The Mercedes-Benz sedan was about to pull out of the Bamboo Forest. An inexplicable sensation, like a fire burning in his chest, tormented Gao Sijin—the exact same feeling he’d had the day he was shot. Tsukiyuki Rio’s soft, alluring body and charming smile were like invisible shackles, making it difficult for him to break free.
Even so, Gao Sijin didn’t let his brow furrow.
He knew very well his emotions couldn’t change a thing. During his hospitalization, there really had been a fleeting moment where he believed he’d moved Rio’s heart.
“Your expression is awfully ugly, Gao-kun. Do you feel I betrayed you?”
Tsukiyuki Rio crossed her perfectly curved legs, a blissful smile spreading across her face.
“I don’t think you’ve betrayed me at all. Isn’t restricting my freedom perfectly fine? I never liked going to school anyway. Now I can stay home every day writing, playing video games, stuffing myself with gourmet food. This kind of life is something I could only dream of. Thanks so much for this.” Gao Sijin took a deep breath, plastered a grin all over his face, and said, “From now on, please just keep me as your kept man, Rio.”
“If only those were your true feelings, Gao-kun…” Tsukiyuki Rio pressed close against his body once more, her dark crimson eyes roaming over his slightly stiffened features as she murmured.
“Those really are my true feelings. I’m no ambitious hero with soaring aspirations. I just want to mooch through a slacker life, lazing around till I die.”
A tender, doting smile tugged faintly at the corner of Tsukiyuki Rio’s lips.
“Gao-kun is terrible at lying. Every time you tell a lie, you mix in superfluous gestures—things you simply can’t control. For example, your pupils will dilate. In micro-expressions, that means deep down, you fear me. And then you’ll try staring straight into my eyes.”
“Staring into your eyes only proves I have an open and honest heart, doesn’t it?”
“It means you’re watching to see if I’ll believe what you’re saying. And there are plenty of other micro-expressions. You really should read some psychology books sometime, Gao-kun, so you can act more convincing whenever you try to lie.”
Gao Sijin lapsed into silence again.
The straight little road stretched farther and farther from the Tsukiyuki Main Family.
Once he left this time, he might never see Uzuki again. And with his freedom to leave the estate restricted, he wouldn’t even have a chance to figure a way to call for outside help.
It was still summer. Even with the car windows rolled up and the AC on, sitting inside still made Gao Sijin feel tight in the chest, short of breath.
Having his lies exposed to his face, even as he was being notified of his effective imprisonment—keeping his tone so consistently calm under those circumstances was getting hard to stomach…
“Can we open the window to get some air, Rio? Surely I haven’t lost even that little bit of freedom?”
“I can grant Gao-kun every freedom… except freedom itself.”
Tsukiyuki Rio’s smile was as radiant as a flower. Yet to Gao Sijin’s eyes, such an exquisitely beautiful smile now seemed almost twisted.
His mind was a mess of confusion.
Fresh air rushed into the car, flowing straight into his lungs.
“Huh?”
Just as the vehicle was about to exit Nameless Mountain, where the Main Family estate was located, Gao Sijin spotted a slender, graceful girl standing on a distant hillside. Her delicate figure was wrapped in a white evening gown with a strapless bodice and full-length skirt. Low-heeled white sandals adorned her feet, her fair, lotus-like arms exposed to the air. She looked like a lotus blossom rising unsullied from the mud.
Could she be an elf?
In the deepest corners of Gao Sijin’s mind, he had imagined countless worlds of Sword and Magic. Elves were an indispensable fixture in any fantasy realm.
Tragically, his impoverished imagination could never quite translate that pure, sweet elven visage into words. Yet here she was now, standing under the shade of a tree, waving at him—that image was the most beautiful elf he’d seen in his entire life.
Her name was Tsukiyuki Uzuki.
Beneath her neat Blunt Bangs, her eyes held a look like a puppy begging for affection. Compared to before—when her body had been defiled by tattoos and her skin bore a sickly pallor—she had truly grown so much.
“Goodbye, Uzuki!”
Gao Sijin waved vigorously toward her.
Uzuki immediately waved back.
About to leave, he had felt something was missing.
So it was just this: he needed to greet Uzuki, to say goodbye.
Now, he had no more regrets.
He wanted to watch her a little longer, but the car window slid shut. Tsukiyuki Rio regarded him with that same sweetly smiling face, yet for some inexplicable reason, it sent a chill right through him.
“Uzuki and I are just friends, saying goodbye.”
“We’ll call it that, then, Gao-kun. Anyway, you’re already in my hands now. So don’t go harboring any unrealistic fantasies about other people.” Tsukiyuki Rio curved her lips upward. “You are my belonging. From now on, you’d better be conscious of that fact. Otherwise, no matter how much I dote on you, I can’t guarantee you won’t suffer a little.”
Her flawlessly gorgeous face, spotless and pure, bloomed like a flower bud—but the words spilling from her mouth were thick with menace.
Gao Sijin understood. Everything she said was the truth.
“Don’t hurt Uzuki.”
“Gao-kun is still trying to negotiate. How cute. But fine. As long as Gao-kun behaves and listens, I won’t do anything excessive.”
Her tongue, wetting her lips, flickered like a beast of raw desire.
Throughout the car ride, Tsukiyuki Rio nestled comfortably against his side. The stifling suffocation of her total domination made him want to scream. Yet every time he felt like shoving her away and cursing her out, his heart couldn’t follow through.
He craved freedom, but he didn’t want to deeply hurt Rio.
Even now, seeing her true nature, he still didn’t regret pushing her away back then—taking that bullet for her.
The rest of his life would be this: kept and fed until death.
Marriage.
One child, or maybe several. The odds of several were probably higher.
One day in the future, news of his relatives passing would reach him; after that, nothing at all would matter.
His hometown’s web of relationships would fade slowly. People would gradually forget a person named Gao Sijin. He would be no different from a dead man.
Could he really accept a life like that?
Tsukiyuki Rio, drunk on a twisted, misshapen love she couldn’t pull free from, wore a bewitching, devastatingly beautiful curl of her lips.
On the journey back to his brand-new cage, she nestled against Gao Sijin’s chest and drifted into a sweet slumber.
Four hours later, Morgana steered the sedan into a forest. They had traversed this road many times now: the architecture of the Imitation Versailles Palace, the marble-crafted courtyards, and beyond them, a winery, a golf course, an indoor ski slope, an equestrian field, mountain cable cars, and various other facilities.
“The Cherry Blossom Garden…”
Gao Sijin’s gaze was full of yearning. That was the day he’d mustered the courage and confessed his love to Tsukiyuki Rio.
The two of them had kissed right there in this very place. Rio had even told him then that pink was actually defined by nine distinct colors.
As warm as that memory was, right now Gao Sijin’s heart was equally tangled. One second he could still bask in that warmth; the next, it felt like basin after basin of ice-cold water was being dumped over his head.
It was as if the God of Fate was terrified he might forget he was trapped in a cruel, merciless world.
“I fell asleep without even realizing it…” Tsukiyuki Rio rubbed her drowsy eyes and said softly, “Welcome home, Gao-kun.”
