When the maid led Ruan Luo upstairs, she noticed he was walking much slower than when he had come down.
After climbing merely four or five steps, he reached out to grip the staircase handrail to pull himself up.
Do you need help? the maid asked.
Ruan Luo offered her a small smile. No need. Going up is always harder than coming down.
The maid could tell he was trying to make light of his situation, but she could not bring herself to smile. She looked carefully at this youth, who was still three months shy of his twenty-first birthday, and remained silent for a moment, simply waiting for him in silence.
Her own child was about the same age. What was her child doing right now?
Probably slinging arms around friends at university, running freely across a crowded sports field, or sharing a sweet kiss with a girlfriend under the afternoon shade.
Yet Ruan Luo’s twenty-first year was spent in a dark corner where even sunlight could not reach. Before he could experience any of the world’s beauty, he was already covered in wounds, so broken that injuries to his soles and ankles forced him to gasp for breath like an eighty-year-old man just to climb a flight of stairs.
Reaching the second floor, she noticed the faint color that had returned to his face after drinking milk had completely burned away on those twenty or thirty steps. Nothing remained except a sheet-white pallor.
They were currently only at the main hall area of the second-floor guest quarters, still some distance from the bedrooms.
Seeing how unnaturally deathly pale he looked, as if he might faint again at any moment, the maid wanted him to rest. She pointed toward a row of soft sofas in the hall. If you are in no hurry, rest on the sofa for a while. I will pour you a glass of warm water.
Having reached the top of the stairs, Ruan Luo indeed felt light-headed, heavy-footed, and cold all over. The milk he had just swallowed was making him feel nauseous. Every step was an ordeal.
He knew he was sick.
He didn’t know how other people handled being sick, but whenever he fell ill, he relied entirely on himself to endure it.
With a fever or a headache, he just had to tough it out until it passed. If he couldn’t, there was nothing to be done; that was simply his fate.
He did not have the luxury to be delicate.
Ruan Luo gave a weak smile. No need, I’ll just go straight…
I’ll just go straight to the guest room to rest.
Before the words could fully leave his mouth, his eyes followed the direction of the maid’s hand and caught sight of a piano.
Ruan Luo’s eyes widened slightly. Gazing at the piano, he suddenly seemed to lose the strength to speak. He stared at it in a complete daze.
Sensing something was wrong, the maid turned around and looked in the same direction. She saw the piano too.
It was a pure black grand piano.
It was a limited edition Steinway Ebony that Fu Yu had bought to place in the second-floor hall as decoration. Whenever Fu Yu felt like it, he would play a few notes, though it sounded terrible.
Fu Yu liked pianos and had even spent vast sums to hire world-class grandmasters for private lessons in his spare time. Unfortunately, his talent was exceptionally limited. He hired five teachers in total, and all five came, flattered and left shaking their heads with furrowed brows.
When they left, their evaluations of Fu Yu were very tactful, along the lines of: Mr. Fu commands the business world with decisive brilliance, so it is quite unexpected that you possess such a grand taste for the refined arts. However, art is merely an embellishment for you; there is no need to dedicate yourself so passionately to it.
The household servants had reached a unified translation for this: You are a piece of rotten wood that cannot be carved! Stop insulting the piano for the rest of your life!
Now, watching Ruan Luo stare blankly at the piano, the maid recalled something they had all overlooked,
Ruan Luo was a piano prodigy.
His talent showed at age five; at eleven, he began winning youth gold medals domestically and internationally; by eighteen, he was accepted into the world’s top music institution, The Juilliard School.
Regrettably, that same year, he was delivered to the Fu residence by the Ruan family, where Fu Yu clipped his wings.
The maid was struck speechless.
As a mother herself, she understood Ruan Luo’s expression all too well. It was just like when her son was ten years old and wanted a toy figure worth tens of thousands of yuan, which she couldn’t afford at the time. As she pulled her son away from the shop, he had turned his head back to look at the toy, a look of longing for something he knew he could never have.
That figure from ten years ago overlapped with Ruan Luo before her. A wave of sour, tender emotion welled up in her heart, though she couldn’t tell whether she was pitying Ruan Luo or that unfulfilled child from a decade ago.
The maid glanced around, verifying that only she and Ruan Luo were on the second floor, and made a somewhat rash decision.
She took Ruan Luo’s hand, just as she had held that blurry figure ten years ago, and without calling him Young Master, she said softly, Child, do you want to play the piano?
Ruan Luo turned his head, a sliver of light seeming to return to his eyes. Can I?
The maid couldn’t tell if it was an illusion, but she felt the sickly air on Ruan Luo’s face diminish by a fraction.
Nodding, the maid led Ruan Luo to the piano and opened the fallboard for him. She winked at him. Mr. Fu is at the company, so he won’t hear it, and I won’t tell him. This area has soundproofing; the servants downstairs won’t hear it unless they listen intentionally, so don’t worry. We will just play for half an hour, and then go back to the guest room right on time.
Ruan Luo sat before the piano. His pale fingers slid softly across the keys like a feather drifted by the wind.
His tone was deeply serious, completely unlike his indifferent manner during meals. He asked the maid, Is there a piece you like? I will play it for you.
Sitting down in the lounge area nearby, the maid smiled warmly. How could I understand such things? I just listen for the sound.
Ruan Luo turned half his body and bowed slightly to the maid. I am starting now.
The amber ceiling light cast a dim yellow glow over Ruan Luo, causing the maid to lose herself in the moment.
She didn’t understand art; she possessed only ordinary aesthetics.
Yet in that instant, she felt Ruan Luo was as elegant as a pure, flawless white swan. To think that someone so bright, pure, and handsomer than any celebrity could be trapped here for a lifetime felt like a cruel injustice of heaven.
She didn’t know what Ruan Luo was playing, only that the notes sounded low and narrative, the melody carrying a melancholy tone.
It was like a secret sorrow. Though she didn’t understand musical structure, she felt the pouring notes igniting her emotions.
Speaking purely of emotion, the expressive power was simply too strong, no different from those grandmasters she had heard before.
However, as she listened, this quiet mood began to shift, gradually turning into something else. It was an indescribable, escalating restlessness. It seized the listener’s heart, dragging it downward into dark undercurrents. The fragile tranquility broke apart piece by piece, as the restlessness grew like a fully drawn bowstring, poised to burst, uncontrollable, and perilously close to the edge.
Unversed in music, the maid assumed it was merely her own imagination. But after about twenty minutes, she caught sight of blood on the piano keys in sheer horror.
As if jolted awake from a dream, she stood up and rushed to Ruan Luo’s side. Your hands…
Mid-sentence, she gasped and covered her mouth in shock.
She saw Ruan Luo’s fingers were bruised purple and blue. Beneath his fingernails, in places difficult to clean, were dark brownish bloodstains, and now, fresh red blood was oozing out.
These hands looked as though someone had ground them underfoot and brutally stepped on them.
The maid’s voice trembled. Child, stop playing… Blame me for not being careful and failing to notice the old injuries on your fingers…
Yet Ruan Luo did not stop; instead, the melody accelerated violently.
The fully drawn arrow had been released; the peaceful old world had completely collapsed.
The scale finally and blatantly poured out its master’s frantic panic, every strike erupting with the most fierce and desperate sounds.
Ruan Luo seemed trapped in a stormy world of his own making, unable to break free, entirely deaf to the maid’s pleas.
The keys were soon smeared with patches of fresh blood. The piano’s tone sounded like choking sobs and howls, every scale crying tears of blood. Even without musical knowledge, the maid could hear the desperate, fight-to-the-death finality in it.
Anxious, the maid reached out to grab Ruan Luo’s hands. Child, stop playing!
The moment her hand touched Ruan Luo’s, she realized something was wrong.
Ruan Luo’s hands were scalding hot.
He was running a fever!
The maid looked intently at his face. Though a fierce light shone in his eyes beneath his raven-feather lashes, his beautiful eye sockets were tinged with a faint red flush. His eyes lacked focus, staring straight ahead into nothingness.
Gasping for breath, he seemed mad amidst the quiet.
The maid was terrified. Ruan Luo looked almost like a child suffering from a delirious fit.
She tried forcefully to seize his hands to stop him, but Ruan Luo suddenly seemed to go wild. He violently shoved her hands away, incessantly muttering under his breath, Don’t… don’t smash it… smash me instead… don’t smash the piano…
Child, child, wake up. Mr. Ruan, Ruan Luo! Half of the maid’s front clothes were stained with blood from his fingertips.
Terrified and panicked, she wanted to subdue him by force, but feared hurting him.
Seeing that she couldn’t wake him, she stomped her feet in regret, immediately turned around, and sprinted downstairs to find the housekeeper.
However, as she turned the corner on the first floor, she nearly slammed headfirst into a wall of flesh.
The moment before the collision, her shoulder was gripped by an iron-like force. Even with her momentum, she couldn’t advance an inch.
Dizzy and with ringing ears, she saw long legs suddenly appear. Gasping for air, she raised her eyes and nearly jumped out of her skin: Fu… Mr. Fu!
Fu Yu’s expression was extremely dark. His icy gaze fell upon the bloodstained front of the maid’s clothes. Before she could speak, he demanded, Where is he?
The maid shrank back, her mouth dry. In the second-floor hall’s…
Before she could finish, she saw Fu Yu taking three steps at a time, swiftly rushing toward the second floor.
The closer Fu Yu got to Ruan Luo, the darker his expression became.
This frantic, hopeless, landsliding sound of the piano made him lose himself for a split second.
It was only a second, though, because his eyes were seared by the blood on the maid’s clothes. He was consumed with anxiety and had no leisure for artistic appreciation at this moment.
He saw Ruan Luo half a minute later.
Ruan Luo’s frame was extremely frail, his shoulders unusually slender. Though he was already twenty-one, his figure still resembled that of a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old youth.
He played the piano with tremendous force, as if exhausting his remaining life to play one final piece.
Fu Yu felt his heart sting sharply at the sight of that struggling figure before the piano, like a bird at the end of its line.
His Adam’s apple bobbed slightly. Like someone carefully approaching a stray wild cat, he drew close to Ruan Luo and called softly, Ruan Luo, your hands are hurt. Let’s stop playing for now, alright?
Though it was a gentle sentence, Ruan Luo reacted as if attacked by his most feared predator, suddenly snapping out of his trance. He turned around, his eyes wide as he stared at the abruptly appearing Fu Yu. His pupils contracted tightly, and he stood up in a violent reflex. Turning his back to the piano and spreading his arms, he assumed a posture of guarding the instrument to the death, his teeth chattering uncontrollably: …Don’t smash it, don’t smash it… Smash me instead.