Nothing will stop him now. Consequences be damned.
...
The room smelled faintly of antiseptic and ginger broth.
Dr. Zhang had just come earlier, murmuring something approving about Yao Ziyang's temperature finally stabilizing. His complexion was better now — the flush from the fever had calmed, leaving behind only a light pinkness in his cheeks.
But his body still ached, and his limbs trembled a little when he moved. Dr. Zhang had checked his vitals, given medicine and treatment, and left satisfied, though with strict instructions for more rest, fluids, and light meals.
It was Chen Bo's shift now, and unlike the more somber Wei Jiang who came before, Chen Bo had a bright grin and the personality of someone who'd either seen too much or just didn't take much seriously.
"I've been told it's feeding time for the little prince…"
Chen Bo said, crouching beside the bed with a tray that wobbled suspiciously.
"Boss's orders. Which means you're stuck with me."
And as expected, the attempt at feeding was… chaotic.
He was sitting upright for the first time in two days, propped with an extra pillow behind his back and his knees pulled up under the covers. The soft edge of a smile played at the corners of his mouth as Chen Bo attempted to feed him with a spoon that rattled far too enthusiastically in the bowl.
"Here comes the porridge express—open up,"
Chen Bo teased, spoon wobbling dangerously in midair.
"Mm. You know, I could get used to this."
Yao Ziyang said, licking the corner of his mouth. He opened his mouth obligingly, not because of the spoon's impending threat, but because… he liked this.
Being cared for. Being given attention. Even if it was from Chen Bo, who wielded a spoon like he was playing darts.
The porridge ended up half in his mouth, half on his chin.
"I don't mind being spoiled…"
He said with a smile, opening his mouth wider like a bird waiting to be fed.
"But you better work on your aim next time. You're the worst nurse I've ever had."
"Sorry…"
Chen Bo said, wiping it quickly with a tissue.
"It's my first time feeding someone who's prettier than my girlfriend."
Yao Ziyang arched a brow and said dryly, almost in disbelief.
"You have a girlfriend?"
"Had."
"That makes more sense."
Chen Bo huffed, trying again. Another spoonful, another small splash of porridge onto Yao Ziyang's blanket. Yao Ziyang gave him a withering look but opened his mouth again anyway.
Still, his thoughts drifted.
Wei Jiang had fed him before. Quietly, gently, like a man who respected silence. Each bite had been steady, calm. No jokes. Just warmth and patience.
And before him—
Dong Yingming.
That man hadn't needed to feed him. But he did and during those times—it had been flawless. Elegant. Each motion deliberate. The spoon had touched his lips as if it had belonged there all along.
Yao Ziyang flushed slightly at the memory. Even the feel of Dong Yingming's gaze on him while feeding him had left him warmer than any blanket ever could.
He looked down at the porridge dribbling onto his blanket now. By the end of the bowl, soup had somehow gotten on the collar of Yao Ziyang's shirt, and a few grains of rice clung stubbornly to his chest. He looked like a charming little mess
"I think you've lost feeding privileges."
He muttered.
Chen Bo was unfazed.
"Please. I'm trying my best here."
"I noticed."
Chen Bo wasn't bad, exactly — but he talked with his hands, and he had no real coordination. The spoon missed once, the bowl tipped a little too far forward, and by the end of it, there was warm broth on Yao Ziyang's blanket and a smear of rice porridge down his front.
Chen Bo winced.
"Alright, alright, you win. I'll submit to defeat. You need to change."
They eventually stopped at the bowl of porridge and half of the golden milk—barely. Yao Ziyang was dappled with droplets, and Chen Bo had gone through half a stack of tissues.
"I really do need to change…"
Yao Ziyang said, brushing porridge from his sleeve.
"And to wash up."
"Bathroom?"
Chen Bo asked, already shifting to help. Yao Ziyang didn't reply — he was already struggling to push the blanket off.
"I'll help…"
Chen Bo said, stacking the bowls and setting the tray aside then stepping forward to support him under his arms.
"Lean on me. Bathroom's just a few steps."
Chen Bo moved quickly to support him, but paused when Yao Ziyang snatched a pillow off the bed and clutched it against his chest.
"You planning to nap on the way?"
He joked.
"Why're you bringing that?"
"I just… need it."
Yao Ziyang's tone shifted slightly — not angry, but firm.
"Not judging…"
Chen Bo said, quirking a brow.
"Just making sure you're not trying to smuggle contraband in it. Like a shiv. Or snacks."
Yao Ziyang glared at him. Chen Bo chuckled back.
"Alright, alright. Let's go."
Chen Bo raised an eyebrow but didn't push.
"You and your emotional support pillow."
They shuffled slowly across the room. Yao Ziyang leaned into Chen Bo more than expected—his limbs still soft, coordination slower than usual. Yao Ziyang allowed the help, though he kept one hand tightly around the pillow, like it was something fragile and precious.
They hobbled together toward the bathroom. But as soon as Chen Bo reached for the door, everything changed.
Yao Ziyang snapped.
"NO!"
He barked, yanking backward.
Chen Bo froze.
Yao Ziyang stepped in front of the door like a barrier, teeth bared.
"You're not allowed in there!"
His voice dropped, low and warning.
"Ever."
For a moment, Chen Bo didn't move. Yao Ziyang's whole body had gone tense, like a feral animal standing guard. His eyes burned with something sharp, something protective. And behind that — fear. Not of Chen Bo, but of intrusion.
Despite his still-fragile frame, there was a warning in his posture—a flash of something primal. He bared his teeth slightly, subtle but unmistakable. A defensive gesture.
He clutched the pillow tighter. Like something delicate was inside.
Like he wasn't guarding a bathroom — but a secret.
Chen Bo put his hands up, voice casual but cautious.
"Whoa. Hey. Got it. I didn't mean anything by it."
Yao Ziyang didn't relax right away.
"I mean it…"
He growled. Yao Ziyang's voice had changed. Sharper. Commanding.
"Don't even try."
Chen Bo continued to hold his hands up in surrender, surprised but oddly intrigued.
"Alright, alright, damn…"
He said, chuckling under his breath.
"If you faint in there, though, I'm busting the door down. Just saying."
Yao Ziyang didn't respond.
Only when Chen Bo took two steps back did Yao Ziyang finally lower his shoulders and turn toward the door, carefully opening it and slipping inside with the pillow still tight against his chest.
The door clicked shut firmly behind him.
Chen Bo lingered for a beat, looking at the closed door, then muttered to himself.
"Feisty little thing…"
He rubbed his neck, a crooked grin forming. Chen Bo leaned against the wall outside, arms crossed, still smiling a little.
'He's definitely hiding something',
He thought.
But he'd let it slide — for now. He did make a mental note — of the pillow, of the reaction, and of the way Yao Ziyang's eyes had flared with instinct like something primal was in there.
The door clicked shut behind him, and at last, Yao Ziyang was alone.
The air in the bathroom was cool, clean — but not unwelcoming. Yao Ziyang wasn't a total clean freak but he was a naturally tidy person who always cleaned up after himself. He'd been doing light cleaning of the bathroom since Dong Yingming left, nothing too physically demanding all things considered. Wei Jiang and Chen Bo made sure the main room was clean but he took charge of the bathroom, making it his own space.
He exhaled slowly, pressing his palm against the white tiled wall near the door.
His heart thumped unsteadily.
He didn't know why, but the need to build something soft, something surrounded, had been gradually overcoming him since his fevers broke again. As soon as the door shut — locked, defended — the urge had only intensified more.
It wasn't fever anymore. It wasn't pain.
It was something older. Primal. Private.
For the past couple days, he had been gathering anything soft around him and placing them in the porcelain tub.
In the beginning it was only the towels at first — thick, folded ones from the upper shelves. He layered them into the tub's base. Then after a few hours, he felt the need to add more. So he added spare blankets and some of his and Dong Yingming's dirty clothes from the laundry basket by the sink.
Now, back again, he took out the soft shirt he sometimes wore in the evenings from inside the pillow and tucked it like a lining against the tubs wall.
Finally, with a reverence he didn't fully understand, he climbed into the tub and placed his pillow — the one he clutched with all his might from the bed — right at the center.
A soft, strange sigh escaped his lips. The scent of the pillow calmed him.
Safe. Familiar.
His fingers gently smoothed over the pillowcase, and his lips moved in a whisper he barely heard:
"…Only for me. And him."
He wasn't sure if he meant Dong Yingming or Wei Jiang. But definitely not Chen Bo. Chen Bo didn't feel like someone who should see this part of him. Too casual. Too loud. Too curious.
Not sacred.
Wei Jiang … maybe. But it was Dong Yingming he thought of when he buried his face into the pillow just briefly, pressing his cheek against the familiar softness. His heart ached.
He missed the man. Despite it all.
The distance had turned into a void. And the void felt personal.
After a moment, he got out and changed clothes quickly, slipping into a pristine set of high-end red prison uniform— smooth, structured, and clean, a rare luxury. It was tailored for him, subtly expensive in texture and fit. He didn't ask for it, but he knew who had arranged it.
Just that thought alone tightened something low in his stomach.
When he finally opened the bathroom door, his expression was once again composed — barely — but he pulled the door shut swiftly behind him, just before Chen Bo could get a peek inside.
The pillow was gone from his hands.
Chen Bo quirked a brow, immediately noticing.
"No pillow?"
Yao Ziyang didn't answer. His lips were tight. His shoulders slightly stiff.
Chen Bo shrugged, but made a mental note of it — again.
"Alright, back to bed, little prince…"
He said, steadying Yao Ziyang's arm as he helped him walk.
"I'll pretend not to be offended that you clearly don't trust me."
"You're not pretending."
Yao Ziyang muttered under his breath.
Chen Bo grinned.
"Fair."
As he eased Yao Ziyang down into the queen-sized, soft bed and adjusted the blanket over him, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a thin, worn book.
"I forgot I got something else for you."
He said casually.
"Special order. You can thank me later."
Yao Ziyang blinked down at the cover.
The title was handwritten, the pages slightly frayed from use. A rare BL novel — the A/B/O genre, no less. Not something easily passed around prison halls.
His fingers curled slowly over the edge of the cover.
Chen Bo tilted his head, watching.
"You know, it's weird how much you're starting to remind me of the characters in these."
Yao Ziyang didn't answer.
But when Chen Bo turned away and returned to the chair, he held the book a little tighter — and glanced toward the bathroom door once more, as if it now held a piece of his heart.
…
Evening crept over the prison like a slow, rotting fog. The last rays of sunlight, tinged with a sickly orange, filtered weakly through the barred windows high along the concrete walls, casting long, distorted shadows that reached like skeletal fingers across the corridor floors.
The usual noise of the cell blocks had dulled to a strange hush—no clanging metal cups against bars, no sharp shouts of inmates calling across tiers. It was too quiet. The kind of silence that tightened the air, made it hard to breathe, like the building itself was holding its breath.
However, this went unnoticed in the sound proof cell Yao Ziyang was currently occupying with his guard. Up on the top floor of First Prison were where the ones with money had arranged their rooms. So the Warden made the layout of the cells more spread out from each other, to give the 'VIPs' of the prison more privacy.
Though, most opted for their own cell blocks in a different building of the prison, especially when it came to being near Dong Yingming's cell. Every prisoner stayed away from his area of the top floor in his block.
Chen Bo stretched his arms over his head, yawning as he ambled over to the cell door. He opened it, peering into the corridor.
"Where the hell's Wei Jiang?"
He muttered, half-expecting the stoic man to appear, demanding to take over as if nothing had happened the night before.
But instead, from the far end of the corridor, a figure approached—measured, dark, dangerous.
Dong Yingming.
His black coat swept behind him like smoke. Chang Xiao followed several paces behind, silent, eyes sharp like emeralds. The sight made Chen Bo's breath hitch.
'The boss? Coming down here himself?'
Before Chen Bo could open the door fully, something shifted behind him.
Inside, propped up against the headboard with one few pillow supporting him was Yao Ziyang, looking at the book in a daze.
Yao Ziyang, ignored Chen Bo, who seemed frozen at the door, and opened the worn book.
At first, it was just words. Phrases. The gentle rhythm of the narrative, familiar and strange all at once.
Then the dizziness hit.
His vision swam. His fingers trembled on the page.
A scene in the book—a soft-spoken Omega, curled in a nest made from pillows and blankets, longing for their bonded mate—hit him like a wave.
And suddenly it wasn't fiction. It was memory.
Unclear, fragmented memories—shadows of warm hands, of scent, of instinct, of a body and heart that once ached for someone. A part of him that had been dormant now surged to the surface.
'This isn't sickness...'
He thought, eyes wide with a trembling realization.
'This is my first heat… first?'
He gasped, his heart skipping, and then the cell door opened fully.
And there he was.
Dong Yingming.
Tall. Composed. Alive in blue-eyed reality.
Yao Ziyang's chest surged with relief and joy and something feral underneath.
"Yingming—!"
He leapt from the bed, unthinking—
But the moment his bare feet touched the floor, the dizziness returned with vengeance.
His nose gushed with blood. His knees buckled.
Yao Ziyang's body hit the floor with a thud that echoed through the cell like a gunshot.
Blood splattered in droplets across the pale floor carpet—red, sharp, violent.
He collapsed just as Dong Yingming stepped forward, catching the moment of Yao Ziyang's eyes rolling back and his body slumping hard to the floor. Dong Yingming reached him in less than a second, but it still felt too late.
"Xiao Yao—!"
His knees slammed against the cushioned floor as he attempted to catch the boy's weight, only managing in pulling him close after the fact. Yao Ziyang's limbs were limp, his head lolling against Dong Yingming's shoulder. Blood streaked from one nostril in thick, wet rivers, soaking into the pristine collar of the luxury uniform he had custom-made for his lover. Yao Ziyang's breath was shallow, fluttery. Eyes barely open. Barely here.
"Xiao Yao!"
Dong Yingming's voice cracked.
He was down in seconds, hands catching the boy's shoulders, lifting him. Blood smeared across his hands, too red, too much, too sudden. Yao Ziyang's breathing was becoming more shallow.
Dong Yingming's hands, so used to breaking men, now trembled as they held something he couldn't bear to see broken.
"No… no, no—"
His voice cracked, the words tumbling out, harsh and quiet.
"This wasn't supposed to happen. You're not supposed to be like this."
"Boss!"
Chang Xiao had already turned on his heel. His voice rang with urgency. He was already halfway down the hall, not waiting for permission.
"I'm getting Dr. Zhang!"
"NOW!"
Dong Yingming cradled Yao Ziyang to his chest, his composure disintegrating.
"Please—wake up. Don't do this to me. Not you."
He cupped Yao Ziyang's flushed face, fingers brushing hair damp with fever-sweat.
Too hot.
"I told myself I wouldn't let this happen again—!"
He'd told himself distance would keep Yao Ziyang safe. He thought ignoring his own feelings was the responsible thing to do — to not let history repeat itself.
But history, it seemed, had teeth.
"You were getting better..."
Dong Yingming whispered, almost in disbelief, eyes wide and wild.
"You were smiling again. You were asking for books."
He looked down at the mess of blood staining Yao Ziyang's mouth and felt a wave of dread crash over his chest. His breath caught in his throat.
"I left you alone."
And now, in his arms, Yao Ziyang looked like he was dying.
All the control Dong Yingming had spent years perfecting — the icy discipline, the calm superiority — cracked under the weight of this moment.
He clenched his jaw, forcing back a roar of panic as he held Yao Ziyang closer, anchoring him against his chest like his presence alone could keep him tethered to life.
"I'll go get some tissues– ah, no, a towel."
Chen Bo rushed to the bathroom for a towel, pushing the door open without hesitation.
And froze.
Inside, carefully arranged in the tub, was a nest of sorts—pillows, towels, folded clothes, and right at the center, the pillow Yao Ziyang had clutched so tightly before.
Chen Bo blinked, stunned.
'What the hell…?'
But Dong Yingming's shouted command in the background snapped him from his trance.
He grabbed towels and bolted back toward the bed, heart racing—not just from urgency, but from the strange feeling curling in his gut.
He'd seen something intimate. Something private. Something not meant for him.
And it wasn't over.
Chen Bo returned seconds later, breathless, towels clutched in hand. He stopped cold at the scene: the boss on his knees, cradling the little prince like something sacred and fragile.
Chen Bo handed over a towel, silent for once, the sight too heavy to joke around.
Dong Yingming didn't thank him. He didn't look up. He was too busy dabbing at Yao Ziyang's face with trembling hands, trying to stop the bleeding, trying to soothe the fever, trying to do something—
But nothing he did could erase the look on Yao Ziyang's face before he fell: the dazed joy of seeing him… and the terror as his body gave out.
Dong Yingming pressed his forehead to Yao Ziyang's for just a breath, closing his eyes.
"This is my fault…"
He whispered, so low only Yao Ziyang might have heard.
"I should have never stayed away."
And for the first time in years—possibly ever—Dong Yingming felt like he had truly, irreparably failed.
…
"I'm an Omega…or at least, I used to be…"