CH 49

Warning, this chapter is, um, very twisted – we’re back to cannibalistic Ningning!!

Within the apartment simulated by the holographic projection, the director briefly explained to Gu Chen and Ji Ning what specific aspects he wanted them to pay attention to during today’s filming. He then withdrew from the room so the two could officially begin their scene. 

The boy sat on the freshly made bed with his head lowered. Slowly, he began to remove his clothes.

After only recently finding out that today was Mr Gu’s birthday, he wanted to give Mr Gu a birthday present. He asked the older man what he would like as a gift. After pondering for a long time, the man finally raised the corner of his lips and said to the boy.

“I want to take photos of you.”

These were not ordinary pictures, but the nude photos that Mr Gu had mentioned to the teenager a few months ago. The boy had politely rejected the proposal the previous time, but now, facing Mr Gu’s expectant gaze, the boy blushed and nodded. 

Today he had followed Mr Gu to his apartment. When he asked Xiao Ning to remove his clothes, Mr Gu saw his nervousness and tactfully left the room, saying that he would return when he was ready.

Sitting on a bed that carried Mr Gu’s refreshing and light scent, the boy ran his fingers across the dark sheets. A look of infatuation appeared in his eyes and he couldn’t help pressing his face into the pillow and taking a deep breath.

This was the scent of Mr Gu.

He really loved this scent.

It was the most wonderful scent in the world, stimulating his appetite, seducing him to chew off every piece of flesh and bone on the man’s body. He wanted to devour him.

After lying on the bed for a while, the boy reluctantly got up and finished removing his clothes. He remained in a half-curled position, his legs clamped tightly together as he called out shyly, “Mr Gu, you can come in.”

With a light click, Mr Gu pushed the door open. His eyes were lowered as he adjusted his camera then, after a few seconds, he raised his head to look at the teenager. Mr Gu froze at the sight of the boy, his eyes lingering on his figure for a long time. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat and he wasn’t able to speak for a long time.

The boy’s body was lithe and beautiful. His pale skin stood out against the dark sheets, dusted in a light blush from his shyness. His large, innocent eyes were fixed on the quilt, his face crimson as he didn’t even dare meet the eyes of the man in front of him. 

“…”

Unexpectedly, instead of speaking, Mr Gu immediately began taking photos. During the entire shoot, he hardly said a word to the teenager, only opening his mouth to guide the teenager to perform different actions in front of the camera.

He didn’t smile when he was shooting. His expression was focused and cold, and his voice was completely flat, but the boy still found his commanding tone arousing.

Under the man’s instructions, Xiao Ning gradually relaxed his tense body, displaying his figure to the camera. The poses Mr Gu used were clever, creating erotic and tempting positions without revealing the boy’s most intimate areas. 

The two cooperated tacitly and the session ended smoothly. The teenager didn’t put his clothes back on immediately, and instead covered himself with the quilt, as Mr Gu said he wanted to check the photos to see if there were any problems. If there was anything he wanted to change, he would ask Xiao Ning to keep shooting.

The man remained calm from beginning to end, his personality even colder than usual. The boy huddled in the quilt looked disappointed and felt a little uneasy.

Mr Gu had complimented him on his beauty for a long time and today he had finally agreed to the photo shoot, but Mr Gu hadn’t said anything. Did that mean Mr Gu hadn’t found him attractive? Would this be the last time they met…

How could this be… 

The young man bit at his lip, worried he wouldn’t be able to entice Mr Gu any longer. Anxious, his fingers unconsciously clenched into the quilt.

If he had known this would happen earlier, he would have continued to string Mr Gu along…but what had he done wrong?

He couldn’t help but feel confused.

In preparation for today’s shoot, he had deliberately gone on a diet and exercised for several days. He had taken good care of his skin and ensured that his body was in its most beautiful state. How could this have backfired on him? 

“Mr Gu…” The teenager called the man hesitantly, with confused and aggrieved eyes, “Was today’s filming not good? If you didn’t like my performance, you can just tell me. I don’t want you to be-”

Before he could finish his sentence, he was overwhelmed with a heated kiss. Mr Gu tangled his fingers in his hair as quickly deepened the kiss. Contrary to his indifference when shooting, his movements were desperate and fierce.

“How can I be dissatisfied?”

The boy gasped for breath as Mr Gu pulled him tightly to his chest, his voice slightly rough. 

“You don’t understand how charming you are, you’re going to drive me crazy…It wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk to you when I was shooting, I just didn’t dare. I had to force myself to focus on the camera, otherwise I would have never finished that photoshoot.”

The boy snuggled into his arms, his face flushed. He murmured, “I’m happy that’s what you were thinking…I thought you hated me just now…”

“How is that possible?” Mr Gu let out a low laugh and softly kissed the corner of the boy’s lips, his eyes dark with lust, “The heavens know how much I like you. I want to devour you.”

“P ilxf Zg Xe abb…” jcv P jirb kjca ab vfnbeg sbe. 

Ktf affcjufg rwlifv yglutais, tlr fsfr oliifv klat joofmalbc.

“P mjc’a fcvegf atlr jcswbgf.”

Ktf tjcvrbwf wjc tfiv atf ybs’r tjcvr jcv mbjzfv tlw klat j ibk nblmf, “Wljb Rlcu, vbc’a yf jogjlv, P’ii yf nfgs ufcaif, pera ulnf sbegrfio mbwqifafis ab wf.”

“…” 

The boy closed his eyes and silently nodded. He looped his arms around the back of Mr Gu’s neck and held onto him tightly.

What an amazing night.

The light in the apartment gradually dimmed to blackness. After a while, they turned back on, signalling the end of the filming. Gu Chen stood up from the bed and nodded apologetically towards Ji Ning.

Ji Ning shook his head and untangled himself from the quilt. His clothes had already reappeared. 

He still felt a little uncomfortable, after all, he had just removed all his clothes in front of a camera. One advantage of holographic filming compared with live action was that certain areas of the body could be automatically censored, so no one could have actually seen anything, but the essence was still…

Speaking of which, he was very grateful to Gu Chen. Although the script required them to be very close together, Gu Chen was very careful not to make him feel uncomfortable. When he touched Ji Ning, he left a slight gap beneath his fingers and didn’t go any further than the script directed.

Although the scene finished, director Liu didn’t enter the holographic projection this time and instead communicated by voice. He wanted as few people as possible to enter the scene to prevent the actors from feeling uncomfortable.

Now that the filming had finished, Gu Chen felt very hot. He sat on the side to rest and slowly calm himself down. 

The scene had left him unexpectedly tired. He really understood Mr Gu’s feelings too well. To be able to watch the person he liked sprawled in bed, moving seductively just for him to see. Even if it was just acting, Ji Ning had gazed at him with such heated eyes. How could he pretend to be indifferent to it?

Fortunately, he had excellent self control and stopped himself from doing anything inappropriate, but to only watch and not touch, it was really…

This sweet torture made Gu Chen shake his head, a wry smile on his lips. The director told him privately that the monitoring equipment had shown his heart beating much faster than it should and asked whether Gu Chen wanted to rest for longer. It seemed his feelings were too obvious. No matter how composed he was usually, Gu Chen couldn’t keep his calm in that kind of situation.

“I’m fine, it doesn’t matter…” 

Gu Chen shook his head, refusing to say another word.

When the director saw this, he stopped chatting with him and left the two of them to get back into character. Once they had returned to the correct headspace, they were ready to shoot the next scene.

After the incident of the previous scene, the teenager and Mr Gu started dating and Xiao Ning finally found an opportunity to invite Mr Gu to his home.

After kissing for a while, the teenager hooked his arms around Mr Gu’s neck and said coquettishly that he had bought a bottle of red wine for the two of them. Mr Gu agreed with a smile. Out of sight, the boy drugged one of the glasses before bringing them through. 

Thinking about how his long cherished desires would soon come true, the boy’s eyes curved up in happiness, a bright smile on his face.

He didn’t feel bad about killing Mr Gu. It was because he liked him so much that he wanted to express his love by eating him.

He had decided he would make a skeleton out of all of Mr Gu’s bones. He would put it next to his bed so they could stay with each other, he thought that would make Mr Gu very happy.

The boy hummed a song as he brought out the two glasses of wine and eagerly drank with Mr Gu. However, after a while, his vision spotted and he felt a strong sense of vertigo. Unable to control his body, he fell forward. The last thing he saw before he fell unconscious was Mr Gu’s smiling face. 

When he woke up, the teenager found himself locked inside a cage. Mr Gu hung a sign that read ‘Carnivorous flower’ on his cage and allowed him to view the glass rooms below him, including the ‘Mermaid’ with scales sewn into their bound legs and the ‘Centaur’ fused to the limp corpse.

Imagining the treatment he might be subjected to, the boy was petrified. He curled himself up in the furthest corner of his cage, tears filling his eyes as he begged, “Don’t-Don’t do this to me, please…”

He regretted it. He really regretted choosing Mr Gu as his target in the first place. If he’d known Mr Gu was a lunatic even scarier than he was, he would never have done anything to provoke him. No matter how delicious his flesh was, he still had to be alive to enjoy it!

“Don’t be scared, baby. You’re not like them.” 

Seeing that the teenager was so frightened he was about to faint, Mr Gu crouched outside the cage and comforted him with a warm smile. “Didn’t you notice this room is different from the others? This is my room. From today, we’re going to live together, are you happy?”

“No…” The boy burst into tears and grabbed at the bars of the cage, begging him desperately, “Please let me out, please…It’s my fault. I promise I won’t think about you again in the future, don’t keep me here…”

“I won’t keep you locked in the cage all the time. As long as you’re obedient, I can let you out.” Mr Gu smiled, “But you can only move around freely in my room. You see the door to the outside-”

He patted the metal door cheerfully, “This door needs a scan of my fingerprints and iris to open. I’m the only one who can operate it.” 

“Just stay here with me, Xiao Ning. Apart from freedom, I’ll give you anything you could want.”

Leaning through the bars of the cage, Mr Gu held the boy’s hand. Gently, he kissed the teenager’s fingertips, eyes filled with dark obsession as he whispered softly.

“You are my most beautiful flower.”

He said Xiao Ning was his treasure, his everything, but the boy knew that the man’s mind wasn’t normal. Now that Mr Gu was in control, he had no need to hold himself back from his desires. Gradually the man began to tattoo Xiao Ning’s body with flowers, branches and leaves. He wanted to make him the most beautiful ‘Carnivorous Flower’. 

In order to stop him from being in too much pain, the man only tattooed a small flower each day. The pictures were vibrant and gorgeous, but they still caused the teenager to suffer a heavy psychological reaction. Whenever the effect of the anaesthetic wore off, he would feel sharp pain all over his body. The newly tattooed flowers were always the most sensitive and the pain made him cry uncontrollably.

“Don’t cry, Xiao Ning. Don’t cry.”

Seeing him crying, Mr Gu felt very distressed. Every day he would bring Xiao Ning out of the cage and hold him tightly, pressing kisses to his head. He injected Xiao Ning with painkillers over and over, but he wouldn’t stop tattooing, etching the outline of a new flower or leaf every day.

Because of the hallucinogenic effects of the drugs, the teenager was trapped in a dreamlike state for a long time. He knew that he couldn’t continue like this, otherwise he would never have the strength to escape, so he eventually refused to take the painkillers, even though it meant he had to desperately endure the physical and psychological pain. 

The beautiful and dreamy colours of the flowers spread out across his body. Starting at his ankles, the inked blossoms unfurled across his skin until large flowers bloomed across his once snow white back.

The teenager was scared to look at himself in the mirror, terrified that he was really changing into a flower.

In the glass rooms beyond his curtains, the so-called ‘mermaids’ and ‘centaurs’ and other twisted fantasy creatures would be taken away each day. He lost count of how many people had died since he’d come here.

This callous and cruel scene made the boy realise he really was different to them. There could be many ‘mermaids’, but there was only one ‘carnivorous flower’. 

But what was the point of this? He didn’t think there was anything special about him compared with those other people. Even the fact that he didn’t die just meant he was suffering for longer.

Mr Gu couldn’t accompany him all the time as he had a lot of other things to deal with. When he went out, the teenager had to be locked inside the cage to prevent him from hurting himself or arranging a trap.

When Mr Gu gave him his first tattoo, the teenager tried to break the tattoo equipment and lashed out at Mr Gu, but he didn’t stand a chance. A few days later, Mr Gu happily showed him photos of the mixed martial arts awards he’d won. Xiao Ning would be an idiot to think he could defeat Mr Gu with strength.

But he wasn’t willing to just give up. He had to escape and kill Mr Gu. 

The teenager began to ask for an apple each day as well as tools for painting since he’d once been taught to use watercolours.

Soon there were many bottles and jars inside the cage, and the room was often filled with the scent of paint. When he was immersed in painting, he found his body didn’t hurt as much. Mr Gu was also happy to sit inside the room and watch him paint.

“You paint beautifully.”

When the boy was finished, Mr Gu would praise him with a smile. He hugged him gently from behind and kissed the top of his hair. 

The teenager had painted a landscape, the place he longed for most. He had once dreamed that if he could one day save enough money, he could go travelling. Now it seemed his dreams would have to remain dreams.

Apart from this room, Mr Gu wouldn’t let him go anywhere. He said the boy was his most beautiful flower, but a flower was just a flower. Once it’s planted in the soil it cannot move, as if its roots are damaged, it would wither and die.

“You have to understand, Xiao Ning.” Mr Gu kissed him lovingly and said with a smile, “Inside this greenhouse, I am your master. Without me caring for you, you would die. You would die without me.”

The teenager was terrified of the word ‘flower’. It was because of his habit of eating people that Mr Gu insisted on calling him a ‘carnivorous flower’. 

It was for this same reason that he was engraved with tattoos and given the sign on his room, but before he had been kidnapped, he had never revealed his cannibalism in front of the man. The man had prepared all this for him, but how had he known?

“Of course I knew. I knew from the start.”

Mr Gu gently pinched the tip of the boy’s nose with a smile, as if he was really doting on his little lover.

“As soon as I heard about you, I specially came to find you at the bar.” 

“As you can see, I like to find all kinds of interesting people and transform them into different creatures. My subordinates collected a lot of information about you for me. When I saw your picture for the first time and knew you had a preference for human flesh…my first thought was that you were like a beautiful carnivorous flower. A flower that belonged to me.”

“I love you, Xiao Ning. You will die without me, I would die without you. In this life we are destined to be together…”

His eyes became gradually more heated and warped, until he pushed the boy down into the bed and entered his body.

But the teenager’s eyes were cold from beginning to end. He was going to kill Mr Gu. It wouldn’t be long now. 

Carnivorous flowers had to be carefully tended to. Every day, Mr Gu attentively selected the highest quality human flesh for the teenager to eat.

The teenager said he liked to eat the meat raw, so although Mr Gu felt it was unhealthy, he obeyed the boy’s wishes and simply arranged more frequent health check ups.

Today was no exception, Mr Gu entered the room with a sumptuous dinner and a plate of human flesh. The meal was shared between the two of them, while the flesh belonged to the teenager.

Looking at the pile of bloody meat on his plate, the boy suddenly pushed it towards Mr Gu and asked him, “Do you want to eat some?” 

Mr Gu was taken aback, but he shook his head, smiling, “I don’t need it thank you Xiao Ning.” Although he treated human lives like dirt, he’d never had abnormal eating fetishes.

“You say you love me but you won’t even eat my favourite food…”

The teenager lowered his head and muttered with a sullen voice. Just as he was about to withdraw his plate, Mr Gu grabbed his wrist.

“If that’s how you feel, of course I want to eat it.” 

The man smiled helplessly and took the plate. He sliced the meat carefully and took a few bites. The boy urged him to eat more of it, but it was too much. The strong scent of blood and the psychological horror of what he was doing made the man feel extremely uncomfortable. Finally, he put down his chopsticks, wiped the blood from his lips and said apologetically, “I’m sorry, I have to go to the bathroom.”

He got up and walked into the bathroom that connected to the bedroom, immediately closing the door behind him. The boy guessed that he couldn’t help but feel disgusted but didn’t care. He picked up a bottle of paint from inside his cage and unscrewed the lid.

The bottle was empty of paint, but instead contained a powder made from apple seeds. Apple seeds contain trace amounts of amygdalin which, in high enough doses, are poisonous when metabolised in the digestive system. Every day, he had saved the seeds from the apple he’d eaten and ground them down into a fine powder, before storing them inside this empty paint bottle.

Although the powder was not purified and wasn’t necessarily lethal, as long as Mr Gu was weakened enough, he would be able to kill him himself. 

As for the bitter taste of apple seeds, it wouldn’t be a problem today. He knew Mr Gu would be working overnight on a business project since he’d specially brought a cup of black coffee in. The bitter flavour of the coffee would mask the taste of the toxins.

He hastily poured the powder into the coffee cup. After a while, Mr Gu came out of the bathroom, sat down and continued to eat. He also drank from the cup of black coffee. He drank all of it without noticing that anything was wrong. Xiao Ning watched him coldly, without speaking a word.

Before long, Mr Gu clutched at his head, his expression pained. He turned pale, gasping for breath as he ripped open his shirt, desperately trying to relieve his breathing difficulties.

Suddenly he seemed to realise something and turned to the boy beside him, choking out. 

“You…”

Seeing him like this, the teenager felt extremely nervous. The longer Mr Gu stayed conscious, the more he was afraid his plan would fail, but he was too desperate to escape. He grabbed the carving knife from the table and stabbed at Mr Gu’s heart without hesitation.

But his wrist was grasped by Mr Gu and the knife only penetrated his skin a little. The blood that flowed out around the metal stained a small patch of red on his white shirt.

The teenager exerted all his strength, struggling to stab him deeper, but despite being poisoned, the man still overpowered him and the strength of both his arms couldn’t match the strength of one of Mr Gu’s. 

Knowing he had failed, the boy’s face went pale, his fragile and tense emotions strung too far. Tears dripped down his face as his hands dropped weakly to his sides.

At this moment, he was so desperate he even thought about committing suicide but to his shock, the man laughed lowly. Despite his wounds and the poison in his body, he pulled the boy onto the bed, holding him down as he unbuttoned his shirt.

At this point, the story was nearly complete, right at the point where both of them truly fell into madness. After their final climax together, Xiao Ning managed to kill Mr Gu. He dragged Mr Gu’s body over to the door and used the man’s iris and fingerprint to unlock the door.

However, the keycode failed. Mr Gu had concealed one of the locking conditions from him. In addition to the iris and fingerprint scans, the mechanism required Mr Gu’s voice. Every time he entered or exited the room he would say hello or goodbye to the teenager, so Xiao Ning had never realised it was one of the conditions. 

Because of the numerous incorrect password attempts, the room entered a locking procedure. Metal walls fell around the room and the power disconnected, leaving Xiao Ning trapped inside the dark, metal cage. There was no chance of him escaping.

Without Mr Gu, he was an abandoned flower, and soon he would wither and die.

The film was supposed to end with a dark screen and the desperate screams of the teenager, which Ji Ning had prepared himself for.

However, just when Gu Chen had pushed him down on the bed, capturing him in a depraved kiss, the heavy metal door was forced open with a loud noise, making the two actors freeze. 

Had the script changed again?

Ji Ning was held down on the bed, most of his clothes ripped off and his alluring body exposed. He was crying, tears running down his face and his eyes reddened with emotion as he stared at the door in a daze. Gu Chen who loomed above him, pinning his hands above his head, also turned to stare at the door.

A tall figure stood in the shadowed doorframe.

A blond monarch in a snow white military uniform stood in front of them. He looked at the two people on the bed, a violent storm brewing in his eyes as he asked in a deathly cold voice. 

“What are you doing?”

Ji Ning is literally down to ten boyfriends now, I cannot think of a single way Gu Chen is surviving this – I’m sorry my darling, I can’t protect you from my wicked author!

This is probably just my bad taste, but I would probably really enjoy a film like this~