After Failing to Reverse the Plot, I Made My Escape - Chapter 33

He said he would love me forever.

“No!”

“Let me go!”

Yu Fuqiu felt as if he were falling into the deep sea. He could only watch helplessly as he drifted into a bottomless abyss with no one to save him.

All around him was a thick, ink-like darkness. Heavy water pressure squeezed him from all directions, pouring into his nose and mouth, blocking his breath, and crushing his chest. Every weak heartbeat brought a tearing, dull pain.

Just as he was about to be swallowed by the darkness, a pair of warm hands caught him and pulled him out of the shadows.

Yu Fuqiu opened his eyes, wanting to see the person who had saved him.

A face carved into his very soul appeared before him.

It was his lover.

Chang Tingzhi appeared like a god descending from heaven, pulling him into an embrace and dispelling the endless darkness. “I am here. No one will bully you again.”

The scene shifted.

He followed the instructions of the lady in white. He only found out later that she was called a nurse.

The nurse said that as long as he was good, he would have everything.

So Yu Fuqiu did as he was told. He stopped trying to run away. Sure enough, the man with the electric baton never appeared again. When he wanted to eat buns from Sanya’s shop, the nurse would bring him soft, fluffy buns the next day that tasted even better than the ones he had eaten in the ancestral hall.

In the middle of the night, the nurse even gave him a beautiful doll.

She instructed him to keep the doll with him no matter what he did.

But Yu Fuqiu did not like the doll. At night while he slept, the doll’s face would occasionally emit a red light. Furthermore, the nurse had recently started making him wear strange clothes and stand in front of the doll. Yu Fuqiu felt extremely uncomfortable being watched like that.

However, he did not dare to resist. Whenever he did, the nurse would pinch his arm forcefully, leaving deep nail marks that hurt even more than when his mother used to twist his skin.

One day, the nurse asked him if he wanted to see his mother.

Yu Fuqiu said yes.

He had been very good during this time, though he still disliked the white powder the nurse fed him every day at noon. It was bitter and astringent. Every time he ate it, his mind and body felt strange and painful, and everything became blurred.

Then, he swallowed the transparent medication once more.

Only, when he woke up, he was not at home.

Instead, he was at…

“The final auction item!”

“Bride for a Night.”

He saw himself tied to a black cross, his wrists and ankles restrained by deep red velvet straps. Only a few ribbons were wrapped around him, outlining a breathtaking silhouette under the suggestive red lights.

No, did she not say we were going home?

Why was he here?

“Why did he wake up early? The dosage was not enough.”

“He has taken too much and built up a resistance, but it is a miracle he is actually conscious.” He turned his head slightly and saw the nurse standing with another person.

His pupils shrank. It was the man who always beat him with the electric baton!

When his face was fully exposed to the underground auction house, the entire audience held their breath.

With his head slightly lowered, his soft, jet-black hair fell messily over his shoulders, disappearing into the bow on his chest. His fair skin shimmered under the red lights, and his waist was so slender it looked as if it could be held in one hand. He trembled slightly against the cold iron frame.

The masked bidders below began to breathe heavily. Pairs of eyes, like slimy poisonous snakes, stared greedily and wantonly at every inch of his skin, accompanied by sharp laughter.

“Ha… how exciting.”

“Truly worthy of being the finale.”

“I heard he is still a virgin.”

“A top-tier specimen. You cannot find another like this in the whole country. I heard he is from the Yu family.”

“Oh my, from a scholarly family? Then I must have a taste.”

Yu Fuqiu trembled all over.

This is a dream.

This is not real.

He told himself desperately in his heart, closing his eyes tightly, trying to withdraw his consciousness into a slightly safer corner. The nurse would not lie to him; he had been so good. She would take him to see his mother and the person he wanted to see.

Why was he being forced back into this nightmare?

He was not a bride. He was not.

He did not like being tied up here, he did not like wearing those clothes, and he certainly did not like taking medicine. He wanted to go home.

Why was no one listening?

He had clearly been so good. Why did they lie and make him take medicine just to bring him to this place?

Why were there always people smiling, wanting to take red-hot branding irons to sear his skin, saying it looked beautiful?

It was disgusting.

The thought of those filthy, greasy stares leaving a nauseating scent, the bitter medicine, the days of being beaten, and being tied up and displayed like a doll for appraisal…

Retch.

Yu Fuqiu suddenly curled up and began to dry heave uncontrollably.

He was not like that.

“Do not look at me. Go away, I beg you.” He struggled unconsciously, wrapping his arms tightly around himself, his nails digging deep into his flesh. He tried to use the sharp pain to extinguish the overwhelming fear and nausea.

Memory and reality, hallucination and perception were completely blurred. His world began to collapse.

It was as if he had returned to that cold mental hospital, like a beautiful doll without a soul, enduring endless pain.

But just as he was about to be annihilated.

He saw it.

A dark figure picked him up, stepping over the faces of those nightmares.

Yu Fuqiu strained his eyes, wanting to see who it was.

It was Chang Tingzhi.

It was his lover.

Saving him from the fire and water.

Rescuing him from the endless darkness.

So, Yu Fuqiu thought, as long as Chang Tingzhi loved him forever, he would pay any price.

The lover before his eyes began to shatter.

“Azhi, it hurts.”

“Be gentler.”

“Azhi, kiss me.”

“Yu Fuqiu, how much longer are you going to keep up this self-indulgent act?”

“It is cheap.”

“I make a million a minute. Can you afford me?”

“What do his affairs have to do with me?”

“The one who loved you died long ago. Why can you not face reality?”

“You truly disgust me.”

Reality and memory intertwined, and the suffocating darkness wrapped tightly around him.

“Mommy.”

He saw his child pulling Ke Qi’an’s sleeve, looking up with a beaming smile. “You are my real Mommy. He is not.”

“He is just something trying to climb his way up.”

Chun Chun.

Ke Qi’an was held in Chang Tingzhi’s arms, and he flashed a smile at Yu Fuqiu.

“A fake is a fake. It can never be real.”

As he watched the family of three fade into the distance, Yu Fuqiu’s own figure gradually became transparent.

“No.”

Do not treat me like that.

You were the one who saved me. Why do you not want me anymore?

You cannot abandon me.

Would it have been better if I had just died in the mental hospital back then?

…

“Heavens, he is finally awake.”

Yu Fuqiu’s consciousness slowly returned. His vacant eyes stared blankly at the cold ceiling.

He turned his head slightly and saw Zuo Chenshuang and Chu Chu sitting by the bed with solemn expressions. Seeing him wake up, Chu Chu burst into tears and held his hands. “You scared me to death.”

He had been in a coma for three full days. During that time, his heart had stopped numerous times, and Zuo Chenshuang had issued several critical condition notices.

Zuo Chenshuang crumpled a critical condition notice into a ball. He was not Yu Fuqiu’s family, and the only lover, Chang Tingzhi, would not answer the phone and could not be reached at all.

By the time he made contact, he had already seen the news broadcasts.

Chang Tingzhi had stayed in a hotel for three days. The first thing he did upon leaving was not to clarify the news of Yu Fuqiu’s accident, but to accompany an unknown starlet to an investment kick-off ceremony.

Yu Fuqiu was in such a poor state that Zuo Chenshuang did not know how to tell him.

“Fuqiu.”

Zuo Chenshuang saw that Yu Fuqiu’s will to live was too low. His brain waves showed significant activity, yet he could not wake up.

Yu Fuqiu did not speak. He wore a ventilator and kept his eyes lowered, his gaze hollow like a quiet doll.

“Actually, he was the one who told me to pick you up at that time.”

“He was also the one who told me to find you in that alley, following his guidance.”

Yu Fuqiu remained quiet, his eyes downcast as if everything in the outside world had nothing to do with him. He could only perceive the sound of the IV saline dripping.

“According to my research, it is possible for him to return.”

Zuo Chenshuang gritted his teeth and took out the call records between them.

The sound of static and distorted current came from the phone, followed by the familiar voice of Yu Fuqiu’s Chang Tingzhi.

“Go find Qiu Qiu. He is at.”

“Tell Qiu Qiu.”

“I will love him forever.”

The vacancy in Yu Fuqiu’s eyes slowly regained some spirit, and his stiff eyes moved gradually.

He slowly turned his gaze toward Zuo Chenshuang’s phone.

His body was covered in tubes, leaving him unable to move at the moment.

Zuo Chenshuang held the phone to his ear, repeating that sentence over and over.

Finally, Yu Fuqiu heard it clearly.

He loves me forever.

He said he would love me forever.

The intimate, rising tone of the voice carried an unmistakable, hidden affection.

It was his Chang Tingzhi.

Yu Fuqiu remembered the day he brought soup to Chang Tingzhi.

In that alley, he thought he would be sucked back into the vortex of darkness.

Then Zuo Chenshuang came to find him.

Calling him Qiu Qiu.

The nickname that belonged exclusively to Chang Tingzhi.

It turned out Chang Tingzhi had always been there.

He had always been by his side, had he not?

Had he never disappeared?

Was it just that Yu Fuqiu could not find him until now?

Yu Zhuo slowly pushed open the door.

He pulled up a video showing a sickly cat lying on the balcony, basking in the sun in Yu Fuqiu’s room.

“Actually, Tingzhi also asked me to deliver this to you as a fifth-anniversary gift.”

Chu Chu wiped her red nose. “When Zuo Chenshuang called me, I went to confront Chang Tingzhi.”

“He said he had no idea you brought him soup and had no idea you ever came to the company.”

So…

Who was it that threw his soup in the trash and hired people to follow him into that alley?

In other words, Chang Tingzhi did not hate him at all.

His Chang Tingzhi was coming back.

It turned out God still favored him.

Had he finished atoning for his sins?

Now, he had new hope.