Xiao Yu: Dr. Li, congratulations on initiating our first conversation.
This beta’s way of thinking really was different from most people’s…
Li Qingchi felt a bit speechless but continued typing a reply.
Li Qingchi: So what if I sent you the first message? What’s so special about that? Don’t tell me you’re going to mark today on the calendar, treat it as an anniversary, and celebrate it every year?
Xiao Yu: Good idea. I might just adopt that.
What was there even worth commemorating? Commemorating the helpless, utterly exasperated expression of someone being coerced?
Li Qingchi: …If you have that kind of peculiar fetish, suit yourself.
Li Qingchi: So, the scar removal cream was from you?
Finally, the other party answered the question properly.
Xiao Yu: Bought it on a whim. I happened to pass by the hospital, so I just dropped it off for you.
It was an admission of sorts, but phrased differently, “on a whim,” “happened to,” “just dropped it off”, these words seemed eager to distance himself from any implication.
Li Qingchi stared at the messages on the screen for a while, then didn’t reply.
Xiao Yu: Don’t worry, I just bought this from the pharmacy. It hasn’t even been opened, it’s clean. You can go ahead and try it.
Li Qingchi: So what? What exactly are you trying to achieve by doing all this? Giving me a little sweetness so I won’t hold your despicable behavior against you? A slap, then a candy?
After sending that, two minutes passed, and Li Qingchi began to regret it. What was he even doing? If he didn’t want to use the things Wen Zhiyu sent, then he should just throw them away like he did with the milk tea last time. Why bother saying so much to him?
Just then, Wen Zhiyu’s message came in.
Xiao Yu: Yeah, so have you changed your mind about me now? Gone from hating me to being overwhelmed with gratitude? (smile)
Faced with this question, Li Qingchi didn’t hesitate, typing: Having delusions again? Then he hit send. Even though the question was deliberately exaggerated and laced with a hint of mockery.
It was as if he was saying: You care that much about what I sent you?
For Li Qingchi, he did care, but in a different sense. He cared because he hated it, with absolutely no other meaning behind it.
Xiao Yu: Li Qingchi, don’t overthink it. You don’t have to treat it as something from me. Besides, I don’t have any other intentions. I really just bought it on a whim. If you don’t want to use it, throw it away, or give it to someone else, it’s up to you.
The conversation came to an abrupt end. Li Qingchi let out a shallow breath and ran a hand through the stray hairs on his forehead.
Without hesitation, he tossed the medicine Wen Zhiyu had sent into the trash can.
The afternoon had few patients, so Li Qingchi spent most of his time researching pheromone resistance syndrome. Time passed quickly, and before he knew it, it was time to clock out.
He shut down his computer, organized his documents and belongings, and prepared to head to the lab. As he stood up, he glanced at the trash can, inside the empty bin sat only a bottle of expensive scar removal cream, looking particularly out of place.
It would be cleared away tomorrow. To him, this bottle of medicine was as useless as their coercive relationship, and even an eyesore.
He walked out of his office, scrolling through his contacts on his phone, ready to contact the lab team members. Before he could dial, another call popped up, the note displayed: that annoying beta.
Li Qingchi’s gaze darkened. His finger hovered over the screen for a moment before he finally tapped to answer. The other party’s uniquely light, languid voice came through the receiver to Li Qingchi’s ear: “Dr. Li, off work yet?” The tone rose at the end, his manner of speaking practiced and familiar.
Wen Zhiyu’s voice was actually crisp and clear, but he always carried that lazy air, as if he’d lowered his voice a notch, so that no matter what he said, it carried an ambiguous undertone.
At this moment, that feeling was even stronger.
They sounded like a couple checking in on each other. If someone unaware of the situation overheard this conversation, they’d never guess that their relationship was that of coercer and coerced.
“Off work. What do you want by calling?” Li Qingchi’s tone was formal, like he was handling official business.
“Hm?” Wen Zhiyu let out a low chuckle, like a feather lightly brushing against one’s ear. “What do you think? What else would I be calling you about at this hour?” He paused, his tone still languid: “Li Qingchi, are you playing dumb on purpose just to avoid treating me?”
Blunt, nasty, precise, no beating around the bush, cutting straight to the point.
And rightfully so. A coercer facing the coerced had no need for circumlocution. After all, he was the one giving orders; whatever needed to be done was simply at his whim.
Li Qingchi had indeed been somewhat deliberate. He didn’t want to be alone in a room with that detestable beta, and he certainly didn’t want to fill the room with pheromones like he was in a rut, which would make him feel out of control.
But this deliberate approach was nothing more than burying his head in the sand, fooling himself. After all, he had no other choice.
Faced with this selfish coercer, he was utterly helpless.
But if he had to go treat that insufferable beta tonight, it meant disrupting every pre-arranged task on his schedule, no work, no experiments, and the War Chain Department project would stall in his absence.
Beyond the frustration of having his autonomy and choices stripped away by coercion, Li Qingchi discovered a second drawback of being blackmailed by that detestable beta, his life, his work, and even his thoughts were increasingly slipping out of his control.
He loathed this feeling of being strangled by a rope, and even more so the way Wen Zhiyu could always effortlessly see through his futile struggles.
A man with such strong planning abilities, he naturally realized he couldn’t let this continue. If things were allowed to develop unchecked, once they crossed that critical threshold, every order in his life would spiral further out of control until it completely collapsed.
Li Qingchi felt a familiar wave of irritation. He exhaled, pressed the bridge of his nose with his other hand, and didn’t give an immediate answer.
“Move aside, move aside!” A nurse’s urgent shouts accompanied the sound of gurney wheels screeching across the floor, growing closer.
Li Qingchi looked up. A team rushed a wheeled bed past him, heading for the emergency room.
In an instant, the corridor erupted in chaos. He frowned, his gaze landing on the patient’s face lying on the bed.
Pale complexion, rapid breathing, body completely curled up, palm pressed against the back of the neck, a preliminary assessment of pheromone resistance syndrome. The fact that no pheromones had been released in this state indicated the patient was a beta.
Another infected beta?
The nurse following behind was breathless, her tone urgent yet tinged with relief: “Dr. Li! Thank goodness you haven’t left yet! Another beta patient infected with pheromone resistance syndrome has come in, his condition is very critical. You treated a case before and are familiar with this disease…”
Before the nurse could finish, Li Qingchi interjected, “I’ll take a look.” The phone call hadn’t ended, and from Wen Zhiyu’s end came the faint sound of objects clattering.
“I have work at the hospital right now, I can’t come find you,” Li Qingchi said to the person on the other end while striding quickly toward the emergency room. But he offered no solution.
The implication was clear, he simply wanted the other party to back down. After all, the patient at hand was more urgent.
Silence. The faint sound of breathing.
After a moment, just as Li Qingchi stepped into the emergency room and was about to hang up, Wen Zhiyu’s voice came through, still in that languid tone: “Simple. I’ll come to you instead. The patient comes first, treat him, and I’ll wait.”
That detestable beta hadn’t forced him to abandon his patient but had taken a step back, proposing an alternative, though only a small step back.
No matter how much Li Qingchi didn’t want to see that insufferable beta, he had no choice but to agree at this moment. If he continued to play games, the other party probably wouldn’t have that much patience left.
“Whatever.” Li Qingchi’s tone was icy as he hung up.
He quickly composed himself, disinfected, put on gloves, then pulled out a penlight to examine the patient’s condition, eyes unfocused, already unconscious.
He put away the penlight, picked up a painkiller from the tray beside him, and injected it into the patient’s neck. Pheromone resistance syndrome had appeared suddenly, spreading without warning, from omegas to betas at an alarming speed. But because there hadn’t been a large-scale, mass infection, the higher-ups hadn’t treated it as a serious issue.
With no pressure from above and the pharmaceutical bureau dismissing it, the development of treatment drugs had been painfully slow. Without targeted medication, doctors were at their wit’s end, able only to administer analgesics to ease the patients’ physical pain.
“This…” The nurse beside him let out a silent sigh. “This is already the second case.”
Faced with an unknown illness, everyone was afraid, afraid things would spiral in unpredictable directions. If intervention didn’t come soon, it would likely erupt on a massive scale. No one knew who would be next.
Li Qingchi had assumed Wen Zhiyu’s illness was an extremely low-probability event caused by a combination of factors, but today’s patient seemed to refute his hypothesis. Things weren’t as simple as he’d imagined.
On the hospital bed, the patient who had been reacting violently gradually relaxed his contorted expression under the effects of the painkiller.
The doctors and patients in the emergency room could do nothing but administer analgesics, and everyone’s face showed an unprecedented sense of defeat.
Useless. Useless. Useless.
Watching the patient tormented to the brink of death by pheromone resistance syndrome, they berated themselves.
“Does he have a partner?” Li Qingchi turned his head to ask the nurse beside him.
“Yes,” the nurse quickly replied. “His partner is an alpha. I’ve already notified them, they should be here soon.”
“If he has a partner, that would be somewhat better, his condition won’t progress to an uncontrollable point.” Another doctor spoke up.
The moment the words fell, a flurry of hurried footsteps sounded outside the emergency room, growing closer from afar. The tightly shut doors were pushed open from outside, and a breathless alpha appeared before everyone. The alpha’s gaze instantly locked onto the beta on the hospital bed: “A-Ning!” Beside him was the nurse who had led him here: “He’s the patient’s partner.”
Li Qingchi’s gaze fell on the other’s face: “Come in. His condition isn’t great right now, but we’ve already administered a painkiller, it hasn’t reached an uncontrollable point yet.”
Seeing his partner on the hospital bed, the once-composed alpha completely lost his composure, at a loss for what to do.
“Doctor… what’s wrong with my husband?” He walked slowly toward the hospital bed, his steps heavy as if his feet were filled with lead, pausing with each step, his voice trembling uncontrollably.
“Pheromone resistance syndrome.” Li Qingchi slightly turned aside, making room for the alpha to approach the bed. “A condition previously only seen among omegas, he’s currently the second beta to contract it. We don’t yet know the specific cause; we’ll need to ask him once he regains consciousness.”