CH 7

Qi Han almost fled in defeat.

He couldn’t stand the way Fu Ge looked at him as if he was a saviour. Every time the affection in Fu Ge’s eyes increased, the remorse in his heart became a hundred times stronger. He desperately hid and covered up his previous criminal behaviour, tasting the pain of cutting his flesh with a blunt knife in self-abuse.

But he couldn’t help it.

He had destroyed the boy he loved with his own hands, and his heart hung on the tip of the knife. The missing memories were like a wolf waiting behind him, ready to pounce and bite his neck.

He was on pins and needles for days.

The day Fu Ge regained his memory was going to be the day he would be doomed to death.

He stood on the balcony, finishing a pack of cigarettes before returning to his room. Fu Ge had gotten up from the bed at some point and was squatting by the door, drowsy.

“Why don’t you go to bed?”

Fu Ge raised his head, bleary-eyed, “You didn’t come back.”

There was no logic to this statement, and Qi Han frowned, “Whether I come back or not has nothing to do with whether you go to bed or not. What does going to bed have to do with it?”

Fu Ge was also stunned by the question, his eyes blank.

Qi Han was about to make him go back to his room to sleep when he suddenly thought of something, “You…”

He gritted his teeth, “Come with me!”

“What’s wrong, sir?”

Qi Han didn’t reply, grabbed his hand and headed for Fu Ge’s room, pushed the door open and went straight to the bed. He reached out and touched it only to find that the bed was flat as if no one had ever laid on it, while the single circular sofa on the side was dented to form a small crater.

“Have you ever slept in this bed?” Qi Han asked Fu Ge, suppressing his anger.

Fu Ge shook his head, “No.”

“So you’ve been sleeping on the sofa for the past month?” Qi Han laughed angrily. “Did I not feed you or give you a place to live, so you need to cramp yourself like this?”

Fu Ge was so frightened that he trembled, and the depressing images kept flashing back in his head, making him instinctively fear that bed even more.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to… I’ll stay in my cage obediently, I’ll sleep quietly and won’t make a sound, I won’t say anything, I won’t say anything, I—”

“Xiao Ge! Wake up!”

Qi Han grabbed his hand that was waving randomly. His lips trembled and he couldn’t say a word, he only felt as if a knife was twisted in his heart, “You… You said you were locked in a cage?”

Fu Ge kept shaking his head, his tears flowing down as he was desperately trying to break away from his hand, “I know I’m wrong, I won’t make a sound, can you, can you stop torturing me… I’m afraid… I’m really scared… Please, I’m really scared…”

He trembled, collapsing on the floor, his frightened eyes full of despair, “Ah Han… Why do you do this to me, ah…”

Qi Han’s heart was squeezed so hard that his breath hitched.

He was silent for a long time, then suddenly took a step forward, his voice hoarse and powerful: “You’re going to remember, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know…” Fu Ge wrinkled his brow in pain, his eyes flickering and gradually regaining clarity, “Sir? Have I mistaken you for him again?”

Qi Han exhaled as if his life had been spared, “…Yes.”

He bent down and picked up Fu Ge, put him on the bed and said softly, “Xiao Ge, it’s all in the past, this is home, your own room, you can do whatever you want.”

Fu Ge’s eyes were red and his voice was hoarse, “My room?”

“Yes.”

“Then may I sleep flat on my back tonight?”

With just one sentence Qi Han’s eyes suddenly reddened and his voice trembled, “…You may.”

Fu Ge hugged him again happily, as if he had been given the whole world, “Thank you, sir, I love you so much.”

Qi Han stiffly let him hold him, gritted his teeth and took a few deep breaths: “Why don’t you dare to sleep on the bed? What happens if you make a sound?” 

Fu Ge’s shoulders trembled and he choked as he cringed, “Will be taken to have sex… I don’t want to… I’m afraid of him…”

Qi Han turned his head, a few tears slipping out, “Then you just… did you just really stop talking?”

“Yes.” Fu Ge squeezed out a whimper, “I really didn’t say anything. I seemed to be sick, I opened my mouth but I couldn’t make a sound…”

“What did you say?” Qi Han’s mind buzzed for a moment and he lowered his head in disbelief.

Fu Ge raised his hand and pressed it to his throat, sobbing as he said, “Here, it was broken, I couldn’t speak anymore…”

At that moment, it seemed that someone had stabbed him in the chest with a knife. Qi Han’s eyes, ears, mouth and nose were all closed, but his head was abruptly cut open by a chainsaw, and scenes of chaotic cruelty of the fourteen days flooded him.

In an instant, the Fu Ge in his arms changed his look.

His body was filthy, his eyes bloodshot, cold sweat and tears streaming down his face, his lifeless eyes half-opened and looking at him in despair.

The chain had already chafed his wrists and the wound on his forehead had long since scabbed. He pressed Fu Ge to the bed, to the floor, to every corner of the basement, clutching his collar and repeating his questions.

“Xiao Ge, say it, as long as you say you don’t have it, I’ll believe you. As long as you say you don’t have it, I’ll let you go immediately. Let’s start over, okay? I can stop taking revenge, I can let go of everything, we can be together again.”

Fu Ge’s eyes were wide open, tears flowing out; he was like a puppet on a string being thrown around by Qi Han, but he never uttered a word from beginning to end.

Qi Han was so furious that he held him by the neck and pressed him to the mirror, shouting like a madman: “Say it, I told you to fucking say it! Are you dumb?”

Fu Ge looked at him in the mirror and begged him with his eyes, twisting his wrists to grasp the corner of his shirt, but when Qi Han let him go, Fu Ge raised his hands again, this time trembling and pointing at his throat.

He tried with all his might to make his vocal cords work, but only two “Ah…” came out.

Qi Han had already lost control and was in a very poor state of mind. He only thought it was a new trick Fu Ge had come up with, so in his anger he used his clothes to gag him.

Only today did Qi Han realise that it wasn’t that Fu Ge didn’t want to say anything; he was so tortured by him that he had lost his voice.

The next morning Qi Han went out early.

Even though Fu Ge got up early, he still didn’t get to see his sir, and to be precise, he didn’t get to see his sir for the next week.

The life that finally became sparkling seemed to be back to square one overnight. Fu Ge shrank in the empty house, like stagnant water, talking to hallucinations and counting the leaves on the trees. He also found a small nest of ants in the courtyard. He happily brought cakes to feed them, but the ants had already burrowed back into the ground.

He seemed to be the most uninteresting of lovers, and both the ants and Qi Han were bored with his company. So Fu Ge walked back to the single sofa and tried to turn himself into a fungus that merged with the fabric.

That was when Qi Han returned.

He was drunk and reeked of alcohol when he opened the door.

“Sir, quickly… come in quickly.”

Fu Ge rubbed his eyes in panic, wanting nothing more than to hug Qi Han at that moment, trying to make sure it wasn’t an illusion he had made up.

But Qi Han gave him a more direct way of confirming it.

He pinned Fu Ge against the wall, ripped his clothes and bit through the back of his neck, piercing it with his fangs like a beast in heat.

“Ugh— it hurts…” Fu Ge bowed his neck but a gasp of painful pleasure escaped from his throat, “A little harder…”

The tips of his teeth went hard and deep; Qi Han sucked and licked those two little holes fiercely, strong and domineering Alpha pheromones injected in streams, and Fu Ge could feel something slowly being drawn out of him.

It was Qi Han who was sucking his blood.

This realisation made Fu Ge more obsessed than the pain itself. He curled his fingers and held Qi Han’s hand, licking his fingers one by one, “Thank you, sir.”

Alpha’s aggressiveness is innate, and blood will intensify their instinct to bite. Omega’s pheromone is the only comfort at this time, but Fu Ge didn’t have it.

“I can’t taste… I can’t mark…”

Qi Han squeezed out two grunts, fiercely sucking at the wound, but he couldn’t get anything but blood.

“Why can’t I mark? Why can’t I mark?!”

He tore into the back of Fu Ge’s neck like a madman, leaving one tooth mark after another on the pale skin, pouring massive amounts of pheromones into each bite, making the young Beta’s hands and feet tingle and feel weak, but still no mark remained on the bare neck.

Qi Han looked at the place for a long time, and suddenly let out a choked sob, “Wife… I can’t mark you… I can’t taste you… Feed me…”

He had simply soaked in a wine barrel for the past few days, drunk and delirious, and the moment he entered the door he couldn’t even distinguish between the past and reality, thinking that he was back to those eight months and as soon as he acted coquettishly and pretended to be pitiful, Fu Ge would undo his clothes and bare his chest for him to bite.

“Sir… I, I don’t have pheromones…”

Fu Ge looked at him in shame. Even though he was messed up, he still tried to please the Alpha in every way possible.

“No pheromones, you don’t have them. What about milk?”

Qi Han used those dirty words to insult him again, ripping open Fu Ge’s clothes and pouncing on him, like a large dog in heat, rubbing against him and licking him also like a large dog.

Fu Ge was so ashamed that his cheeks were red and his heart pounded, but he didn’t push him away, putting his hand on Qi Han’s head and stroking it slowly, with unexpected skill, as if he had done it hundreds of times before.

“Xiao Ge, gege, I miss you…” Qi Han hugged him and kissed him indiscriminately, his shoulders trembling slightly, his voice gradually choking, “I miss you so much… Don’t you go with someone else, okay… Don’t you not want me…”

Fu Ge was very flattered, sniffling and suppressing his crying, saying in a tiny, sobbing voice, “I want you, I want you, sir… You’re the one who doesn’t want me, you never come home and leave me alone…”

“Not anymore, I promise I won’t ever do that again.”

He kissed Fu Ge’s neck, his warm lips moving slowly over his collarbone, before being blocked by the thin scar, the scar that Fu Ge had cut with his diamond ring.

Qi Han raised his eyes in a trance, his fingers rubbing the old dark scar, his eyes sliding inch by inch over Fu Ge’s thin, sunken features. His mind was filled with the image of the pain and determination on Fu Ge’s face when he cut his neck open.

He didn’t even dare to think about what that beautiful, romantic young Beta had gone through in that basement, and how he had to grit his teeth and survive the five years he had been alone and with no one to care about him.

The boy he loved so much that a lick of his finger could have crumbled his heart was reduced to a walking corpse by his own hands.

And he didn’t even notice it when he first met him, he just left him at home and ignored him.

“I’m sorry… Xiao Ge, I’m sorry…” Tears fell drop by drop. Qi Han buried his head in the side of Fu Ge’s neck, suppressing his sobs, “Let’s start over, okay?”

Fu Ge was stunned, “Start over what? Sir, what do you want to start over… to keep me once again?”

“No, it’s not keeping.” Qi Han raised his head, the tip of his nose pressed against Fu Ge’s, his forehead against Fu Ge’s forehead. He was obviously smiling, but warm water kept dripping into Fu Ge’s eyes.

“Let’s stay together, let’s get married, I’ll give you back your wedding, the honeymoon, the inspiration and the love, I’ll give it all back to you, okay?”

Fu Ge pursed his lips, not knowing why his heart was beating wildly, “I want it so badly, I want all of what you said, sir… But when did you owe me all this, I can’t remember…”

“If you can’t remember, don’t think about it, don’t ever think about it again, forget about those things, let’s start over, okay?”

Fu Ge grabbed his hand and wrapped his arms around Qi Han’s neck as if he was desperately clinging to him with everything that was left of him, “Do I have to forget to be together?”

“Yes, you must forget.”

“But… I can’t do it…”

Qi Han’s face darkened, and for a moment it was like falling into an ice cellar.

He stood up and helped Fu Ge straighten his clothes. Fu Ge grabbed his hand hard and cried, wrapping his arms around him, hugging him, kissing him, pleasing him, so desperate that it looked like the last thread of life was being taken away from him.

“No, sir! Don’t leave me, please don’t leave me alone… Don’t leave me alone again, don’t not want me… You’re all I have, I love you, I’ll love you so well…”

He even knelt on the sofa and begged, using all his strength to hold onto Qi Han, tears flowing all over his face, crying so hard that he couldn’t breathe.

Qi Han’s vision was blurred; the figure in front of him gradually overlapped with the Fu Ge of five years ago, so pitiful and so desperate.

He let out a bitter laugh, thinking, it was you who didn’t want me.

“You can’t forget…” He murmured a few words and looked straight into Fu Ge’s eyes, “What do you want to do if he appears in front of you again?”

Fu Ge didn’t make a sound, only kept shaking his head, grasping Qi Han’s fingers so hard that his knuckles turned white, but Qi Han didn’t try to break free at all.

“Do you still hate him?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then do you still… love him?”

“I… I really don’t know.”

Qi Han held on to the last shred of hope, “There are no feelings anymore, are there?”

Fu Ge stopped shaking his head, “There are…”

His hollow eyes blinked twice and he said word for word, “I want him to die.”