Chu Zhixia has recently become obsessed with going to a top-tier hospital to get her teeth checked.

The young dentist is a top graduate of University A, aloof and handsome, dressed in a spotless white coat. His peach-blossom eyes are cleanly defined, narrow and slightly upturned, cold as frost. He keeps himself wrapped up tight, but near his collarbone there’s a tiny, light-brown mole—seductive, ascetic. When he removes his gloves, his long, fair fingers look detached and pure to the bone.

What she likes most—
is his gentle and patient manner.

Whenever she so much as frowns during treatment,
he leans down, fingertips lifting her chin, his voice low and magnetic:
“Does it hurt?”

Later, she finally manages to tease him into submission. As she wished, they changed to a different place, a different scene. She licked the tip of his flushed ear, and that tiny mole. Listening to his voice go low, hoarse, and broken:
“Does this hurt?”

And then, later still—
Chu Zhixia grew tired of it. She blocked him and disappeared without a sound.

Until, when the Chu family fell into financial crisis, she was arranged to go on a blind date with the most powerful Shen family’s young master.

That night was like a storm.
The once aloof, quiet young man pinned her against the table, his eyes reddened, demanding fiercely:
“It’s always been me asking if it hurts…”
“Do you know how much I hurt?”

…

“Ship of Fools” comes from a satirical poem: a ship cut off from the world, drifting aimlessly, loaded with fools and madmen. With no connection to the outside, in its closed space, it festers and devours itself.

On the nights Chu Zhixia was “kept” in the Shen household, unseen by the sun, she touched his beautiful, bloodshot, obsessive eyes, and looked at the whitened joints of his fingers from too much force.

And thought—he had boarded that ship long before she did.

“Why don’t you tease me anymore, hm?”

The young man was still in his white coat, tall and slender, fingers cold like jade. Yet he suddenly tilted up her chin, his breath low and sultry at her ear, scorching her heart into trembling knots, as he asked in a deep voice:

“Continue.”

His grip only tightened, as he looked at her bound to the bedside, sweat dripping down her forehead, her face flushed crimson. Yet his tone remained as calm and gentle as ever, even faintly polite, just like before.

—He was insane.
But it didn’t matter. She loved him so much.