HOYSE CHAPTER 29

Chapter 29 — I Saved… Nothing?

Balloons were drifting over the rooftop, and amid them a human silhouette swayed as if about to topple.

You have got to be kidding me.

Was he jinxing it? Maybe the heavens had been successfully fooled until he went and jinxed it out loud.

From this distance Rong Jing could not confirm if that shadow was Gu Xi and he did not want to guess what might have happened.

Whatever it was, speculating was useless. Move first. Rong Jing cut back into the building at a near run.

Classmates who had watched him step outside blinked as he flashed past them and vanished again. What on earth…?

He jabbed the elevator button and stared at the numbers climbing, urging it to move faster.

---

Following the note’s directions, Gu Xi pushed open the rooftop door and was met by a sea of roses in full, gaudy bloom. Under the blazing gold of the sun, the red stung his eyes. Another Omega might have been swept away by the grandeur. Pulling off something like this meant plenty of hands, money, and power behind it.

With that kind of pursuit, even Omegas, rare as they were, would have trouble staying unmoved. And the ones perched atop the pyramid were rarer still.

This person understood how to tease a heart along. He had left cryptic crumbs before, tugging at Gu Xi’s curiosity while never once revealing himself.

It was psychological warfare meant to breach his defenses.

Apart from several massive water tanks, the only thing on the platform was a three-meter-tall object swaddled in white cloth, shaped like a water droplet.

Gu Xi glanced around. No one was there. He stepped up to the covered shape and gave the fabric a tug. It slipped off with a soft rustle.

A house, miniaturized and lashed to multicolored balloons, floated up in front of him. A guide rope trailed from its base, and the little house bobbed gently in the breeze.

It was bright with color, like something from a fairy tale.

A few years ago, when he was at his hottest, Gu Xi had loved an animated short called House Journey. He had envied the hero’s lifelong devotion to his late wife. He had been so moved he wrote a recommendation and even jokingly replied to a fan: If anyone gives me a little house like that, I will marry him.

It had been a throwaway quip. Even fans did not take it seriously.

Yet now someone had made a scaled version for real. It was not even a little wooden house, it was a miniature villa, glittering and gold. The tiny “diamonds” on it could well be real. The cost was definitely high.

Beautiful, yes, but to Gu Xi it looked more like a gilded cage.

A lovely cartoon sullied by filth.

Maybe tugging the cloth had triggered a switch.

The golden door clicked open. Inside was a phone and a stack of photos. Gu Xi picked up the phone, saw nothing suspicious at first glance, then drew out part of the stack. His expression changed.

They were nude shots. All of them were of him, in sultry, suggestive poses. And in those photos, he was clearly awake.

Impossible. That was not him.

He suddenly remembered a magazine shoot from a while back and pulled the images up on his own phone. There it was... the exact same head. Just the head. It had been grafted onto another body.
The lighting and angles were almost perfect that you could pass them off as real.

If those got uploaded, they would spread like a plague.

Even if platforms took them down for obscenity, sharp-eyed users would save them and pass them around in private.

True or not did not matter.

Even if proven fake later, so what.

He would still have fed their curiosity and desire. Fake or not, his reputation would take a hit he might never shake.

Ding.

The previously silent phone lit up with a message: Would you like to be together with me?

Gu Xi almost threw the thing. The mysterious suitor had bombarded him with flowers and gifts. When those were returned or donated, the man must have blown his top, which was why this rose-and-balloon spectacle had been staged. The nine thousand roses downstairs were only the appetizer.

The whole production was a confession and a warning.

As if to say, if you do not appreciate my kindness, who knows what I will do next. There could be worse consequences.

Worse could mean making the photos real or something he could not even predict.

The sun was blazing, yet his vision went dark at the edges and a cold seeped down his spine.

These roses felt like countless invisible hands dragging him into the mud.

There was no one here, yet he felt naked, exposed.

His fingers trembled as he jabbed a single word back: Get lost.

Right then, the guide rope snapped.

Buoyed by the balloons, the little house lifted. Several photos hidden inside had not been taken out yet. Gu Xi lunged and just as the house was about to drift past the parapet, he caught it and yanked out every last picture.

He gripped too hard and tore his palm. Blood rolled down off pale skin.

Smack!

A figure burst through the door, and Gu Xi’s body went rigid.

This rooftop did not have direct access; you had to—

The newcomer bent over, gulping air. He had run all the way up.

Rong Jing lifted his head to the fields of roses and then to Gu Xi, who stood at the edge where a stronger gust could have taken him. The despairing, suffocating air that wrapped Gu Xi hit him at once; blood still streaked his hands. Gu Xi stared back, stunned, as if unable to understand why Rong Jing was here.

These roses were identical to the ones he had seen downstairs. Same origin, probably.

There was no time to dwell on it. Rong Jing zigzagged through the gaps, kicking over a few pots, trampling muddy footprints as he seized Gu Xi by the wrist and dragged him away from the edge.

The pull tipped Gu Xi forward, nearly into Rong Jing’s arms.

There was only a layer of fabric between them and the hard, elastic planes of Rong Jing’s chest. Alpha scent threaded into every breath Gu Xi took.

Once he had hauled the man back from danger and silenced the sirens in his head, Rong Jing finally snapped, voice low and fierce. “No matter what you are going through, you do not choose death. Think about your family, your friends. How would they feel?” If he could go back to his own world, no matter how hard it was he would still fight to live. Only living gave you time to find a way.

“…Huh?” Gu Xi blinked.

Had the junior he had just mentored really opened by chewing him out? Was this the same gentle, restrained Alpha?

A corner of Rong Jing’s mind wondered whether the world would collapse if the main-plot Omega actually died here.

In the original, Gu Xi did not try to jump off this building. The place was different, the setup eerily similar.

Why did the story keep looping back through nine twists and eighteen turns, even when he tried to wrench it off-track?

“What do you mean, huh. You were about to jump.” Rong Jing almost never raised his voice. It was less anger than fear. He had seen Gu Xi’s work and knew how serious and dedicated he was. He admired that. He also knew, from gossip and his own observation, that Gu Xi was cold outside but warm inside. Someone that driven dying like this would be too cruel a verdict from the world.

“I was not jumping. I was getting the photos back,” Gu Xi said softly. His voice sounded like a wind-bell under the eaves, light and soothing.

He had banged his head against that rock-hard chest, and his brain was still buzzing.

Uh.

Rong Jing froze. Had he… misunderstood?

Gu Xi pushed him away. The heat from Rong Jing’s body seemed to cling to his face. He felt oddly self-conscious, a flush creeping down his neck, bright and soft in the rooftop light.

The only witness had zero appreciation and Omega allure bounced right off him.

Rong Jing was the one who felt awkward. The two of them looked at each other and said nothing.

So after all that, I saved… nothing?

Blood was still sliding down Gu Xi’s hand. The pain snapped his focus back.

His heart gave a hard thump.

Like a rusted clock hand forcing itself upward, he slowly lifted his gaze to Rong Jing.

Rong Jing was extremely handsome, the kind of handsome that carried a touch of nobility. On that face now was a thread of anxiety, the kind that made a heart stutter, Alpha presence wrapping around him like a cloak.

But why was Rong Jing here? That made no sense. Only the sender of the roses should know about this place.

Rong Jing was a film school grad and the Xie family’s young master.

He had the means to stage all this. Yet the help he had given before had not felt false.

Unless that help had been another trap.

His thoughts chased each other until he was dizzy. Days of bottled irritation, the sensitivity of his heat cycle, pressure from every side, and the rooftop’s high-alert stress piled together until he felt spooked by shadows, seeing danger in every face.

Best course: trust no one.

Gu Xi edged back a step at a time. Confusion sharpened to vigilance, then to suspicion and fear.
Rong Jing saw him nearing the ledge again. “Do not back up. One more step and you really will fall.”

Gu Xi’s fingers brushed the rough stone of the parapet. He stared at Rong Jing, searching his face, then nodded once. “You go over there first. Let me think.”

“I get it. I will not touch you.” Rong Jing lifted both hands to show no sudden moves.

He looked so harmless doing it that Gu Xi almost laughed, if not for the situation.

Rong Jing had read enough basic psych to recognize the anxiety on Gu Xi’s face, the shrinking pupils, the unconscious curl of his fingers, the bluish lips. If you had to describe it, Gu Xi was a taut string ready to snap. The mental pressure must have been immense.

Why had he seemed fine at the audition, yet now…

Then Rong Jing saw the photos scattered all across the concrete.

One glance at the explosive content and he nearly wanted to gouge out his own eyes. What was this?

Gu Xi noticed he had seen and there was no stopping it.

He closed his eyes in despair. He must think I am disgusting.

The average person’s first thought would be that the upright Gu Xi had a filthy private life to be shooting this trash.

Or that he slept around, followed by a sigh about how deep the industry’s water ran.

Would any explanation help? Even if they were composites, why were they of him and not someone else? Because he was “asking for it?” He had heard that victim-blaming line too many times.

Who forced him to shoot these or are they fakes?

Gu Xi’s trembling hand stilled. He stared, stunned, at Rong Jing, who had not said a word.

He had heard it. Rong Jing’s thoughts.

His long-vanished mind-reading had switched on again.

---

 PREVIOUS           TOC           NEXT