Countless nurses swarmed toward Qin Guan’s ward. As one of them rounded a corner, she happened to run into a doctor pushing a transport cart.
The man wore a white lab coat and a mask, covered from head to toe. On the cart lay a corpse draped in white cloth, its abdominal cavity torn open with a large hole, and absurdly, an IV pole was still stuck in it.
As the two passed each other, the man cast a cold glance at the nurse and walked away without a word. The nurse stood frozen in place, somewhat bewildered.
Patient deaths did indeed occur frequently in the psychiatric hospital, and normally there were dedicated staff who transported all these corpses to the underground morgue. This should have been a perfectly routine matter for them…
But… of all times, it had to be now…?
Having already become a walking corpse, she clearly could not process overly complex questions, but in the instant they passed each other, she did indeed see…
That “doctor” had a pair of extraordinarily beautiful, smoke-gray eyes.
The transport cart squeaked and rattled down the corridor. Qin Guan pulled his mask up high to cover his face, calmly surveying his surroundings as he disguised himself as a corpse transporter, pushing the cart forward at a brisk pace.
The so-called nurses here were all walking dead, lacking any capacity for independent thought. Thanks to the help of Lu Chuan’s corpse, he encountered no obstruction or questioning along the way and smoothly reached the elevator.
Watching the elevator numbers slowly descend, Qin Guan’s nerves relaxed slightly.
All the walking corpse nurses in the hospital who could still move had been summoned to the original floor. The only genuinely threatening fellow was good and dead beside him. As long as he reached the morgue smoothly and escaped through the “death chute” used for transporting corpses, the entire instance would be completely over…
“Hey, isn’t it a bit too early for you to be happy?”
A voice rang out from behind him.
Qin Guan couldn’t even be bothered to turn his head. “Drop the act. The dose of muscle relaxant I injected into you is enough to take down a rhinoceros.”
Behind him, Lu Chuan stared at the wound on his abdomen as it gradually healed, chuckling as though he had heard a highly amusing joke.
As Qin Guan had said, his entire body was utterly devoid of strength; only his head could barely move a little.
Lying in the filth of blood and dust, he strained his completely uncooperative cervical vertebrae to turn his head and look. After great effort, he finally caught a glimpse of a small sliver of the other man’s earlobe peeking out from beneath his hair, adorned with a tiny, vivid red mole.
That mole was exceedingly small, visible only from a specific angle. Even Qin Guan himself might not have known of its existence, like an unspeakable secret.
For a moment, Lu Chuan stared, somewhat entranced.
“What’s a rhinoceros?” Lu Chuan asked, making conversation out of nothing.
“A creature that falls in love easily.”
“Then what is love?” Lu Chuan persisted relentlessly.
Qin Guan finally condescended to glance back over his shoulder, shooting him a cold look.
But Lu Chuan showed absolutely no self-awareness of being unwanted, still examining the other man with keen interest.
Ever since he could remember, Lu Chuan had been locked away in the psychiatric hospital. Every day, his eyes were filled with nothing but madmen, corpses, and the stench of blood. Countless people came and went, unnamed dead piling up into thick, high walls.
But he had never met anyone like Qin Guan.
Lu Chuan stared at the red mole behind the other man’s ear, thinking.
Someone who could stir in him such an intense… desire to destroy.
His waist was slender and straight, and his eyes always carried a haughty pride like a little peacock’s, making people unable to resist wanting to destroy him, crush him, watch him cry and scream… until bone and blood merged together, and they were devoured whole, side by side.
Lu Chuan savored this rare sensation, an itch that seemed to burrow into the roots of his teeth… fine and scattered yet surging fiercely, triggering wave after wave of rapid, violent heartbeats.
So he was still alive.
He had forgotten for too long.
Lu Chuan licked the tips of his teeth. “Are you married?”
Qin Guan looked at him. “What?”
Lu Chuan stared at the two rings stacked together on his ring finger.
The morgue was on the third underground level, and the old elevator still needed some time to descend.
An eerie silence spread between the two of them. Just as Lu Chuan was certain Qin Guan would never speak to him again in this lifetime, the other man suddenly spoke.
“A ghost marriage.”
“What?” Lu Chuan didn’t process it for a moment.
His cartilage earrings swayed gently. Qin Guan looked with some distaste at the two rings lying side by side on his finger and curled his lip. “Might as well have married a dead man.”
“Mm-hm.” Lu Chuan gave an ambiguous hum.
“What kind of person is he?”
This question truly stepped on Qin Guan’s sore spot. He whipped around and snapped furiously.
“What’s it to you?!”
Lu Chuan said shamelessly, “Let me help you remember. What if I’ve seen him before?”
The words did sound somewhat reasonable, but when it came to matters about his lover… ranging from the other person’s physical features down to the details of their time together… he couldn’t remember a single thing.
There was still some time before the elevator would arrive. Lu Chuan began guessing on his own: “What kind do you like? Dominant? Smart? Gentle?”
He guessed several in a row, but Qin Guan said nothing. Lu Chuan laughed. “Oh my, don’t tell me you like the obedient type. That would be a bit tricky.”
Qin Guan said darkly, “Say one more word, and believe it or not, I’ll cut out your tongue.”
Lu Chuan still had that IV pole stuck in his abdominal cavity, his mouth full of bloody froth, yet he laughed so hard he rocked back and forth, pinned to the examination bed.
In a corner the other man couldn’t see, Lu Chuan tilted his head, watching him, then glanced at the ring on his hand. For the first time, a somewhat subtle expression appeared on his face.