Mask off

The little robot was locked outside and was extremely anxious.

It’s over! That 100% ultra-concentrated pheromone extract… even if the mechanical little bird’s bio-stomach system is strong, it’ll still be corroded!

The AI imagined the horrific scene—the little bird’s internal tank would rupture and all sorts of nasty fluids would leak down his prosthesis. And this bird was particularly fierce; he might even pry himself open with a screwdriver, pull out his transparent intestinal structure, and, right in front of its Master, flush water through his bio-guts, cleaning himself with a blank expression.

This… this is too…

Too likely to excite Master!

No, it had to remind Master to be gentle with the mechanical little bird’s plastic intestines! If those things leaked, it would be hard to find a suitable replacement model.

In its desperation, the AI swapped its pincer hand for a drill attachment. Bzzzzzz. It drilled a pinhole-sized opening in the door and pressed its camera lens against it—

Only to meet the merman’s forest-green eyes, cold and warning.

Even knowing Master couldn’t see, the little robot felt a jolt of electricity run down its back. It backed away sheepishly, not daring to disturb him further.

---

The world called Izsu Paraiso stubborn and cold-blooded, and Yu Chen certainly was. His coldness was that of a system running without a single error, frigidly precise. He treated others this way, and he held himself to the same strict standards, rigorously controlling even his rut and breeding periods, times when alphas were typically allowed to indulge.

But now, all his detachment had vanished. He had almost completely lost his composure in front of Bai Ling.

“Recklessly eating things out of spite.” Yu Chen’s Adam’s apple bobbed. His voice deepened, and it was tinged with involuntary anger. “That’s half a year’s dose. It’s far beyond what you can handle.”

“Is it?” Bai Ling’s tone was light, almost airy.

“I will contact a doctor to induce vomiting. Stay here and don’t move.” Yu Chen fumbled for his terminal, preparing to call his private hospital.

“And after that?” Bai Ling asked.

“Rest well.”

“And then it’s over, just like that, isn’t it?” Bai Ling laughed, the sound trailing off, as if he saw through everything. “Just as I thought.”

Yu Chen couldn’t help but press, “Like what?”

Bai Ling’s agitation subsided into calmness and his tone was utterly dead. “Forget it.”

Forget it. Those two words sounded like resignation, but they instantly made Yu Chen’s heart clench as dark waves boiled in his eyes.

The light dimmed in the late afternoon. Silence filled the room. A gust of wind blew the French windows open, and the high-altitude gale swept fiercely yet silently between them.

Bai Ling looked out blankly. The billowing curtains were like a stormy sea, churning violently. The man’s long golden hair flew in the wind, like the golden years, gone, never to return.

He suddenly felt exhausted.

As if all his emotions had burned away in the silence, leaving only ashes.

Bai Ling wanted to grab him by the collar and demand why he had lied, why he had hidden his identity.

But thinking back, their relationship had never been close enough for that kind of heart-to-heart. Yu Chen’s kindness towards him had been nothing more than treating a stray dog kindly on a rainy day, or feeding a bird on a windowsill. It was the favor of a chance encounter, a relationship he could withdraw from at any time.

Besides, from the very beginning, Bai Ling had told him to his face that he wanted to kill Izsu Paraiso. Yu Chen hadn’t condemned him; instead, he had helped him multiple times. He had already shown more than enough benevolence. And him? He had eaten a few meals here and already thought the world revolved around him, even daring to throw a tantrum at the man.

Forget it. Let it end here.

Ending it here could still be considered a clean break.

“…I drank the extract myself. I’ll take responsibility. You don’t have to… Thank you for… taking care of me these past few days. I’ll pay you back…”

Hearing this, Yu Chen nearly crushed the terminal in his hand. He took a deep breath. “Pay me back? With what?”

At an age when others were being pampered and protected at home, he was already utterly alone. Whether injured or sick, his emotions were terrifyingly detached. A simple “I’m used to it” could cover everything.

It was the same this time. He had run over here, broken and battered. His prosthesis was ruined, and his heart was shattered.

Bai Ling muttered, as if to himself, “I still have my life. I can always pay it back.”

“No need.” Crack. The terminal screen shattered.

“No, I have to…” His voice was almost a whisper. The concentrated liquid in his stomach was, unsurprisingly, starting to burn. Bai Ling felt his mouth go dry and his voice was hoarse when he spoke. “If I don’t pay it back… I’ll remember it for too long. The milk you gave… I remembered it for a long time…”

How long? So long that in his past life, when he was in his forties, leaning on a crutch and passing  by a shop window, he still didn’t dare look too long at an old advertisement for the state-run milk factory.

He hadn’t understood this strange avoidance and sorrow back then.

Until one day, he pulled an old, discarded book from a trash heap. The cover was missing, but the title page read, Promise at Dawn. Inside, a passage was underlined with wavy lines:

[It was only after my fortieth winter that I began to understand. It is wrong to have been loved so much so young, so early. At the dawn of life, you thus acquire a bad habit, the worst habit there is: the habit of being loved. You can’t get rid of it. You believe that you have it in you, that you have it in you to be loved, that it is your due, that it will always be there around you, that it can always be found again, that the world owes it to you, and you keep looking, thirsting, summoning, until you find yourself on the beach at Big Sur, with only your brother the ocean, and his tortured tumult, with only your brother the ocean able to understand your heart. In your mother’s love, life makes you a promise at the dawn of life that it will never keep. You have known something that you will never know again. You will go hungry to the end of your days. Leftovers, cold tidbits, that’s what you will find in front of you at each new feast. You will always crawl back to your mother’s grave and howl like a lost dog.]

There was no more love like that, no more selfless milk… The Empire was dead. The statue in the square was just a mother’s monument.

He realized that he had been wailing all along. He wandered back and forth along the places where the milk truck used to pass. His throat made no sound, but his soul cried out.

Having tasted love in childhood, the rest of his life was spent in endless recollection and remembrance.

Compared to that, what was pheromone addiction? The extract, the milk… he always willingly drank the poison that came to his mouth.

“If you’re kind to me, I really will take it seriously.” A sourness surged into his nose. Bai Ling took deep, ragged breaths, and leaned against the wall as he slowly turned, reaching for the cold doorknob.

This time, he wouldn’t need the merman to leave without a word. He would leave himself.

“You still haven’t asked me the third question,” Yu Chen suddenly said.

“It doesn’t matter anymore…” Bai Ling lowered his eyes.

They were both intelligent people. As things had reached this point, they both understood. There was no need to completely tear down the facade and make things awkward for both of them.

Yu Chen had hidden things from him, and he had lied to Yu Chen. There was no winner in this brief relationship, only two losers.

But the merman’s voice trembled. “I am the person you want to kill.”

The muscles in the back of Bai Ling’s neck tensed. He remained silent.

“I am Izsu Paraiso,” he answered his own unasked question, his words tumbling out faster and faster, unable to be contained. “The shameless Emperor who abandoned the Empire. The Demon. The criminal who used milk trucks to monitor the entire nation—”

“ENOUGH!”

Bai Ling’s shoulders trembled. He strode back, shouting, “I don’t want to hear you say those things!” As if the man were confessing to him.

The distance was close enough now. Close enough that Bai Ling flinched, caught off guard, as an iron hand clamped onto his forearm, yanking him inward and pulling him crashing down into the pool.

A cold, yet burning embrace imprisoned him.

The bird in his arms struggled like a dying creature. “Get off!! Ah…”

He was the kind of person who would break before bending, who would rather die than be trapped. Yu Chen loosely held him, listened to his short, angry gasps, and leaned down, speaking with restraint. “Don’t move. Hear me out. I will give you power. You can dispose of me as you wish today. Vent your anger however you want. Afterward, go and get proper treatment.”

“You have no right to order me around!” Bai Ling shoved him with all his might, splashing water everywhere.

 

But the next second, his wrists were seized in a powerful grip, like a bird’s wings being pinned. They were twisted behind his back and pressed against his head.

Yu Chen trapped him in a corner of the pool wall, his voice a chilling whisper by Bai Ling’s ear. “No right? Of course, I do. Bai Ling, don’t forget you asked me for a partnership. And I agreed.”

Bai Ling’s eyes were bloodshot. He wished he could kill him. “That’s the biggest regret of my life!”

“Regrets are not accepted,” he said, as autocratic as the rumors claimed.

A mixture of resentment, anger, and grievance surged up. Bai Ling gritted his teeth and lunged, taking a vicious bite out of the merman’s bare shoulder.

“Hiss…!” The muscles at the corners of Yu Chen’s eyes twitched. He was forced to tilt his head back, exposing his well-defined neck.

It was a savage bite.

The scalding streaks of blood immediately flowed into his collarbone, pooling in his supraclavicular fossa before streaming down his powerful chest, dripping and staining the pool of icy water red.

Taking advantage of the opportunity, Bai Ling pushed away from the slightly loosened restraint and tried to scramble back onto the shore in a disheveled mess.

But then, his prosthetic ankle suddenly grew heavy. It was caught by a powerful and unquestionable force, which then ripped it off entirely!

Tearing off the prosthesis wasn’t enough. The merman’s grip was terrifyingly strong; Bai Ling watched as he crushed the hollow chamber with his bare hands, crumpling the piece of junk metal into a ball before tossing it back onto the shore.

With a loud “clang,” the scrap metal hit the carpet.

“Are you still running?”

“You bastard!! You’re looking for death!” Bai Ling screamed in despair. He tried to throw a punch at Yu Chen’s face, but because he had lost his prosthesis, he lost his balance and fell.

Just as he was about to crash into the bottom of the pool, those destructive hands caught him with deceptive care and pulled him upward. Yu Chen took the opportunity to pinch his thin chin, his tone gentle yet slow and cruel:

“Look at you. Just how many illegal wires did you install in yourself? You’d probably wet your pants just trying to charge up, wouldn’t you?”

Before the words could even settle, Bai Ling, with tears in his eyes, raised his palm high and was about to strike him across the face—

The merman, as if sensing a violent wind, tilted his sharp jaw up and waited for him.

But the palm that was so close fell away.

Bai Ling lowered his arm and rested his against the marble tiles. Strands of hair soaked in cold sweat clung to his forehead. He was numb with pain, yet a corner of his mouth was quirked up.

—He still couldn’t do it.

His weak body finally reached its limit, and he collapsed forward, unable to support himself any longer.

Bai Ling allowed himself to fall onto the merman.

Just like that night, he threw his desperate self into the Devil’s milk truck. Like a howling stray puppy, he returned to his mother’s side.