Bian Yiqiu felt like his body was falling apart.

When he was seven, a stray dog bit through his palm. Terrified of rabies, he used a piece of iron heated by fire to scrape away the swollen, raw flesh around the wound. He later realized it was pointless, but luckily, the dog had just been hungry, not infected.

At twelve, he fought with a group of thugs over turf. He lunged at their leader, sinking his teeth into his throat, while steel pipes, fists, and baseball bats pounded his back relentlessly. Afterward, he lay in bed for two months, secretly grinning. He was lucky none of them were aiming to kill. If one of them had swung hard enough at the back of his head, he’d have ended up in a coffin.

At twenty-one, he went out on a job with Old Master Jiu, taking two bullets for him. One of the bullets grazed his femoral artery; if it had been a little to the right, he would’ve stayed forever twenty-one. A little to the left, and the Bian family would’ve been wiped out—though, as a pure gay, he didn’t really care about having heirs. But not being able to “erect” anymore? That would be worse than death.

All the near-death experiences from before felt like they were replaying now.

He hurt everywhere—his head, neck, back, abdomen, and legs. The pain was overwhelming, blooming like a twisted garden of agony that left him dazed. All he could see was an endless, dark abyss, and his mind felt like it was exploding in a kaleidoscope of chaos. He tried to let out a faint moan, but his throat felt as if a flaming iron rod had been thrust into it, and scalding blood bubbled up from his lungs.

Where the fuck am I? What’s happening?

Bian Yiqiu struggled to feel his fingers and toes, but to his shock, he realized he couldn’t move anything.

Am I dead? But it seemed he could still breathe.

He forced himself to take a breath, and the buzzing in his ears gradually subsided. Then he heard it—a faint dripping sound.

Drip—drip—

It was slow and deliberate, like a leaky faucet someone had forgotten to turn off. One drop, then another.

Ke Mingxuan.

Ke Mingxuan—

He rasped the name, his vocal cords trembling and tightening as a faint, broken stream of air escaped his lips. Only he could hear himself whisper those three syllables.

Suddenly, a flash of white light cut through the darkness, and Bian squinted his eyes. In that fraction of a second, he saw something that nearly stopped his heart.

Ke Mingxuan—the man who was always so strikingly handsome, as if perpetually above the clouds—was now within arm’s reach, yet pinned between the twisted wreckage of the driver’s seat and the steering wheel, his body slumped forward. His face was ashen, his eyes shut tight.

A steel rod, as thick as a finger, protruded from the right side of Ke Mingxuan’s chest, piercing through his shoulder blade and out the front. Dark red blood sluggishly pooled at the tip, dripping steadily toward Bian Yiqiu’s left chest.

His heart.

Bian Yiqiu’s chest tightened with unbearable pain, as if his heart was being torn apart.

“Ke Mingxuan—”

The beam of light from the lighthouse vanished in an instant, and darkness returned. But the overwhelming scent of blood filled Bian’s nose and throat, suffocating him.

“Ke Mingxuan—”

A massive wave of terror swept over him, like thorny vines crawling out of hell, coiling tightly around his heart, cold and unrelenting. The sharp, stabbing pain pricked every nerve in his body. Even though he couldn’t move his limbs, he could feel his entire being trembling from the inside out.

He was terrified—more than he’d ever been in his life. He hadn’t been afraid when Bian Ying died when he was four. He hadn’t been afraid when he stuck a fruit knife into the orphanage director’s body. He hadn’t been afraid when he snatched bread from the mouth of a stray dog. He hadn’t been afraid when he was hacked. He hadn’t been afraid when he took bullets for Old Master Jiu. And even when Qian Ying told him he was about to die, he hadn’t been this afraid.

“Ke Mingxuan—”

He wanted to lift his hand to touch him, to check his breath, to feel for a pulse, to make sure he was still alive!

But the muscle relaxant was still taking its toll, and the violent impact to his head had left him dizzy and disoriented. Ignoring the pain that radiated from every part of his body, he gathered all his strength and slowly raised his right hand, only for it to fall helplessly midway.

He couldn’t touch him, couldn’t feel him, couldn’t sense his breath. All he could do was call his name over and over, his voice trembling more and more, filled with despair.

He didn’t know how many times he had called out when, at last, a weak, almost ghostly voice whispered, “Shut up.”

He immediately fell silent, biting down hard on his tongue. After the sharp pain passed, he finally believed that the voice wasn’t a hallucination.

“You’re not dead, you’re not dead…”

As the weak voice faded, tears began to slip from the corners of his eyes.

Bian Yiqiu, who hadn’t tasted tears in decades, suddenly wanted nothing more than to hold Ke Mingxuan and cry his heart out.

He’s not dead. He’s still alive. There’s nothing better than this.

“…Not for long,” Ke Mingxuan murmured, a faint smirk tugging at his lips in the darkness.

“Bullshit!” Bian Yiqiu snapped, his voice suddenly louder. “Did I say you could?”

“…Why?” Ke Mingxuan seemed to laugh, his lazy tone as light as a wisp of smoke, ready to dissipate at any moment.

“Because… I haven’t fucking beaten you yet!” Bian Yiqiu gritted his teeth, forcing all the strength he had left into lifting his right hand just a little higher.

His breathing grew heavier and louder, drowning out the faint sounds Ke Mingxuan made.

“Ke Mingxuan! Ke Mingxuan!”

Bian Yiqiu’s hand stretched desperately into the darkness, pushing through the layers of life, death, fame, pride, and persistence, inch by inch, trying to reach what was just out of his grasp.

But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t touch him. Even with all his strength, he couldn’t see clearly.

It felt like a long time had passed, or perhaps only a few seconds, when Ke Mingxuan’s voice finally surfaced in the deathly silence of the darkness.

“Alright… I’ll wait for you…”

Bian Yiqiu had lost track of how many times he had woken up from a dream. His eyes were open, but his consciousness was still trapped in the pitch-black darkness of the dream, where he couldn’t see his hand in front of him, wrapped in overwhelming despair and fear that he couldn’t escape. Every time, it was the same.

He raised his arm to shield his eyes, slowly exhaling. After a long while, it felt as though he had finally broken free from the nightmare, but the desire to go back to sleep was gone.

The clock on the bedside table showed it was 4:20 AM. He got up, left the bedroom, poured a glass of water in the kitchen, and then headed to the gym.

Zuo Cheng woke up at six in the morning to use the bathroom. Passing by the gym, he heard movement inside and silently stood for a moment before turning and heading to the bathroom.

At seven o’clock, Zuo Cheng set the breakfast on the table. Bian Yiqiu had already finished washing up and changed into his clothes, walking out of the bedroom.

Zuo Cheng wasn’t good at cooking. His so-called breakfast consisted of two boiled eggs, a bag of bread, and two cups of milk.

By seven-thirty, the two of them left for the office right on time.

The main road was jammed with traffic during the morning rush hour, causing people to curse in frustration. Zuo Cheng drove his flashy Maybach, inching forward like a tortoise through the long line of cars, taking over an hour to reach the Ruide Center.

At 8:55 AM, Bian Yiqiu arrived at the Jiu’an Group office, where his assistant had already neatly placed today’s freshly printed morning paper on his desk.

Reading the newspaper was a new habit he had recently developed.

The most eye-catching news in Z City these days was the Wuye Mountain arms smuggling case. The mainstream media had bombarded the public with several special reports, covering everything from national security to the bravery of the warriors, from civic responsibility to the city’s landscape. Every little detail was picked apart and turned into an article, with any related keyword sparking a lengthy discussion.

Amid all the attention on the arms smuggling case, hardly anyone noticed another small piece of news published around the same time.

On the day the smuggling case was busted, a traffic accident occurred on the Wuye Mountain National Highway. One person was killed on the spot, and two others were seriously injured.

This piece of news only made it onto a small media outlet’s secondary page, taking up barely two lines. That was only because the outlet had a limited circulation and its printing press was located far out of the way, meaning the paper hadn’t been retrieved and destroyed in time.

Only a few people knew about the location of the accident, the details of what happened, and the final outcome.

The truck driver was found mostly responsible. Not only was he driving while fatigued, but he was also suspected of overloading, which caused a head-on collision with a Bentley coming in the opposite direction. The truck was carrying a full container of steel rebar, which tilted during the crash and, as luck would have it, scattered all over the road, with one piece piercing through the passenger-side windshield of the Bentley…

The person sitting in the passenger seat, if not for the two lines of text in the newspaper in his hand, would almost doubt that the accident and the person named “Ke Mingxuan” were nothing more than a dream.

Because from the moment he woke up in the hospital, he never received any news about this person again.

He Xu told him that it was a passing driver who called 120. When he and Zuo Cheng arrived at the hospital, they didn’t find Young Master Ke. They also asked the attending emergency doctor that night about the whereabouts of the other injured person. The doctor’s answer was, “There is no one.”

Bian Yiqiu didn’t believe that answer. For a victim of the same accident, 120 would never have failed to bring them to the hospital together. Even if the person had already passed away, the body would still have been sent to the hospital for the family to identify. The only explanation was that someone had come to the hospital and taken Ke Mingxuan away, thoroughly erasing all traces of him.

The call was transferred to the secretary’s desk, and He Sheng’s front desk rejected all requests. Bian Yiqiu stood before the massive floor-to-ceiling windows of Junlin Tianxia, gazing at the bold He Sheng Media across the way, the glass and air cutting off all his attempts to reach what he sought.

You know he’s right there, yet you can never get in.

In the bedroom closet, there are Ke Mingxuan’s clothes; in the bathroom, his toiletries; in the study, his books and computer; in the kitchen, his cup for drinking water; and on the nightstand, there’s even a half-used box of condoms…

Only the person is gone.

Uncertain if alive or dead.

Bian Yiqiu called Chu Yi. Among all of Ke Mingxuan’s friends, he was the only one Bian Yiqiu could get in touch with and who was close enough to Ke Mingxuan to help.

Unfortunately, Chu Yi told him that he hadn’t seen Ke Mingxuan yet. He only heard that Ke had been severely injured and was sent to the best military hospital by the Ke family for treatment, so Bian Yiqiu didn’t need to worry. He promised that if there was any news about Ke Mingxuan, he would inform him right away.

Bian Yiqiu’s injuries weren’t life-threatening, but the car accident left him with multiple bruises and a concussion. The sight of it was pretty alarming, though luckily, his internal organs and bones weren’t harmed.

He knew he was still alive because, in that life-or-death moment, Ke Mingxuan had rushed over and blocked the steel rod that almost pierced his heart. Every time he thought of that scene, his heart would ache so much it felt like he couldn’t breathe.

He stayed in the hospital for a week, waiting through every minute and second as if he were being tortured in a sea of fire and water. He had He Xu help him buy a new phone and get a new SIM card, keeping it by his pillow even when he slept. But still, there was no news from Chu Yi.

Finally, he couldn’t wait any longer. Ignoring everyone’s objections, he insisted on leaving the hospital and went straight to Chu Yi’s house.

When Lu Xiao opened the door, he saw Bian Yiqiu with bandages on his head and his arm in a cast. He called out, “Qiu Ge,” his eyes brimming with tears.

But even after making this special trip, there was still no result. The Ke family had been airtight about this matter. No one, not even Ke Mingxuan’s childhood friends or company employees, could visit him. Not even the hospital’s ward or room number was known to anyone.

But Chu Yi told him, “No news is the best news. Since the Ke family hasn’t made any moves yet, it means Ke Mingxuan is definitely still alive.”

Bian Yiqiu accepted this almost comforting explanation and, after returning home, started to focus on healing his injuries. He also had He Xu and Lao Meng keep a close eye on Ruan Chengjie’s movements and find Zhou Ming at all costs.

Even before the cast was removed, he started going to the company. This apartment, this home, the furnishings, and the traces of daily life were all constant reminders that someone was missing, leaving him in pain and feeling helpless. The only way he could ease the suffering was to throw himself fully into work, as it was the only thing that made him feel a little better.

Years later, when Bian Yiqiu thought back on that time, he realized it was probably the most hardworking period of his life.

The assistant knocked on the door and informed him that the meeting would start in five minutes. Bian Yiqiu put down the newspaper, stood up, and left the office, leaving his phone on the desk.

He didn’t expect that after the meeting, his phone would have several missed calls, all from the same name: Liang Ziyue.

He immediately called back. After a few rings, Liang Ziyue’s voice came through, with no pleasantries or greetings. He went straight to the point: “Do you want to see Ke Mingxuan?”