That crisp slap to the face felt like waking up from a dream. Lu Nanyang even stammered a bit as he tried to speak.
“I… I wasn’t going to say anything. You startled me, overreacting like that.”
“You were.” Xie Quan turned his chin toward him. “If you weren’t, why won’t you look me in the eyes?”
He was right. Lu Nanyang couldn’t.
He was afraid of seeing indifference in those eyes—afraid Xie Quan would see right through him.
“Lu Nanyang, you can’t fool me. I know you too well,” Xie Quan said. “You wanted to break up with me.”
He said those words calmly, without emotion, but it pierced straight through Lu Nanyang’s heart.
“I…”
“You think staying with me will ruin my future, that people will look down on me, don’t you?” Xie Quan gripped his chin tighter, refusing to let him look away. “You think without you, my life would be better. That you’re holding me back, isn’t that right?”
“Isn’t it?” Lu Nanyang pulled away, eyes filled with sorrow. “Don’t give me that ‘just a medical incident’ excuse. We both know exactly why it happened!”
“Fine, then answer me this, Mr. Lu Nanyang.” Xie Quan braced both hands on the chair, boxing him in. It was like a wall-slam, intimate and forceful. “Have you considered that after we break up, I’ll just go from ‘the spoiled lover of a rich heir’ to ‘the cast-off lover dumped by one’? Right now, people are still wary because I have the Lu family behind me. Once you’re gone, I’ll have nothing.”
Lu Nanyang froze.
Xie Quan’s words hit him like a bucket of ice water to the face, cooling his impulse and jolting him back to reason.
“Lu Nanyang, do you know something?” Xie Quan looked down at him. “I’ve always thought you and I are actually quite alike.”
“What?” Lu Nanyang looked up, shocked.
There were so many ways to describe their relationship.
Cool vs. passionate. Rational vs. emotional. Self-serving vs. self-sacrificing.
To outsiders, those descriptions made sense—they seemed like opposites who somehow complemented each other.
But no one would ever say they were alike. The differences between them were so obvious, the contrast in the same room almost palpable.
Yet at this moment, Xie Quan’s words felt like a drop of warm water on Lu Nanyang’s parched heart.
“You’re like me. Deep, deep down, there’s a part of you that wants to exile yourself—a subtle desire for self-destruction,” Xie Quan said softly and slowly. “You’re always focused on what trouble you’ve caused others, how you affect them… but you never stop to look at yourself.”
“I…” Lu Nanyang’s voice was hoarse.
“You were the one targeted by Lu Zhanlei, the one summoned by Lu Hongzhen for a ‘chat.’ In this incident, it’s also you standing at the eye of the storm, right at the center of public scrutiny. I was just dragged along as collateral. The one who endured the most malice and blame was you—not me,” Xie Quan said, looking into Lu Nanyang’s eyes. “But you act like it’s nothing at all, like you were meant to endure it. Have you ever thought about how I feel watching you like this?”
Lu Nanyang was stunned.
He had never looked at it from that angle before, and for a moment, he didn’t fully understand what Xie Quan meant.
Xie Quan took a deep breath and slowly exhaled.
It was getting late. The sun was perched on the topmost branches of a tree at the western edge of the yard, slowly sinking as time passed, leaving a vivid red streak across the sky.
Xie Quan sat down beside Lu Nanyang, placing the milk tea back into his hand, and said slowly, “Lu Nanyang, all my emotions right now—everything I’ve given, everything I’ve endured—have all been for you. Because I like you. Because I like you, I’m willing to be seen as a rich young master’s kept lover, willing to tolerate the snide, sarcastic remarks behind our backs, willing to face all possible consequences of being with you. Because to me, in a world where I have nothing, you are the one treasure I cherish most.”
Lu Nanyang listened in a daze, his fingers tightening around the milk tea cup until it crinkled in his grasp.
He was so shocked, he didn’t know how to react.
In this late evening, under the setting sun, Xie Quan sat calmly on the bench behind the hospital building, holding a cup of milk tea and speaking his heartfelt confession as if he were simply talking about the weather.
The evening breeze brushed through the hair by his temples, passing over those stunningly beautiful gray eyes.
“Because of you, I became who I am now. Only with you by my side does everything have meaning,” Xie Quan said. “So, Lu Nanyang, when you don’t treasure yourself, it’s like you’re trampling on the most precious thing in my life right in front of me. Do you understand? That’s not fair to me.”
In such a picture-perfect scene, Lu Nanyang felt his heart waver like never before.
“…I’m sorry.” Lu Nanyang hugged Xie Quan tightly, resting his chin on Xie Quan’s shoulder, arms clenched around him. “I’m sorry… I was wrong. I’ll never say things like that again. Please forgive me, okay?”
Xie Quan sighed and gently patted Lu Nanyang’s shoulder with the hand that wasn’t holding the milk tea. “But you didn’t say it. Words unspoken don’t count, right?”
Lu Nanyang’s shoulders began to tremble as he silently leaned against Xie Quan. Only when Xie Quan felt the fabric of his shirt growing damp did he realize what was happening.
They sat quietly on that bench for a long time, until the sun had fully set and the streetlights came on, before finally standing up with their now-empty milk tea cups.
“Give it to me,” Lu Nanyang said, asking Xie Quan for the empty cup.
“What for?” Xie Quan asked, puzzled, but handed it over anyway.
Lu Nanyang squinted, aimed at a trash can not far away, then tossed it. The cup landed perfectly inside.
“Hey, I made it!” Lu Nanyang said excitedly.
Xie Quan was amused by his childish behavior, but still clapped his hands graciously.
“You’re just humoring me,” Lu Nanyang said, displeased.
“Oh, and now, contestant Lu Nanyang throws with lightning speed,” Xie Quan announced theatrically. “His movements are like a thunderbolt across a clear sky, swift and fierce like a panther—he…”
“Damn,” Lu Nanyang couldn’t help but laugh out loud.
Xie Quan smiled too.
“I should’ve recorded that just now,” Lu Nanyang said, still laughing as he wiped the corners of his eyes. “Let all your hospital colleagues who always see your poker face see the real you…”
“First of all, they’re not colleagues—they’re my supervising doctors. Second, I don’t wear a poker face at work,” Xie Quan replied, grabbing Lu Nanyang’s wrist and gently pulling it down. “Let me see.”
Lu Nanyang’s eyes were already red from crying, and now, after rubbing them with his hands, they looked even worse—practically like a rabbit’s eyes.
“Stop rubbing them,” Xie Quan scolded, swatting his hand away and frowning. “You’ll get an infection.”
“Infection, infection… is everything an infection to you?” Lu Nanyang muttered.
“I’m a doctor. You dare not follow medical advice?” Xie Quan raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, now you’re playing the doctor card,” Lu Nanyang grumbled. “But when you were popping diazepam like candy, you didn’t say that…”
“Hm?” Xie Quan folded his arms and raised his voice.
“No, no, I mean—” Lu Nanyang cut himself off, then pointed in a direction. “Looks like there’s a night market across the street. Wanna check it out?”
Xie Quan followed Lu Nanyang’s gaze.
Across from the hospital was a small park, usually quiet and empty. But that night, possibly because it was the weekend, there was a small performance drawing a crowd. Vendors had lined the street with their stalls, and from afar, the scene looked lively and bright.
“Sure, why not?”
After saying that, Xie Quan naturally reached for Lu Nanyang’s hand and held it as they walked toward the street.
Lu Nanyang only hesitated for a moment before quickly catching up, intertwining their fingers tightly.
They walked hand in hand across the bustling road, and even as they merged into the crowd, they didn’t let go.
“Actually, the day Lu Hongzhen invited you for dinner… I was right outside your private room,” Xie Quan said suddenly after a few silent steps.
“What?” Lu Nanyang was startled.
“When I went to the mall to find you, I happened to see you getting into Lu Hongzhen’s car,” Xie Quan explained. “So I hailed a taxi and followed you all the way there. I stood outside your room the whole time. I pretty much heard everything he said to you.”
Lu Nanyang stared at him in disbelief. “You… you weren’t kicked out by security?”
“The security guard saw me, but didn’t chase me away,” Xie Quan said. “So I think Lu Hongzhen probably knew I was there. Some of what he said… he was probably saying it for me to hear.”
“……” Lu Nanyang was so shocked he couldn’t speak. He wasn’t sure which was more surprising: that Xie Quan had followed him all the way to the private room, or that Lu Hongzhen had known all along Xie Quan was outside.
“To put it bluntly, he was trying to scare me,” Xie Quan said. “He was warning me that if I kept being with you, I’d be throwing away my future. He must’ve looked into my background beforehand and found out what I care about the most, so he could use it to threaten me. At the same time, he used your kindness to make you feel guilty about me, so it would push us to break up.”
Lu Nanyang pressed his lips together. “But… what he said wasn’t wrong.”
Xie Quan really valued his future — Lu Nanyang could tell. He had poured a tremendous amount of effort and dedication into it.
“No. Old Fox Lu did miscalculate one thing,” Xie Quan said with a carefree smile, like a breeze on a summer night. “Without you, that future means nothing.”
