The black car shuttled through the pitch-black night, its golden headlights like a sharp blade, slicing through the dark road ahead.

What was originally a twenty-minute journey, Xie Dongcheng only took ten minutes. The parking lot of the office building was right in front of him. Xie Dongcheng slammed on the brakes suddenly, then turned off the engine and locked the car door.

He pushed open the heavy glass door and walked quickly to the elevator hall. However, the buttons on the elevator were pitch black. He pounded on them hard several times, but the display screen showed no response.

Xie Dongcheng looked around and found that all the lights in the entire office building were out, probably due to a power outage caused by the thunderstorm.

He turned and headed for the staircase; the office was on the fifteenth floor. He ran up three steps at a time. The entire corridor was filled only with the high-frequency sound of footsteps and his rapid breathing.

When Xie Dongcheng finally reached the fifteenth floor, the glass door of the office was firmly locked. He looked inside through the glass but saw no one.

The torrential rain outside had not stopped, and the deep blue sky was torn apart by lightning.

“Yu Zi!” Xie Dongcheng shouted loudly at the door, but there was no response.

He ran from the fifteenth floor to the ground floor, but there was no trace of Yu Zi in the entire building.

Xie Dongcheng’s throat was dry, and his heart was pounding violently.

He took out his phone from his pocket, turned on the screen, and saw that only 5% of the battery remained.

An hour had passed since he sent the message to Yu Zi, and there was still no reply. He opened the call page and used the last bit of battery to call Yu Zi.

The phone rang several times, but no one answered in the end.

He watched as the last of the battery drained from his phone. After a brief shutdown animation, the screen returned to a dead darkness.

Xie Dongcheng was soaked through, and water dripped down his arms incessantly.

Raindrops continued to fall on the ground, emitting a steady stream of white noise. The scene he feared the most had come true. Yu Zi had disappeared without a trace or any sound.

The marble pillars were chilled by the rain, and the coldness seeped through the wet T-shirt onto his back.

A raindrop flowed into his eyelid along his eyelashes, and Xie Dongcheng rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, but still felt everything was blurry.

“Xie Dongcheng!”

A familiar voice suddenly came from behind him, and Xie Dongcheng thought he must have misheard.

“Xie Dongcheng!” the person shouted again.

Xie Dongcheng finally confirmed that he hadn’t misheard and abruptly turned around.

He saw Yu Zi holding a black umbrella, standing a few meters away from him.

He opened his mouth but couldn’t utter a word. He just stood there, dumbfounded, watching Yu Zi approaching him with the umbrella.

“Why are you standing here alone?” Yu Zi, startled by his drenched appearance, exclaimed, “I didn’t check my phone. I just saw your message now. Why was your phone off when I tried calling you?”

Xie Dongcheng’s face remained pale, and it took him half a minute to remember to answer, “My phone ran out of battery.”

“Why did you come here by yourself? Didn’t I ask you to wait for me to come back?” Yu Zi patted his arm.

“You didn’t leave.” Xie Dongcheng took a deep breath and repeated in a low voice, “You didn’t go with him.”

“What are you talking about?” Yu Zi frowned. “I just finished talking with him. The building had a power outage, so I let him leave on his own.”

“Why didn’t you leave with him?” Xie Dongcheng lifted his eyes, looking at him with a soaked gaze.

Sensing his confusion, Yu Zi wiped the rainwater off his eyelashes. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

The two got into the car, with Xie Dongcheng slowly starting the engine and driving back into the rain.

He didn’t say much on the way, but every time the car stopped at a red light, he repeatedly turned to confirm the person sitting in the passenger seat.

Feeling uneasy under his gaze, Yu Zi asked, “What’s wrong with you?”

As the car entered the parking garage of Fangjiyuan, Xie Dongcheng turned off the engine and sighed deeply, as if he had survived a catastrophe. “I thought you were going to leave again.”

Then, in a lighter tone, he added, “…like last time.”

Yu Zi unfastened his seatbelt and looked back at him. “Do you miss me that much?”

“Yeah,” Xie Dongcheng nodded. “Why else would you push me away…”

Yu Zi shook his head helplessly. “He clearly had an agenda. If you stayed there, who knows what unpleasant things you might have heard.”

Xie Dongcheng was momentarily speechless, unable to respond.

Seeing his distressed expression, Yu Zi continued, “He’s my biological father. I know him. He’s only good at one thing.”

“What’s that?” Xie Dongcheng didn’t understand.

“Sweet talk and deception,” Yu Zi’s lips curled slightly downwards. “His words are always prettier than his actions. If I believed him, I’d be falling into a trap. When things are abnormal, there’s always a reason.”

After listening, Xie Dongcheng murmured, “No wonder he…”

“What did he do to you?” Yu Zi became curious.

Xie Dongcheng looked up at him, took a deep breath, and confessed, “He called me. At the end of last year.”

Yu Zi’s gaze sharpened. “He called you? What did he say?”

“He just asked about your situation, then mentioned casually that they were doing well abroad, and he mentioned your brother.” Xie Dongcheng pondered for a moment, recalling the inexplicable call he received on New Year’s Eve.

Yu Zi pondered for a moment, then became more certain about something. “He must have encountered some trouble abroad. Otherwise, he wouldn’t think of contacting me.”

But Xie Dongcheng didn’t follow up on his words. He lowered his hand holding the steering wheel and asked softly, “Is there any other reason?”

Yu Zi didn’t understand what he was asking. “What other reason? The reason he contacted me?”

“No,” Xie Dongcheng shook his head, staring into Yu Zi’s eyes. “The reason you stayed.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Besides his situation, do you have any other reason to stay?”

Looking at his soaked hair, Yu Zi suddenly smiled.

“What reason do you want to hear?” He reached over to the driver’s seat and touched Xie Dongcheng’s cold cheek.

Xie Dongcheng flinched at his touch.

Yu Zi stared into his eyes. “Do you want to hear that I’m madly in love with you, that I can’t bear to be away from you for even a day?”

As he uttered the word “love,” Xie Dongcheng’s pupils contracted.

Yu Zi’s finger stopped at his collar, and his palm lightly touched his chest.

Xie Dongcheng’s chest rose and fell slightly with his breath. The sound of his heartbeat transmitted through his bones to Yu Zi’s palm, becoming more intense with each beat.

That heart, like a muscle and skin about to burst out of his chest, was presented vividly and bloodily in front of Yu Zi.

“Hmm? Is that the reason you want to hear?” Yu Zi asked again.

The noisy rain outside the car hadn’t stopped, but the car was quiet inside.

Xie Dongcheng couldn’t resist staring at his lips, forgetting even to nod in response. The next moment, he raised his right hand, covered Yu Zi’s hand on the back of his hand, leaned across towards his face, and forcefully kissed his slightly parted lips.

In the gap between kisses, he answered with heavy breaths, “Yes. That’s the reason I want to hear.”

He hoped to have an indomitable position in Yu Zi’s heart, and he yearned for Yu Zi to love him uncontrollably. He didn’t want Yu Zi to leave him again, to go anywhere with anyone.

This strange, stubborn possessiveness made him unable to make any rational judgments.

Neither of them knew who had first lowered the back seat, but they ended up entangled in the narrow space, both soaked to the skin.

The rain beat against the car windows, one wave after another. Streams of water flowed rapidly down the glass, blurring the view inside the car. Even if someone passed by the front of the car, they wouldn’t be able to see what was happening inside.

Xie Dongcheng’s shirt was wrinkled and discarded in a corner of the car. Two buttons of Yu Zi’s shirt were torn off and disappeared under the rear floor mat. Their skins pressed against each other, and their originally cold, wet bodies began to heat up due to the confinement of space.

The parking garage was far from the buildings, and it was raining heavily outside, with no one around. Only occasionally, the sharp cries of stray cats could be heard under the rain canopy. The scorching summer suddenly gave way to this downpour, as if even the stray cats couldn’t suppress the restlessness inside them.

Xie Dongcheng’s fingers firmly grasped Yu Zi’s waist, his thighs tightly holding onto his body, as if afraid that he would escape again.

Yu Zi felt the pressure he exerted and bit his wrist back, saying, “Are you crazy?”

Xie Dongcheng shook his head, not saying a word but tightening his arm even more.

Then he lowered his head and said something to Yu Zi’s ear.

At first, Yu Zi didn’t fully catch it, “What did you say?”

Xie Dongcheng repeated it.

Instantly, a cold light flashed in Yu Zi’s eyes, “No, you’re crazy.”

The rain continued until the early hours of the morning. Xie Dongcheng didn’t ask for Yu Zi’s opinion but acted out the words he had whispered in his ear.

Yu Zi’s waist and abdomen were sore and weak from his antics, with red marks left on his skin by his fingertips.

The rain was like a raging tide, wave after wave. In the strong wind, the pink roses swayed up and down, and the rainwater in the flower pond gushed out.

Finally, Xie Dongcheng, like a sated wolf, lay on Yu Zi’s shoulder.

Yu Zi only regretted not having fangs; otherwise, he would have surely raised his head and bitten Xie Dongcheng’s neck.