enough to prove he was, for once, not in control.
"I brought your milk," Xia said, gesturing toward the hallway where the two broken suitors were currently weeping while stacking crates. "Since you were so busy being a 'lifestyle icon' that you forgot how to use a phone, I figured I'd bring the reminders of your past victims to jog your memory."
"Xia... I can explain the 'Hamster Book' thing," Chen Feng started, taking a cautious step forward.
"Don't," she interrupted, a faint, dangerous smile playing on her lips. "I'm here now. I've officially transferred. I'm the new 'Lead' of this production, Mr. Chen. And I believe we have a lot of... rehearsing to do."
The drama students looked back and forth between the two, sensing a tension that was far more "R-rated" than anything they had ever read in Shakespeare.
"Is he in trouble?" Tiffany whispered.
"No," Madison replied, her eyes narrowing in jealousy. "He's in love. Which is much, much worse for the curriculum."
Chen Feng looked at the broken suitors, then at the furious, radiant woman in front of him. For the first time, the Sovereign didn't want to evade. He wanted to stay right here, even if it meant dealing with the "Drama" of a lifetime.