With the play finished, Pei Sichen took Jiang Ruobai home. Throughout the journey, Jiang Ruobai remained in a daze, staring blankly at the street scenes flashing past the car window. His hands were curled together unconsciously, as if he had not yet recovered from that bloody farce.
Pei Sichen held him, gently patting his back, looking exactly like a qualified lover.
The car moved slowly along the street. When they passed a crossroad, a sudden commotion and shouting erupted from the crowd behind them.
“Oh no, someone jumped off the building!”
His body trembled, and he wanted to look back, but his movement was gently blocked by a pair of hands.
“It is not a sight worth seeing.” Pei Sichen’s voice was low and calm.
Hearing this, he abandoned the thought of turning around, nodded, and whispered “Mm.” Remembering everything that happened at the banquet made him feel freezing cold. His body unconsciously shrank toward the car door, trying to escape Pei Sichen’s embrace.
“Mr. Pei,” he said in a very soft voice, with an imperceptible tremor, “I am fine now.”
He wanted to reject the contact, but he was held even tighter.
“Sleep for a while.”
“Okay.” Jiang Ruobai nodded, not daring to refuse again.
Perhaps because he had experienced too much stimulation tonight, even though his reason told him he should stay alert, the excessive exhaustion caused him to fall asleep in Pei Sichen’s arms.
Pei Sichen looked down at Jiang Ruobai’s uneasy sleeping face, his eyes settling into an unfathomable, dark gloom.
The clichéd trope of a hero saving the beauty was old-fashioned, but it always worked wonders.
Pei Sichen understood Jiang Ruobai’s ambition to escape beneath his gentle exterior all too well. Therefore, he needed a carefully choreographed play, a highly dramatic and impressive “hero saving the beauty.”
A “rescue” that was shocking enough to be engraved into the bone marrow; it had to make Jiang Ruobai fearful, but more importantly, it had to make him dependent.
He was a selfish, cold-blooded, and incredibly greedy person. Anything that was his had to belong to him completely.
Whether he loved him or feared him, he wanted Jiang Ruobai trapped in his cage, never daring to harbor any ambition of rebellion.
As for those who were blind, just like the figure who jumped from the building, no one would care how they jumped.
He lowered his head, his fingers smoothing out the frown between Jiang Ruobai’s brows, then touching the corner of his eye, repeatedly stroking the unremarkable tear mole until he stopped only when he felt Jiang Ruobai’s uneasy murmur.
He held his fingertips under his nose and sniffed. The faint scent of rum made him sigh lightly.
“The scent is fading.” His tone carried a sense of regret and displeasure.
The driver glanced back inadvertently; the gaze full of possessiveness and desire made his hair stand on end, and he quickly looked away.
When Jiang Ruobai woke up the next day, he felt sore all over. The stinging pain at the back of his neck seemed to reveal the perpetrator’s crimes from the day before. Pei Sichen, the originator, was already sitting in the living room downstairs, waiting for him to wake up for a meal.
Jiang Ruobai was wearing a baggy gray pajama set, walking down the stairs slowly with sleepy eyes.
The silk material was light and comfortable, specially ordered by Pei Sichen for the housekeeper to buy.
He had ordered his previous white T-shirt and black shorts thrown into the trash; by now, they had likely already entered an incinerator.
Ever since he followed Pei Sichen, his food, clothing, housing, and transportation had been entirely taken care of by the other man. It was not that he had not resisted, but out of understanding and tolerance, Pei Sichen had indeed promised he could choose his own dress for the Su family’s charity banquet.
This indulgence went bankrupt the moment Jiang Ruobai chose a green dress that looked like a peacock fanning its tail from a pile of elegant garments, and Jiang Ruobai lost the power to choose his own clothes.
“Good morning, Mr. Pei.”
He pulled out the chair next to Pei Sichen and sat down, his expression somewhat disappointed as he looked at the table full of Western breakfast items. Compared to these Western-style breakfasts, he missed the soy milk and fried dough sticks from the street corner of his home even more.
It was just that Pei Sichen was not used to eating those greasy things in the morning, so the breakfast at home was always simple and healthy: sandwiches and milk.
Pei Sichen sat gracefully at the dining table, with only a cup of simple coffee placed in front of him.
Jiang Ruobai could not empathize with Pei Sichen drinking bitter water every day, just as Pei Sichen could not empathize with why a pampered canary always longed for the gray cage outside.
For the month after returning from the banquet, Jiang Ruobai was indeed as obedient and compliant as he had expected.
But a month later, Jiang Ruobai’s thoughts became active again, and he had mentioned wanting to go out to work more than once.
And no matter how many times Jiang Ruobai brought it up, he refused every request to go out to work.
“Mr. Pei, I just want to find a normal job.” Jiang Ruobai lowered his head, his voice so soft it almost melted into the air. “Rest assured, I will definitely not run away.” He paused, took a quiet breath, and tried to keep his voice steady: “You can set a time for me. I promise to leave only after you go out every day and will be back before you get off work.”
He was terrified of Pei Sichen becoming angry.
Every word right now was carefully considered and chosen during a morning when he seemed to be in a good mood.
Just like this morning, Pei Sichen was willing to sit across from him to share breakfast, which should have been a safe signal.
“No.” Pei Sichen interrupted in a cold voice, his eyes turning to ice.
He did not expect that the “hero saving the beauty” play he had painstakingly arranged had not completely cut off Jiang Ruobai’s thoughts of escape.
“Mr. Pei, I will not go to places like ‘Darkness’.” Jiang Ruobai gathered his remaining courage to continue pleading, his voice trembling imperceptibly. “I just want to find a normal, decent job. I swear I really will not run.”
On the night he returned from the banquet, he had the same nightmare repeatedly.
That shiny black pistol, the chaos of the banquet, and Pei Sichen’s excited yet indifferent eyes as he watched the blood flow. Endless fear had long since permeated his bone marrow.
He could not help but be afraid, and he could not even be sure if the gun barrel aimed at someone else would turn toward him in the next second. Being in the same space as Pei Sichen seemed to make even the air suffocating.
“I said, no.”
But on this matter, both were unusually stubborn.
“Is it because I have been too indulgent with you these past few days that you have developed thoughts you should not have?” Pei Sichen’s face darkened, and his aura turned frigid. “I will say this one last time: put away those unrealistic thoughts.”
“But Mr. Pei, I just want to work like a normal person.”
Jiang Ruobai’s heart sank deeper and deeper, but living like a parasitic plant every day made him feel suffocated.
All his expenses were paid by Pei Sichen. He stayed at home like a useless person who could do nothing, and the only thing he had to do every day was wait for Pei Sichen to finish work and come home, prepare a table of dinner for him, and sleep with him at night.
As the days went by, he would eventually be completely disconnected from the outside world.
Pei Sichen leaned over toward Jiang Ruobai, his large body covering the person beneath him, and grabbed his chin, forcing him to look at himself: “I will ask you one last time: do you really choose to make me angry for the sake of that damned job?!”
Jiang Ruobai looked at Pei Sichen, his fingers under the table clenched until they turned white, and he gathered his courage to stubbornly say: “I hope Mr. Pei can agree to my request.”
With a loud rip, the gray pajamas on Jiang Ruobai were easily torn open by Pei Sichen.
Pei Sichen sneered, “Fine. Since you still have extra energy to go out to work, why don’t you serve me well instead!”
“Mr. Pei!” Jiang Ruobai covered his body with his arms and cried out in terror.
Pei Sichen pressed down on Jiang Ruobai, his eyes cold and dark: “Don’t be in such a rush to cry out. You will have plenty of reasons to cry in a moment!”
In the end, neither of them ate this meal. The weak, harmonious relationship they had barely established was completely torn apart.