“What is the combination for the safe?”
Qi Han unclasped his watch, and the cold dial quickly pressed to Fu Ge’s neck. The young Beta was trembling, his toes spasming as he tried to reach the ground but couldn’t.
“You don’t deserve to know.”
“I heard there are four digits, right?”
The quartz watch hand pointed to twelve o’clock noon, “Four digits, and I’m pretty much going to ask for them from the time I start fucking you now until tomorrow night.”
“Fuck off!” Fu Ge spat on his face angrily, and the next second Alpha violently slammed his head against the wall.
“You really don’t cry until you see the coffin!”
With a rustling sound, the last layer of shame was torn to pieces. Qi Han didn’t give Fu Ge any chance to mitigate the impact, and his fragile body seemed to be torn apart.
“Ahhh—”
The young Beta screamed in pain, drops of cold sweat sliding over his forehead. He rolled his eyes and raised his head high, and Qi Han’s mouth clamped on his slender neck.
The Alpha’s fangs tore into every inch of his flesh, and the pheromones of the white bellflower rushed through Fu Ge’s blood with reckless abandon, as if briefly showing who he belonged to.
After five years, he was once again hung in mid-air by Qi Han and taken by force. Fu Ge clenched his teeth, his heart numb like a pool of stagnant water.
“Does it hurt? Xiao Ge, so you can hurt too.” Qi Han pinched his chin, his eyes flushed, “Then when you and your father joined forces to hunt me, didn’t you think about whether I hurt or not?!”
“You brought this on yourself, no one else is to blame.” The handcuffs banged frantically against the wall with a crisp sound.
“Such a noble young master committing himself to me for a manuscript, that’s quite a sacrifice.”
“Was it disgusting to hug me? Have sex with me? Did you want to vomit when in bed? Did it make you sick to accompany me through the rut period?”
Qi Han roared, slamming harder. Fu Ge opened his mouth in a silent scream and it took all his strength to squeeze a desperate sob out of his throat, “I didn’t…”
He bit the ribbon, trembling convulsively and shaking his head constantly. There was no slightest light in his hollow, dark eyes, only warm liquid constantly flowing out.
“I told you— ugh! I, I didn’t…”
“You didn’t?” The Alpha sneered, and the hand squeezing Fu Ge’s neck suddenly tightened, “You lied to me for two years and played me like a fool, and now you’re telling me you didn’t?!”
Fu Ge coughed violently. There wasn’t enough air in his lungs, his embarrassed face was flushed, his tears trickling down.
Qi Han took a deep breath and relaxed his hand.
“Did you not take my manuscript, or did you not two-time me?“
He paused in his movements and asked the question with his lips against Fu Ge’s forehead, his ragged breath soft and careful for a moment, as if he would believe everything if Fu Ge uttered a single word.
However, the young Beta was silent for a long time and only said, “I don’t know…”
Qi Han raised his hand and slammed his fist into the wall, his hot, wet face sliding down and pressing in the nook of Fu Ge’s neck, “I really want to strangle you.”
“You don’t even want to tell a lie, do you?” He untied Fu Ge and pushed him to the dusty floor, rubbing the narrowest part of his waist, “Aren’t you the best at acting?”“
The flower of the high mountain (something/someone beautiful and unattainable) was pressed under his body without mercy. The white moonlight boy was tortured into a dodder flower that couldn’t even talk.
Qi Han laughed frantically, looking at Fu Ge’s face in the dim, mottled light, his heart almost exploding with pain.
He pinched Fu Ge’s chin and forced him to look at him, “Weren’t you full of adoration for your sir before today? Didn’t you beg me to do it harder? You were so good at acting five years ago, why can’t you act now?”
“Shut up! Stop talking!”
Fu Ge’s heart was pierced by the word “sir”. Every trace of his infatuation in the past two months filled him with shame. Qi Han leaned closer, blood dripping from his shoulders into Fu Ge’s eyes, “Can’t stand it anymore?”
“Do you know how sexy you looked when you begged me to burn you with a cigarette? So humble, so obsessed. You can’t wait to stab me to death when you’re awake, but when losing your memory, you were like a puppy wagging your tail. How could I resist you?”
“I don’t know… I don’t know! Stop talking…” Fu Ge screamed, breaking down, shaking his head desperately to get rid of those memories.
He struggled to straighten his upper body, clawing at the ground with both hands, crawling haphazardly, his weak and numb legs dragging behind him as if paralysed. Qi Han easily gripped his ankle and yanked him back.
“Don’t—”
Fu Ge cried and kicked him, his red eyes desperate and fierce as he aimed at Qi Han’s wounds again and again.
Qi Han couldn’t feel any pain, so he let Fu Ge go crazy on him, grabbing his hair and forcing him to raise his head, “Why don’t you say it?“
“Gege, remember how passionate you were last night? When I moved, you said you loved me, and when I kissed, you said you liked it. For a moment I really felt like we could start over. We could obviously start over!”
His voice paused, the gloom on his face turned to bitterness, and he laughed mockingly, “But why did you have to regain your memory…”
“Or what, to be fooled by you for another two years…”
Qi Han only smiled, and went to bite his lips again, “Say what you said last night again, say you love me, say you will always be with me.”
As soon as Qi Han said that, Fu Ge suddenly grabbed his neck. Blue veins throbbed violently under his lower jaw and the exact opposite words were squeezed out of his hoarse throat: “I hate you! I will never forgive you! I can’t wait to kill you! I just wish I had never met you!”
With a bang, Qi Han slammed him to the ground. The out-of-control Alpha was completely enraged, his eyes bloodshot, and his cold tone was like the fangs of a venomous snake.
“Gege, you’re wrong.”
He pressed Fu Ge to the rough stairs and leaned over him.
For half a day and the whole night, the tide was only rising without receding.
However, no matter how he threatened and insisted, Fu Ge never said he loved or liked him even once, until Chen Xing’s call came.
It was early morning and the first rays of sunlight pierced the autumn night, falling on the faces of the two men pressed together almost nose to nose.
“The combination of the safe has been deciphered.” Qi Han hung up the phone and blew on Fu Ge’s eyelashes, “Are you looking forward to it, gege?”
Fu Ge, who was sluggish for a long time, squeezed out an extremely sad wry smile.
Qi Han called Uncle Gu in and casually dealt with his wounds. He left Uncle Gu and two bodyguards at the door and took the rest of the people away.
Fu Ge lay on the ground, covered in filth, his empty eyes staring straight in the direction where Qi Han had left. The Alpha had cleaned himself up to look gentlemanly and decent, but only threw him a crumpled jacket that barely covered his body.
The boy who had run around half of the city to help him get the outfit he wanted now didn’t even want to give him alms of being dressed.
Fu Ge closed his heavy eyelids and fell into a coma completely.
Qi Han rushed back to the villa as quickly as possible. Chen Xing had already been waiting at the door with the safe. From the downfall of the Fu family to the present, Qi Han had been looking for this small box for more than five years. But now that he really got it, he didn’t dare to open it.
“What’s the matter, man, let me help you?”
Qi Han smiled, “No, it’s nothing more than the same trick as his father used.”
He had imagined many times how he was supposed to be dealt with in the hunting plan written by Fu Ge. First using his feelings to approach, then inquiring carefully and finally inevitably going for a grab blatantly? And if he never compromised?
What would Fu Ge do?
Imprison him like his father and give him injection after injection?
Suppressing the bitterness in his throat, Qi Han opened the safe and pulled out the hunting plan from inside, a sketch book almost two inches thick.
“So many pages, how badly did he want to put me to death, ah…”
Qi Han smiled bitterly and opened the first page. Only a few words were written on the yellowed paper— for my Mr. Bear Cub.
“Hmm? Who is Mr. Bear Cub?” Chen Xing asked.
Qi Han’s mind flashed back to that photo of Fu Ge in bed with someone else, and he directly reached out and tore up the page, “Who else could it be, his lover.”
However, the next thing he saw was the content that made his blood freeze on the spot.
A boy playing basketball was painted on the unfolded part of the page. The setting sun shone on the road under his feet, and the fallen hawthorn flowers were blown onto his pants.
Qi Han’s gaze wandered along the boy’s arm to his neck, and the next second, a face identical to his own appeared before his eyes.
His breathing stagnated and his heart stopped suddenly.
Qi Han tremblingly opened the folded paper in the lower right corner, where two lines of crooked fine writing were hidden—
“The teacher said that fondness blurs the painter’s eyes, and that even someone as strong as steel becomes particularly cute in your eyes. Like how he’s obviously the tallest Alpha in the crowd, but to me, he looks like a bear cub holding a honey jar when he’s holding a basketball.”
“I like Ah Han the first day, he is very cute.”
“I’m Mr. Bear Cub…”
Qi Han forgot to breathe for an instant, and his heart was beating wildly. He read the few lines of fine writing repeatedly in disbelief, rubbing his own face on the drawing paper dozens of times as a terrible thought filled his mind.
But he quickly rejected it: “No, it’s impossible… This must be his trick, a cover-up!”
He raised his head abruptly, his eyes flushed, and clutched Chen Xing’s collar, saying in a hoarse voice: “He knew I would find the safe, so he did this to trick me, it must be like this!”
Chen Xing panicked too, and only held his shoulders, “Brother Han, don’t get excited, take a look further, take a look again.”
“Yes, look again, look again…”
Qi Han nodded stiffly, his hands shaking as he turned the page, turned a dozen pages at a time, muttering something like a demon as he did so. His chapped lips couldn’t stop trembling, but the more pages he turned, the more his heart sank.
On June 18, 2015, the drawing showed Qi Han falling on the court, and when he opened the folded page, the fine writing said: “Today, Mr. Bear Cub accidentally fell while playing. His knee bled a lot. I lay on the bed after dinner and couldn’t sleep.”
On July 21, 2015, the drawing showed Qi Han flying in a lay-up. The fine writing was: “Today, Mr. Bear Cub hit seven three-pointers. He hugged his teammates so excitedly that I also wanted to learn to play and be his teammate.”
On August 15, 2015, the drawing showed Qi Han holding a rabbit, and the fine writing said: “Today, Mr. Bear Cub and I went to the dormitory on the same road. The rain was so heavy that I almost fell into a puddle. He grabbed the schoolbag on my back. If I were a rabbit, it must have rained carrots from the sky that day.”
On October 27, 2015, Qi Han was painted with his head up, drinking water. The fine writing was soft and floppy: “Mr. Bear Cub has many suitors, but I never dare to come forward. It’s really hard to like someone. Can he… also like me a little bit…”
“How could it be… How could this happen…” Qi Han shook his head at a loss, falling to his knees on the floor as if he was exhausted. His spasming fingers dug deep into his hair, blue veins on his forehead almost bursting.
The sketch book fell out of his hand, and the content of the page that opened was like a red-hot iron rod, pierced straight into his heart—
“Today, on June 8th, 2017, Mr. Bear Cub confessed to me. I will love him with every fibre of my being, and will love him forever.”
The picture showed the two hawthorn flowers that fell in the pool on the day they first met.
The two-inch-thick book was full of thousands of drawings, and every page was related to him without exception. From the beginning of high school to the wedding, Fu Ge used his brush to record every living moment of his Mr. Bear Cub.
This was not Qi Han’s hunting plan at all, but Fu Ge’s heartfelt diary. He had been in love for two years, eight months and fourteen days, and every day was sincere and documented.
It was just that Qi Han didn’t realise it.
“He liked me… Xiao Ge, he… he really liked me…”
Qi Han choked, muttering these words in a daze. Tears flowed down from his chin, and the blood from the wounds soaked the gauze into a bright red colour, but he knelt on the ground as if he had lost his five senses. Only one picture floated in his chaotic mind.
The night before Fu Ge lost his voice, he pinned him down and violated him in the bathtub. The young Beta was in so much pain that he was about to faint, but he still tremblingly raised the only hand he could move and put the ring onto Qi Han’s middle finger.
His eyes could only be half-opened and his voice was as hoarse as if he had swallowed sand. He used all his strength to defend himself for the last time: “Ah Han… believe me… I really love you…”
However, the Alpha, who was driven crazy, covered his mouth, took off the ring and stomped on it, whispering in Fu Ge’s ear: “I don’t want to hear you speak anymore.”
Since then, Fu Ge had really been unable to make a sound.
Qi Han laughed madly, his chest rattling with a desperate cry: “Xiao Ge, he liked me, and he loved me for two years, but what did I do… What did I do!”
He let out a low growl and slapped his own face, then raised his hand and hit the table, the nails of his index and middle fingers breaking.
But Qi Han seemed to feel no pain, holding the sketch book tightly, crying and howling. The arrogant son of heaven, the debt collector who was still taking his due from Fu Ge a moment ago, was now like a vagrant who had gone crazy because his lover was missing.
“Brother Han, don’t be like this, calm down, calm down…” Chen Xing staggered to help him up, and the two fell down together again.
Qi Han’s flushed eyes were surging with endless remorse as if flesh was peeled from his bones with a knife. If he could, he would have travelled back in time and stabbed himself to death in the past.
“I ruined him, I completely ruined him…”
Fu Ge couldn’t paint anymore, couldn’t get pleasure normally, and even his senses were gradually disappearing, and the boy who was so warm and romantic completely became a breathing walking dead.
Chen Xing with his eyes red came over and pulled him to help him get up, and a piece of paper fell out of the sketch book. Qi Han lowered his eyes in a daze and saw that it was the half of the manuscript that Fu Ge had taken away at the beginning.
But on the silk paper where the molecular formula was supposed to be copied, there was only a head-and-shoulders portrait of him. Qi Han choked and turned the album to that page, and saw the “evidence” he had been looking for for five years scribbled in small letters—
“Today, Mr. Bear Cub let me borrow the manuscript. My father saw it by chance. He said he liked this piece of silk paper and wanted to take it to the company for research. But this is a relic of Ah Han’s father and cannot be given to outsiders, so I made a rough piece of silk paper myself and drew something random on it so that I could hand it over to him. But I want to draw Ah Han even when I draw something random.”
Fu Ge had never given the manuscript to his father, and he had never even heard of Qi Han’s feud with his father from beginning to end.
He only knew that he had a boyfriend who loved him and whom he loved very much. They would get married after graduating from high school and become a happy family.
But then disaster struck, and the long-awaited wedding, and the fourteen days that followed, became a nightmare he would never forget.
On the last page of the album, time would remain forever on February 14, 2018.
The picture showed a young couple’s wedding photo, and the folded page opened to reveal Fu Ge’s writing: “From winter to spring, you are my muse, all the fireworks on earth in my dreams.”
Qi Han roared and slammed his head on the floor, completely losing his mind. He rushed out of the room holding the sketch book, crashing into everything on the way. When he ran to the top of the stairs, his eyes suddenly went black and he rolled down the stairs.
