CH 16

“Do you think I’ll be soft-hearted if you say this?” Fu Ge directly pressed the utility knife against his neck.

“Don’t be soft-hearted…” Qi Han looked at him with a bitter smile. “I’m sorry, from the age of seventeen to twenty-three, gege’s best years were wasted by me. If it weren’t for me, would you be able to live better?”

He didn’t know the answer, so he could only raise his hand tremblingly, and finally nudged the tip of his lover’s nose.

“Do it. Leave everything that follows to Chen Xing. No one will suspect you, and from now on, my Xiao Ge will live well and in peace.” 

Live well…

These two words cut into Fu Ge’s heart like a knife.

How was he going to live well?

Life for him was a puppet show made of countless nightmares, and he didn’t even dare to close his eyes.

His blurred vision gradually melted into several halos of light, and his mind that had been shredded by hallucinations too many times became confused once again.

“You’re sorry… It turns out that my seven years are only worth one “sorry” in your heart, right? One apology from you, one miserable childhood, and you can excuse all that you did with your own hands.”

Fu Ge sneered; his hand holding the utility knife trembled convulsively, and tears rolled down from his eyes unconsciously, “Qi Han, am I so cheap in your eyes?”

“No, gege…” Qi Han didn’t stop shaking his head, trying to brace himself to sit up only to fall back. In the end he could only support himself against the back of the bed in embarrassment.

“No? But they all say so…”

Fu Ge’s vision was blurred by tears, his hazy eyes blank, and he once again was in his prison of pain.

“Everyone I’ve met these past few days, your friend, your housekeeper, even the bodyguard who shared a portion of fruit with me, they all said… that Xiao Han had suffered and was so pitiful, just let go of those things between you, It’s not worth mentioning after all these years.”

Fu Ge smiled and murmured, repeating these words, “Not worth mentioning… everything I have suffered is not worth mentioning, only the suffering you have suffered is real. You were imprisoned, experimented on and given injections, you are so miserable and pitiful, but…”

He paused, a choking sob escaping his throat, and it took all his strength to complete the sentence, “I didn’t do those things…”

“I didn’t do it, it wasn’t me, it wasn’t me…” He tugged at Qi Han’s clothes, aggrieved and desperate to prove it to him, “You know it wasn’t me, don’t you? You know, you can testify for me.”

“I know, I know.” Qi Han knelt on the bed and took him into his arms, so heartbroken that the wounds on his body were ignored, “It’s not Xiao Ge’s fault, it has nothing to do with Xiao Ge, it has nothing to do with gege, I know all about it.”

The man in his arms shivered for a moment, raising his head to reveal his eyes filled with horror and confusion as he asked a dumb voice, “Has nothing to do with me?”

“Then why did you do these things to me?…”

He still couldn’t figure out the cause of that nightmare. Unwillingness and grievances continued festering in his heart; like a pitiful child who was bullied but had to wait for an adult to coax him before he dared to ask in a whisper: Why did they beat me, I didn’t do anything bad…

And Fu Ge waited for five years before he finally had the adult come and coax him.

“Why should I bear the consequences of the actions of others… Why should I be imprisoned and tortured… Why should I let go of everything…”

He raised his finger shakily and pointed at himself, saying helplessly and sarcastically, “Just because I don’t have anyone to protect me, I don’t even have the right to choose whether to forgive or not, do I?”

Fu Ge felt that this was the case.

He had no mother, no father, no family, no mark and no Alpha, and because he had nothing, no one looked out for him, no one felt sorry for him.

It seemed that his crying was unreasonable and his tears were meaningless. Even the unwarranted disaster he suffered again five years later was because he relied on Qi Han again for good or ill, and he deserved it for being so low.

“But I didn’t come back on purpose, I’ve lost my memory…”

The young Beta’s body trembled, fear and helplessness filling every fibre of his being. He withdrew from Qi Han’s arms and said timidly, “Can I apologise to you? You don’t need to ask for my forgiveness, I’ll apologise to you instead.”

“I’m sorry, it’s all my fault…” The desperate victim and the executioner at the same time pleaded, “Please let me go…”

The utility knife didn’t cut through the oxygen tube that night after all, because Fu Ge suddenly fainted and the wounds on Qi Han’s body that had just been stitched up opened again.

Chen Xing barged in with the doctor and bodyguards, and the two sets of resuscitators tossed around the ward in a tizzy.

In less than a week, Fu Ge was rushed into the surgery room for the second time.

The doctor gave him a full body check-up and finally determined that the cause of his fainting was the sequelae of the operation to remove the mark.

If not removed cleanly, the residual mark would remain in his inner cavity for a long time, causing his memory to be impaired and his mind to be disturbed.

And one of the sequelae was that he would go into shallow estrus when stimulated.

“Can you change the treatment method, do you have to lock him in?”

Qi Han watched the young Beta, who had been pushed into the small, cramped isolation room, cowering helplessly on the bed, not daring to move, like a rabbit caught by the ears.

“It’s the only way to go when he’s in estrus.”

The doctor said, “The outside full of AO pheromones will make it harder for him, and besides, he’s much better off now than he was a few years ago when he was in estrus and had to hide at home.”

Qi Han was punched in the heart and stopped talking.

He watched through the one-way glass as Fu Ge got off the bed, gathered everything including towels, rolls of paper and energy bars onto the bed, then threw himself onto it as well, covering himself with a thick quilt, and started taking those things and putting them under his nose one by one to sniff.

His eyes lit up before he sniffed, as if he was expecting something, but after the tip of his little nose slowly moved twice, the light would suddenly disappear. He flattened his mouth and childishly kicked the things off the bed gently.

Qi Han wondered, “What is he doing?…”

“Building a nest. BO in estrus are used to surrounding themselves with things that smell like their partner. They subconsciously imagine themselves to be a bird waiting for their mother to feed them.”

Qi Han immediately walked to the door when he heard the words, moving a little anxiously, “Can I go in? I’ll release pheromones for him.”

“Of course not!” The doctor was also a little embarrassed and tried to explain to him as professionally as possible, “It’s his instinct to look for his partner’s scent, but your Beta is a little special and he… loathes your pheromones.”

“Fainting suddenly is the stress response of his body after he smells too much of you. You are now… unable to comfort him.”

The movement of opening the door stopped. Qi Han was silent for half a minute, and with a “hmm”, his fingers holding the handle turned white.

Perhaps because it was only a shallow estrus, Fu Ge’s reaction was pitiful, but there were no symptoms except for restlessness, building a nest and being in a daze.

There was no impatience, no trying to relieve himself, he didn’t even touch himself there. He cowered at the foot of the bed, like a little mushroom that no one had picked, trembling and clutching his not-so-big cap.

Qi Han watched for a long time before he noticed that the little Beta’s lips were slowly moving, as if he was talking to someone. He picked up the phone outside the isolation room and listened to just one sentence before his eyes turned red.

Fu Ge said, “Ah Han, I hate estrus because I can’t use inhibitors and I don’t have money to book an isolation room.”

It was like he was schizophrenic, hating Qi Han to the point of tearing him apart when he was awake, and hallucinating about Mr. Bear Cub when confused.

“The doctor said going to the isolation room would make me feel better, but it costs three thousand yuan. I tried to paint the tourists on the street, but I couldn’t paint well.”

Fu Ge froze for a moment, as if the person in the hallucination asked him why he couldn’t paint well, and the little Beta thought for a long time and said, “The paintings will be burned, so I don’t dare to paint.”

Outside the isolation room Qi Han froze in place, his chest stuffy with pain.

Fu Ge continued to share his only experience of “enjoying” the isolation room.

“It took me a long time to save up enough money, and after half a month of waiting for my number, the doctor gave me a very small room at the end of the corridor. It was very dark inside, but I felt very safe. For the first time, I felt that estrus was not so scary.”

Then his voice changed and the ends of his eyes drooped again, “But I didn’t use that isolation room.”

Qi Han’s heart seized up; he knew that the other party couldn’t hear him but still subconsciously asked, “Why didn’t you use it?”

Fu Ge said, “Because an Alpha next door said that Beta in estrus was weird and he was afraid I would harass his lover, so he used the money to grab my spot.”

He flattened his mouth as he muttered it; even after many years he still couldn’t forget the grievances he felt at that time, “I know Beta in estrus is weird, I didn’t want to be like that either. I swore I wouldn’t affect anyone, why should I be thrown out… it was so hard to book it…”

His voice was tinged with thin, soft sobs, as if it would break at any moment, and Qi Han squeezed his eyes shut against the glass, suppressing a sob in his throat.

The person in Fu Ge’s illusion seemed to coax him, and the little Beta smiled again, “But I was lucky that day and used the best isolation room, because an Omega’s estrus ended early and he left the room for me.”

Fu Ge still couldn’t forget the little Omega that had helped him, beautiful and well behaved. The fallen bathrobe revealed a large lifetime mark on his back, a crimson crane.

His Alpha held him in his arms the whole time, kissing the back of his neck as he softly called him “baby.”

From the door of the isolation room to the reception desk, the little Omega’s feet never touched the ground. He nestled softly and drowsily in his lover’s arms, as if he didn’t have to be distracted by fear even if the sky was falling.

That was the first time Fu Ge knew how pleasant it could be to be in estrus with a lover to comfort you.

“They loved each other so much and his Alpha loved him so much that the doctor and nurses sighed after they left that the little Omega was so good…”

Fu Ge raised his eyes to his imaginary Mr. Bear Cub and pleaded in a soft, tiny voice, “I’ll be good too, will you hug me too?”

He held his breath nervously and slowly reached his hand into the air to reach the corner of Mr. Bear Cub’s clothes.

“Just hug me for a while, just a little bit, I’m uncomfortable… really uncomfortable, can you coax me…”

Qi Han stiffened, the blood in his body rushing to his head. He wanted to shout to stop Fu Ge from continuing to reach forward, yet he could only watch as Fu Ge’s fingers grabbed the emptiness. The little Beta’s body tilted, his expression freezing on his face, as if he was awakened from a beautiful dream.

“Fake…”

He muttered this word, straightening up and looking around, like a little bird in the cold winter that can’t find its mother, pleading in desperation.

“Don’t go… I don’t want to be hugged…”

“I’ll be good… I don’t need to make love, I don’t want pheromones… I don’t want anything… just talk to me…please, don’t leave me alone…”

The clothes on his back were soaked with sweat and the fabric of his pants was also stained. He was obviously already dripping wet from the heat of estrus but still endured without a word, knowing that no amount of crying and begging would result in being caressed.

The door to the isolation room was suddenly opened. Fu Ge sluggishly turned his head and was hugged before he could fully see the person who had come in.

“…Ah Han?”

“It’s me.”

“Are you… fake?”

The person holding him choked back a sob, “Yes, I’m fake.”

Tears slipping down in an instant, Fu Ge rubbed against his neck like a kitten, “What took you so long to get here…”