Found You

“One hundred?!”

The scream came from the front of the crowd, and in three seconds the whole corridor of the mathematics building was packed shoulder to shoulder.

“Move, move, let me see!”

“That has to be a printing mistake.”

“Lin Xiyan? Which Lin Xiyan? The one who sits at the back and never talks?”

At the very top of the results board, above every name in the department, sat the one name nobody had ever bothered to remember.

Lin Xiyan — 100/100.

Second place: 81.

But it wasn’t the score that made the corridor go quiet. It was the red note Professor Zhou had written beside the final question.

Question 12 — The Qian Formula. SOLVED. Correct.

A boy near the front dropped his coffee. “No way. No way. That formula hasn’t been solved in thirty years. My uncle’s a maths professor in the capital and he says it’s impossible!”

“Professor Zhou only put it on the paper as a joke…”

“So how did he—”

“Excuse me. Sorry. Coming through. VERY important person coming through.”

A short, round-faced student with messy hair elbowed his way to the board, stared at it, then let out a whoop loud enough to rattle the windows.

“I KNEW IT! I knew my deskmate was a hidden boss!”

Tang Lele. The only person in the entire university who ate lunch with Lin Xiyan. Mostly because Xiyan shared his notes, and partly because Lele had decided, on the first day of first year, that the quiet boy at the back was “secretly cool” and refused to change his mind.

He spun around, beaming. “Xiyan! Xiyan, where are you? You’re famous!”

But Xiyan wasn’t there.

He had already been called to the department office.

✦✦✦

Across the city, on the sixty-eighth floor of Gu Group Tower, twelve board members sat in absolute silence.

That was normal. People were always silent around Gu Yanchen.

Thirty-two years old. Richest man in the city. The one the newspapers called the Iron Wall, because nothing got past him, and no one who crossed him ever recovered. He sat at the head of the table in a black suit, scrolling through a report, his face showing nothing at all.

“Mr Liu,” he said without looking up. “Your division lost four hundred million this quarter.”

Mr Liu began to sweat. “Mr Gu, the market—”

“I didn’t ask for an excuse. I asked for a solution. You have until Friday.”

The door opened. His assistant, Chen Mo, walked in fast, which was strange, because Chen Mo never walked fast. He leaned down to Gu Yanchen’s ear.

“Sir. The Qian Formula has been solved.”

Gu Yanchen’s fingers stopped on the screen.

For six years, Gu Group had poured money into the encryption project that depended on that formula. They had hired professors. Experts from overseas. A team of forty. All of them had failed.

“By whom?”

“A twenty-year-old student at Jinghai University. Lin Xiyan. He solved it on a regular exam paper. In forty minutes.”

The board members looked at each other. Gu Yanchen stood up.

“Meeting’s over.”

Mr Liu blinked. “But, Mr Gu, my quarterly—”

“Friday.” Gu Yanchen buttoned his jacket. “Chen Mo. The car.”

“Sir, the investors from Hong Kong are arriving at three.”

“Then they can wait.”

Chen Mo sighed in the way of a man who had cancelled four hundred meetings in his career and was about to cancel another. “Yes, sir. Shall I bring flowers? A contract? A cheque with many zeroes?”

Gu Yanchen gave him a look.

“…I’ll just get the car, sir.”

✦✦✦

The department office at Jinghai University was hot and crowded and very, very unfriendly.

Lin Xiyan stood in the middle of it with his hands in his pockets.

On the sofa sat his half-brother, Lin Hao, tall and handsome in a designer jacket worth more than most students’ yearly rent, one leg crossed lazily over the other. Beside the counsellor’s desk stood his half-sister, Lin Yue, in a white dress, eyes already shiny with tears that came and went exactly when she needed them.

“I really don’t want my brother to get into trouble,” she said in a small, sweet voice. “But… he was sitting by the window. Anyone could have passed him notes.”

“Notes?” Lin Hao laughed. “He probably stole the answer key from Professor Zhou’s office. Everyone knows he’s been failing for years. Suddenly he’s a genius? Come on.”

A few students crowded at the door snickered.

The counsellor rubbed his forehead. “Lin Xiyan, your father is one of our most generous donors. If you admit it quietly, we can keep this out of the records. Just say you cheated, apologise, and resit the exam.”

Xiyan looked at him for a long moment. Then he spoke, calm as still water.

“Sir. Can you tell me where I copied Question Twelve from?”

The counsellor opened his mouth. Closed it.

“There is no answer key for the Qian Formula,” Xiyan said. “Nobody in this country has ever solved it. Not Professor Zhou. Not the Academy. Not anyone. So who exactly did I copy?”

Silence.

At the door, Tang Lele, who had squeezed in at some point, punched the air and whispered, “Boom.”

Lin Hao’s smile slipped for half a second. Then it came back, uglier.

“Who knows what dirty tricks you used? Maybe you paid someone. Oh wait, you don’t have any money.” He laughed. “Everyone here knows what you are, Xiyan. A failure. A nobody. The family embarrassment.”

Lin Yue dabbed her eyes. “Brother, please don’t say that… he can’t help it…”

And just like that, the room turned. The counsellor nodded slowly, as though this settled everything. The students at the door murmured. Somebody said, “Yeah, it makes sense, he must have cheated,” and someone else agreed, and then everyone agreed, because that was easier than believing the quiet boy at the back was smarter than all of them.

Twenty years of the same story. One perfect score wasn’t going to change it.

Xiyan looked around the room. At the faces that had watched him go hungry at lunch for years. At the people who had seen his books thrown into the fountain and said nothing.

Something in him went quiet. Not angry. Just… finished.

He picked up his bag.

“Believe whatever you want. The paper speaks for itself.”

He walked out.

Tang Lele glared at the whole room, said loudly, “You’re all going to be SO embarrassed later,” and ran after him.

✦✦✦

Outside the gates, the black Lin family Bentley was waiting for Lin Hao and Lin Yue, the way it did every single day. The driver opened the door for them. Lin Yue paused to wave at Xiyan with a sweet little smile.

“Bus is that way, brother!”

Xiyan didn’t even look at her. He walked to the bus stop.

Tang Lele trotted beside him, puffing. “Okay, real talk. How did you solve the Qian Formula? Was it a dream? A vision? Did a ghost whisper it to you?”

“I just looked at it from a different angle.”

“Just looked at it. Thirty years of professors crying, and he just looked at it.” Lele clutched his heart. “I’m friends with a monster.”

For the first time that day, the corner of Xiyan’s mouth twitched.

✦✦✦

The bus dropped him at the old river road, two streets from the Lin mansion. The sky had gone orange. Street vendors were packing up their carts.

He had taken five steps when he heard it.

The scream of brakes that weren’t working.

A black Maybach shot through the red light, swerved hard to miss a delivery bike, and smashed into the concrete barrier with a sound like thunder splitting open.

Glass exploded. People screamed. A woman dropped her shopping. A man pulled out his phone and started filming.

Nobody moved closer.

Xiyan dropped his bag and ran.

The driver was groaning, blood on his forehead, but conscious. In the back seat, a man in a dark suit lay slumped against the shattered window. Blood ran from his temple down his jaw. His lips were turning grey. His chest barely moved.

“Hey! Kid! Don’t touch him!” someone shouted. “You’ll make it worse! Wait for the ambulance!”

Xiyan pressed two fingers to the man’s throat.

Weak. Thready. Fading fast.

Internal bleeding. Chest trauma. Maybe four minutes. The ambulance is at least ten.

He unzipped the hidden inner pocket of his bag and pulled out a worn cloth roll. When he unrolled it, a line of silver needles caught the sunset and glittered.

The man filming lowered his phone. “What is he… is that acupuncture? Is he crazy?!”

Xiyan didn’t hear him. His whole world had narrowed to the body in front of him.

His hands didn’t shake. Not even slightly.

One needle beneath the nose. Two at the inner wrists. One at the crown of the head, angled at exactly thirty degrees. Then four more, fast and precise, along the line of the chest, each one placed and twisted in a single smooth motion, like he had done it a thousand times.

Because he had.

He laid his palm flat over the man’s heart and counted under his breath.

“…three… four… five… come on… breathe.”

The crowd had gone completely silent.

Then the man gasped.

A long, ragged, desperate breath, and his chest began to rise and fall on its own. The colour crept slowly back into his lips. The bleeding at his temple slowed to a thin trickle.

Somebody in the crowd whispered, “Heaven above…”

The man’s eyes opened. Just barely. Dark, unfocused, searching.

For one second, Gu Yanchen saw a face above him. A young man’s face, pale and serious and very calm, framed against a burning orange sky. Like something out of a dream.

“Who…” he breathed.

“Don’t talk,” the young man said. “You’ll live.”

Then the darkness took him again.

Sirens wailed at the end of the road.

Xiyan pulled the needles out one by one, wiped them, rolled the cloth closed, slung his bag over his shoulder, and slipped into the crowd. By the time the ambulance doors opened, he was gone.

✦✦✦

The doctor jumped down, knelt by the car, and checked the patient’s pulse. Then he froze.

“Who treated this man?”

The bystanders looked at each other.

“A student,” said the woman with the shopping. “Young. Skinny. He came off the bus. He used… needles.”

The doctor bent closer, staring at the tiny red marks on the patient’s skin. His face changed, from confusion, to shock, to something close to awe.

“These points, in this order, at this depth…” He looked up. “Do you understand what you just saw? This is master-level technique. I’ve seen it done properly twice in my whole career, and both men were over seventy. Without this, this patient would have been dead five minutes before we arrived.”

The man who’d been filming slowly looked down at his phone. “…I recorded all of it.”

The doctor grabbed his arm. “Where did the boy go?”

But the road was empty.

✦✦✦

That night, in the top-floor VIP ward of City Central Hospital, Gu Yanchen opened his eyes.

Chen Mo was beside the bed in an instant, looking more rattled than anyone had ever seen him. “Sir! Thank heavens. Don’t move. You have two cracked ribs and a—”

“The car.”

Chen Mo’s face hardened. “The brake lines were cut, sir. Deliberately. We’re investigating.”

Gu Yanchen didn’t look surprised. Men like him never did.

“The one who saved me,” he said. “Find him.”

“We’re trying. We have a video from a bystander, but the angle is bad. Young, slim, a student, came off the city bus. That’s all.”

Gu Yanchen closed his eyes. He saw the face again. The calm voice. You’ll live.

“And Lin Xiyan?”

Chen Mo hesitated. “We never reached the university, sir. You crashed on the way.”

The Iron Wall of the city lay in a hospital bed, staring at the ceiling, with two names in his head and no answers.

He didn’t know yet that they were the same person.

✦✦✦

The Lin mansion glowed with golden light when Xiyan pushed open the front door.

He had barely stepped inside when his father’s voice cracked across the hall like a whip.

“Get in here.”

Lin Zhenghai sat on the leather sofa, his face thunderous. Beside him, perfectly arranged, sat Su Wanqing. The woman who had moved into this house four months after Xiyan’s mother was buried. She wore pearls and a soft, worried expression.

Lin Hao lounged in an armchair, scrolling his phone with a smirk. Lin Yue sat on the arm of her mother’s chair, already wearing her poor-me face.

The whole family, waiting. Like an audience.

“The university called,” his father said. “Cheating. In front of the entire department. Do you have any idea how much face I lost today? The Dean called me personally.”

“I didn’t cheat.”

“Still lying!”

Su Wanqing laid a gentle hand on her husband’s arm. “Zhenghai, please, don’t be too hard on him. He grew up without a mother. It’s only natural he turned out… like this.” She sighed beautifully. “It’s not entirely his fault.”

Lin Yue nodded sadly. “Brother, just admit it. Dad will forgive you. We all will.”

Lin Hao didn’t look up from his phone. “Don’t bother. He’s too proud to admit anything. Same as his dead mother.”

The room went still.

Lin Zhenghai rose, strode across the marble floor, and raised his hand.

Xiyan knew that hand.

He knew it from when he was six and spilled soup on the tablecloth. From when he was ten and Lin Hao smashed an antique vase and pointed at him. From when he was fifteen and Lin Yue “lost” her necklace and it was “found” in his schoolbag. Every time, he had lowered his head and taken it. Every time, he had told himself, one day.

The hand came down.

And stopped in mid-air.

Xiyan’s fingers were wrapped around his father’s wrist. Not shaking. Not straining. Just holding it there, like iron.

The whole hall froze.

Lin Hao’s phone slipped out of his hand and clattered on the floor. Lin Yue’s tears vanished mid-blink. Su Wanqing’s mouth fell open.

Lin Zhenghai stared at his son as if he’d never seen him before. “You… you dare—”

“Twenty years,” Xiyan said quietly. “Twenty years, and you have never believed me once. Not one single time. Whatever they said, you believed. Whatever I said, you called a lie.”

He let go. His father stumbled back half a step.

“I’m done. From today, I cut ties with the Lin family.”

For a moment no one breathed.

Then Lin Zhenghai laughed, a cold, furious sound. “Cut ties? You? We raised you! We fed you! Clothed you! Put a roof over your head! And this is how you repay us?”

Xiyan tilted his head. “Fed me?”

He turned and looked across the room at the old housekeeper, Auntie Wang, who had been hovering by the kitchen door with a tray in her hands.

“Auntie Wang. How many meals has this kitchen cooked for me in the last eight years?”

Auntie Wang’s tray trembled. Her eyes darted to Su Wanqing, then to the floor. Her voice came out barely above a whisper.

“…None, Young Master.”

Su Wanqing’s face went white.

“You stopped giving me money when I was twelve,” Xiyan continued, turning back to his father. “Not one penny since. Every shirt I wear, I bought. Every meal I ate, I paid for. My school fees, I paid. My textbooks, I paid. The only thing this family ever gave me was a bed in the storage room under the stairs.”

He looked his father straight in the eye.

“You can have it back.”

Lin Zhenghai’s face went red. Then purple. He opened his mouth and nothing came out.

Xiyan turned and walked up the stairs.

✦✦✦

It took him eight minutes to pack.

A few sets of clothes. His textbooks. An old laptop held together with tape and stickers. The cloth roll of silver needles. And one photograph, curled and faded at the corners, of a young woman with a bright smile holding a newborn wrapped in a blue blanket.

His mother. The only person in this house who had ever loved him, for the three days she lived after he was born.

He tucked the photo carefully inside his jacket, against his heart, and carried his single cheap bag down the stairs.

The family was waiting at the bottom. They’d recovered now. Su Wanqing had rearranged her face into gentle sorrow. But her eyes were glowing.

“Let him go, Zhenghai,” she murmured. “He’ll be back in a week, begging, after a few nights sleeping on the street.”

Lin Hao had picked up his phone again. He grinned and waved it. “Bye-bye, big brother. Don’t starve to death! Actually, send us a photo when you’re living under a bridge, yeah? I’ll put it in the family group chat.”

Lin Yue covered her mouth and giggled.

Lin Zhenghai pointed at the door, shaking. “If you walk out that door, don’t you ever come back. You won’t get a single cent from me. Not now, not when I die. You’ll be nothing!”

Xiyan paused at the door. He looked back at them all, one last time.

“I’ve been nothing to you my whole life,” he said. “At least now it’ll be my choice.”

The door clicked shut behind him.

Through the heavy wood, he heard Lin Hao burst out laughing.

He left with nothing, they told each other that night over an expensive dinner. Nothing at all.

✦✦✦

On the dark road outside, Xiyan’s phone buzzed. Then buzzed again. And again.

He pulled it out. A plain, old, cracked phone. But the encrypted app glowing on its screen was something no one in the Lin family had ever seen.

[Private Channel — Ghost Needle]

Ghost Needle, I beg you. My father has three months to live. Name any price. Any price at all. — Chairman Huo, Huo Shipping

[Private Channel — Ghost Needle]

The Military Hospital requests a consultation. We have a patient no one else can save.

[ShadowNet — Global Rankings]

#1 — ZERO (unchanged, 41 months)

[Encrypted Message to ZERO]

Payment of 20,000,000 confirmed for the security audit. Thank you for your service. — National Bank

He scrolled past all of them without reacting.

In the underground medical world, there was a name spoken only in whispers: Ghost Needle. A doctor no one had ever seen, who chose his patients himself, whose fee could buy a mansion, and who had brought back three people every hospital in the country had declared dead.

In the world of cybersecurity, there was another: Zero. Number one in the world for almost four years. Untraceable. The hacker who once dismantled an entire criminal syndicate’s servers in a single night and handed every file to the police without asking for a cent.

Two legends that powerful people would kneel for.

One twenty-year-old boy with a cheap bag, walking alone down a dark road.

✦✦✦

The taxi stopped outside a quiet apartment building on the east side of the city. Not flashy. Clean. Safe. Ten minutes from the university by bike.

He had bought it in cash six months ago and told no one. He’d only been waiting for the day he’d finally have the courage to use it.

He turned the key.

The apartment was small and bright. A wide window looked over a sea of city lights. A desk. A bookshelf. A soft grey sofa. And a little kitchen with a rice cooker still sitting in its box on the counter.

Xiyan set his bag down and stood in the middle of the room.

No shouting. No sneering. No footsteps outside the door waiting for him to make a mistake.

Just… quiet.

He took the photograph out of his jacket and placed it on the shelf by the window, where the city lights fell across his mother’s smiling face.

“I got out, Mum,” he said softly. “I’m going to live properly now. I promise.”

His phone buzzed. Tang Lele.

Lele: BRO. ARE YOU OK??? Your evil half-brother posted on his story “finally the trash took itself out” ??? DO YOU NEED A PLACE TO STAY?? My mum says you can sleep in our living room but the cat might sit on your face

Xiyan smiled. Properly, this time.

Xiyan: I’m fine. I have a place.

Lele: WHAT. SINCE WHEN. HOW. You’re a broke student like me!!!

Xiyan: Long story.

Lele: I’m bringing hotpot ingredients tomorrow and you’re telling me EVERYTHING

He put the phone down, unboxed the rice cooker, and made himself a simple bowl of noodles with a soft egg on top and a handful of green onions.

He ate it slowly, at his own table, in his own home, for the very first time in his life.

He had enough money to buy a hundred mansions. He didn’t want them. He didn’t want fame, or fancy cars, or anyone’s praise or anyone’s pity.

He only wanted a life where no one could ever hurt him again.

✦✦✦

Across the city, in the VIP ward, Chen Mo knocked and stepped in with a thin folder.

“Sir. About the student, Lin Xiyan. Something interesting happened tonight. He walked out of the Lin family. Cut ties completely. Our source says he left with one bag and nothing else.”

Gu Yanchen held out his hand without a word.

Chen Mo passed him the folder. Clipped inside was an old student ID photograph.

A pale face. Serious eyes. Calm, like still water.

Gu Yanchen went utterly still.

Chen Mo frowned. “Sir? Is something wrong? Are your ribs—”

“Chen Mo.” Gu Yanchen’s voice was very quiet. “Bring me the video. From the accident.”

Chen Mo brought up the bystander’s recording on his tablet. Shaky. Blurry. A slim figure kneeling beside a shattered car, silver flashing in his hands. For one second, the boy turned his head toward the camera.

Gu Yanchen paused it.

He held the student photo up beside the screen.

The same face.

For the first time in years, the Iron Wall of the city smiled.

“Found you.”

Chen Mo cleared his throat. “Sir? What do you intend to do now?”

Gu Yanchen closed the folder slowly.

“Marry him.”

Chen Mo, who had survived nine years as Gu Yanchen’s assistant without once losing his composure, choked on absolutely nothing.

“M-marry? Sir, you’ve met him for one minute. And you were unconscious for most of it.”

“Then I’ll meet him properly.” Gu Yanchen leaned back against the pillows, eyes on the paused video. “Where is he now?”

“That’s the problem, sir. No rental record. No hotel booking. No new address. It’s as if he vanished the moment he walked out of that house.”

“Then we start with the family.” Gu Yanchen’s voice was calm. “If I’m going to ask for him, I’ll do it the proper way. Through the front door.”

Chen Mo sighed and quietly began writing buy gifts in his notebook.

✦✦✦

Three days later, after Chen Mo’s people had searched every hotel, hostel and rental record in the city and found no trace of Lin Xiyan, a convoy of black cars rolled up the long drive of the Lin mansion.

The gardener dropped his hose. The maid at the window dropped her duster. Inside, Lin Zhenghai nearly dropped his tea.

“Gu… Gu Yanchen? Here?”

The richest man in the city had never set foot in the Lin house. He had never even answered Lin Zhenghai’s dinner invitations. Not one, in eleven years.

And now he was walking up the front steps, tall and pale with a bandage still showing beneath his collar, while Chen Mo followed behind him with two bodyguards carrying armfuls of gifts. A two-hundred-year-old wild ginseng in a glass case. A jade carving. A rare Song dynasty tea set.

Su Wanqing grabbed her husband’s arm so hard her nails left marks. “Zhenghai. Zhenghai. Those gifts. That’s a courting visit.”

They both turned at the same moment and looked at Lin Yue.

The whole city had seen the blurry bystander video by now. Mystery student saves Gu Group CEO with silver needles. No name. No clear face. Just a slim, young figure.

And Lin Yue, as it happened, had posted a selfie from a café on river road that very same evening.

Su Wanqing’s eyes lit up like a cash register.

“Yue’er,” she whispered, fixing her daughter’s hair with trembling fingers. “Smile. Be modest. Don’t say too much. Let him say it.”

Lin Yue’s heart was pounding. She didn’t know the first thing about needles. But she knew exactly what to do with a rich man’s gratitude.

By the time Gu Yanchen stepped into the hall, the entire family was lined up and beaming like a wedding photo.

“Mr Gu! What an honour!” Lin Zhenghai bowed so low his back cracked. “Please, please sit. You shouldn’t be walking with your injuries!”

Gu Yanchen didn’t sit. His eyes moved slowly across the room. The father. The woman in pearls. The smirking son. The daughter in white, blushing on cue.

He was looking for one face. It wasn’t there.

Su Wanqing stepped forward with a gentle laugh. “Mr Gu, you don’t need to say anything. We know why you’re here. Our Yue’er was on river road that evening. She’s always been so brave, so kind-hearted, she just couldn’t stand by.”

Lin Yue lowered her eyes shyly. “I only did what anyone would do, Mr Gu. I’m just glad you’re safe.”

The hall went quiet.

Gu Yanchen looked at her for a long moment. Then he said, very calmly:

“The needle at the crown of my head. What angle did you place it at?”

Lin Yue’s smile froze.

“I… it was… everything happened so fast, I don’t really remember—”

“Thirty degrees,” Gu Yanchen said. “The doctor measured it. He says perhaps five people in this country could do it.” He tilted his head slightly. “Are you one of them, Miss Lin?”

Lin Yue’s face went from pink to white to red. Behind Gu Yanchen, Chen Mo coughed very loudly into his fist to hide something that was absolutely a laugh.

“I’m not here for your daughter,” Gu Yanchen said, turning to Lin Zhenghai. “I’m here for your son.”

Lin Hao straightened up proudly, fixing his collar. “Mr Gu, it’s an honour, I’ve always admired—”

“Not you.” Gu Yanchen didn’t even look at him. “Lin Xiyan.”

The silence that followed was so complete you could have heard a pin drop on the marble.

Lin Hao’s face twisted. “That trash? He’s gone. He walked out three days ago. We don’t even know where he’s sleeping. Probably under a bridge.”

Gu Yanchen’s gaze finally turned to him. It was the kind of look that made grown board members quit their jobs.

Lin Hao took a step back without meaning to.

“Then let me be clear, so you can pass the message on,” Gu Yanchen said. “I intend to marry Lin Xiyan.”

Su Wanqing made a sound like a strangled chicken.

Lin Zhenghai’s mouth opened and closed like a fish. “M-marry? Mr Gu, you… you must be mistaken. Xiyan is… he’s not suitable. He’s a disgrace! He cheated on his exams just last week, the whole university knows—”

“He’s ungrateful,” Su Wanqing jumped in quickly. “Cold. Strange. He never speaks to anyone. Honestly, Mr Gu, there’s something not quite right with that boy. Ever since his mother died—”

“He steals,” Lin Yue added in a small voice. “My necklace once…”

“He’s a loser,” Lin Hao finished. “You’d be the laughing stock of the city.”

Gu Yanchen let them talk. He let every single one of them say their piece, his face giving away nothing.

Then he spoke, and his voice was so quiet that all four of them had to lean in to hear it.

“The Qian Formula. Thirty years. Forty of my best people. He solved it in forty minutes. And you call that cheating.”

He took one step forward. They all took one step back.

“He saved my life on a public road while a hundred people stood and watched. And you call him strange.”

Another step.

“From today, Lin Xiyan is under my protection. If any of you go near him, threaten him, or speak his name the way you just did, Lin Corporation will not exist by the end of next month.” He paused. “That isn’t a figure of speech.”

He turned to leave.

“Chen Mo.”

“Sir?”

“Take the gifts back. These people don’t deserve them.”

“Yes, sir.” Chen Mo turned to the bodyguards with great cheerfulness. “You heard him, boys. Ginseng, jade, teapots, everything. Back in the car.”

The bodyguards marched straight back out the front door, carrying every single box.

The Lin family stood frozen in the middle of their marble hall, staring at the empty space where a fortune had been a moment before.

✦✦✦

The moment the cars disappeared down the drive, the Lin house exploded.

“Marry him?!” Lin Hao kicked over a side table. “That freak? Gu Yanchen wants to marry that freak?!”

“Shut up!” Lin Zhenghai roared. For once, he wasn’t shouting at Xiyan. He was pacing the hall, his face grey. “Do you know what this means? Gu Group could buy this entire family ten times over before lunch. One word from that man and the banks pull our loans tomorrow!”

Su Wanqing sat very still on the sofa. When she spoke, her voice was soft and cold.

“Then we turn it around.”

Everyone looked at her.

“Mr Gu wants Xiyan. Fine. Xiyan listens to no one, but he’ll listen to one thing.” She smiled thinly. “His mother is still in our ancestral hall, isn’t she? Her urn.”

Lin Yue’s eyes widened. Lin Hao slowly began to grin.

“We bring him home,” Su Wanqing went on. “We let him meet Mr Gu. And he tells Mr Gu that he isn’t interested, and that his dear little sister is far more suitable.” She looked at Lin Yue. “Men change their minds. Especially when the one they want keeps saying no, and a beautiful girl keeps saying yes.”

Lin Zhenghai stopped pacing. Then he nodded.

✦✦✦

On the east side of the city, for the third night in a row, a pot of spicy hotpot bubbled away on Xiyan’s little table. Tang Lele had turned up with ingredients the morning after Xiyan moved in, and had somehow never fully left.

“Three days. Three whole days, and you still won’t explain.” Tang Lele pointed at him with a slice of beef. “You bought an entire apartment. In cash. Six months ago. And you never told me.”

“You never asked.”

“Who asks that?! ‘Hey, Xiyan, pass the salt, also do you secretly own property?’” Lele stuffed the beef in his mouth and glared around the room. “This place is nicer than my family’s place. Are you in the mafia? Blink twice if you’re in the mafia.”

Xiyan didn’t blink. He was smiling down into his bowl.

It was the most normal evening of his life, and he loved every second of it.

Then his phone rang.

An unknown number. He answered.

“Xiyan, darling.” Su Wanqing’s voice was sweet as poisoned honey. “You’ll come home tonight. Your father wants to talk to you.”

“I have no father.”

A soft laugh. “Then let me put it another way. Your mother’s urn is sitting right in front of me. It’s a bit dusty, poor thing. If you’re not standing in this hall by nine o’clock tonight, I’m afraid there may be an accident on the bridge. The river is so deep this time of year.”

Snap.

Tang Lele looked down. Xiyan’s chopsticks had broken clean in half in his hand.

The line went dead.

For a long moment, Xiyan didn’t move at all. Across the table, Lele had stopped chewing. He’d never seen that look on his friend’s face. Not anger. Something far quieter, and far more frightening.

“Xiyan,” Lele said carefully. “Who was that?”

“I have to go back.” Xiyan stood and picked up his jacket. “Just for a while.”

“Back? To them? Are you insane?!” Lele scrambled up so fast he knocked over his drink. “Okay. Okay. I’m coming with you. I’ll fight them. I’m very scary. I’ve watched a lot of kung fu films.”

Despite everything, the corner of Xiyan’s mouth lifted.

“Finish the hotpot,” he said. “Lock the door when you leave.”

✦✦✦

The Lin family greeted him at the door with smiles.

That was the most frightening part.

“Xiyan! You’re home!” Su Wanqing hurried forward as if to embrace him. He stepped around her without a word. “Your room’s been cleaned. Auntie Wang, bring him some soup!”

Auntie Wang looked at Xiyan with wet eyes and hurried away.

Lin Zhenghai cleared his throat from the sofa, trying to look dignified. “Sit, son.”

Son. Twenty years, and that was the first time.

Xiyan didn’t sit. “Where is my mother’s urn?”

“Safe,” Su Wanqing said pleasantly. “Safe and sound. And it’ll stay that way, as long as you help the family with one small thing.”

Lin Zhenghai leaned forward. “Gu Yanchen came here. He’s… taken an interest in you. He wants a marriage alliance.”

Xiyan frowned. “Who?”

The whole family stared at him.

“Who?” Lin Hao repeated in disbelief. “Gu Yanchen! Gu Group! The richest man in the city! His face is on a billboard on every highway! Do you live under a rock?!”

Xiyan genuinely thought about it. He didn’t read business news. He didn’t watch TV. He spent his free time in hospitals that didn’t know his name and on servers that didn’t know his face.

“Never heard of him,” he said.

Lin Yue looked like she wanted to scream.

“It doesn’t matter,” Su Wanqing cut in smoothly. “Here’s what you’ll do. When Mr Gu contacts you, and he will, you’ll tell him you’re not interested. Politely. And then you’ll tell him that your sister Yue’er is a much better match. Kind, beautiful, from a good family. You’ll recommend her.” Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Do that, and you’ll have your mother back.”

Xiyan looked at each of them in turn. At his father, who couldn’t meet his eyes. At Lin Yue, already practising a shy smile. At Lin Hao, lounging, delighted.

They had no idea who he really was. And they had no idea who Gu Yanchen really wanted.

He didn’t know either. Not yet.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll meet him.”

Then he turned, walked down the hall, and opened the door to the storage room under the stairs, where his old bed was still waiting for him under a layer of dust.

✦✦✦

At 2:14 a.m., every alarm in Gu Group Tower went off at once.

By 2:30, Gu Yanchen was standing in the security operations centre on the fortieth floor, cracked ribs and all, his jacket thrown over a hospital shirt. Around him, thirty engineers were typing so fast it sounded like rain.

The head of IT, Director Fang, was soaked in sweat. “Sir, it’s ransomware. Very advanced. It got past the outer firewall in under four minutes. It’s encrypting the core database right now. Client records, financial data, the encryption project, everything.”

On the giant screen at the front of the room, a red bar was crawling across the display.

ENCRYPTING… 31%

Beneath it, a message blinked:

Gu Group. 500 million in crypto in 6 hours, or every file you own is gone forever. Including the ones you’d rather the government never saw.

“We don’t have files like that,” Chen Mo said sharply.

“They’ll make some,” Gu Yanchen said. “Fang. Stop it.”

“We’re trying, sir! We cut the network, it’s already inside! Every time we close a door, it opens two more! This isn’t a normal gang, these are professionals—”

ENCRYPTING… 47%

The room was going quiet now. Engineers were slowing down. One of them pushed his chair back and put his hands over his face.

Gu Yanchen stared at the red bar, jaw tight. Six years of work. Three million customers. All of it, about to disappear.

ENCRYPTING… 58%

And then the bar stopped.

It just… stopped. Frozen at 58.

“What did you do?” Gu Yanchen said.

“N-nothing, sir.” Director Fang leaned toward his screen, squinting. “That’s not us. Someone else is in the system.”

“Another attacker?!”

“No… no, wait.” Fang’s voice changed. “It’s fighting them.”

On the big screen, lines of code began to pour down in a blur, faster than any human should be able to type. The attacker’s processes were dropping one by one, like soldiers being picked off in the dark. A gate slammed shut. Then another. Then a third.

“It’s tracing them back,” whispered a young engineer. “Look at that. It’s going through their proxies. One… four… seven… nine proxies. That’s impossible. Who traces nine proxies in—”

ENCRYPTING… 58%… 41%… 20%… 0%

DECRYPTION COMPLETE. ALL FILES RESTORED.

The room erupted.

Engineers were on their feet, shouting, hugging, slapping each other on the back. Somebody burst into tears. Chen Mo, who had never shown emotion in nine years of employment, quietly sat down on the floor.

But the mysterious code wasn’t finished.

For another fifteen minutes, it kept moving through Gu Group’s network like a calm, cold surgeon. It closed every hole the attackers had used. It found six more that nobody had known existed. It rebuilt the firewall from the ground up, layer after layer, so cleanly that Director Fang began quietly taking notes.

Then, at exactly 3:07 a.m., a single message appeared on every screen in the building.

Your security was a paper door. I’ve replaced it with a steel one. The attackers came from an overseas server through nine proxies; their full details are in a folder on your desktop. Hand it to the police. You’re welcome.

— Z

The screens went dark. Then came back to normal.

Whoever it was, they were gone.

The room slowly turned toward Gu Yanchen.

He was standing very still, staring at that single letter.

“Fang,” he said. “Find him.”

Director Fang was already typing. Five minutes. Ten. Twenty. Then he looked up, pale.

“Sir… there’s nothing. No trace. No IP, no fingerprint. He didn’t just cover his tracks, he erased them. It’s like he was never here.” Fang swallowed. “Sir, I think that was Zero. The number one hacker in the world. Nobody’s ever found him. Nobody’s even seen his face.”

Gu Yanchen was quiet for a moment.

“Then pay him.”

Chen Mo blinked up from the floor. “Pay him? Sir, he didn’t ask for anything.”

“That’s exactly why.” Gu Yanchen turned to Fang. “He left a door open somewhere, didn’t he? A way to reach him. A man like that always does.”

Fang hesitated, then nodded. Buried deep inside the new firewall’s code was a single line, almost like a signature: an anonymous account number.

“How much, sir?” Chen Mo asked, standing up and dusting himself off.

“He just saved this company five hundred million in ransom and six years of work.” Gu Yanchen’s eyes didn’t leave the screen. “One hundred million.”

The engineers gasped. Chen Mo didn’t even flinch anymore. He simply made the transfer and, at his boss’s instruction, attached a short note.

Thank you. I’d like to meet you. — Gu Yanchen

Thirty seconds later, a reply came back.

Payment received. No.

The whole room stared at the screen.

And for the second time that week, the Iron Wall of the city smiled.

“Interesting,” he murmured.

✦✦✦

In a dusty storage room under the stairs of the Lin mansion, an old laptop held together with tape and stickers glowed softly in the dark.

Xiyan had been tracking that ransomware gang for months. They’d hit two hospitals last year and nearly killed a patient in surgery when the systems went down. When their signature lit up on his monitor tonight, he hadn’t even looked at who the victim was. He’d simply gone to work.

His cracked phone buzzed on the pillow.

Incoming transfer: 100,000,000.00 Sender: Gu Group

Xiyan looked at the screen for a moment.

Gu Group.

Where had he heard that name recently?

Somewhere at the back of his tired mind, something tried to connect. Lin Hao, shouting about billboards. A name he hadn’t bothered to remember.

Tomorrow, he decided. He’d think about it tomorrow.

He closed the laptop, pulled the thin blanket over his shoulders, and went to sleep.

✦✦✦

On the fortieth floor of Gu Group Tower, Gu Yanchen stood alone at the window as the sun began to rise over the city.

Two mysteries.

One, he had already solved: a quiet boy with silver needles and a pale, serious face, who could break a thirty-year-old formula in forty minutes.

The other was a ghost called Z, who had just saved his entire empire and then told him no.

He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had told him no.

He found that he didn’t mind at all.

“Whoever you are,” he said softly to the glass, “I’ll find you too.”

He had absolutely no idea that both of his mysteries were, at that very moment, fast asleep in the same small room.

✦✦✦

“A party,” Su Wanqing said, turning a crystal glass slowly in her fingers. “A grand one. Welcome home, Xiyan. We invite the whole city. And we invite Mr Gu.”

It was past midnight. The mansion was dark except for the small study, where the four of them sat with the door locked.

Lin Hao frowned. “Why waste money on that freak?”

“Because it’s the perfect stage.” She set the glass down. “Mr Gu wants Xiyan because he thinks Xiyan is clean. Brilliant. Untouchable. So we make him dirty.”

She slid a small paper envelope across the desk.

“A little something in his drink. Then a room upstairs, where Boss Qiang will be waiting.”

Lin Hao’s eyes lit up. Boss Qiang ran half the gambling dens on the east side. Everyone knew what he liked, and everyone knew what happened to the people he took an interest in.

“By morning,” Su Wanqing went on calmly, “there’ll be photographs. Xiyan, waking up in a gang boss’s bed. Mr Gu will be so disgusted he’ll never say that boy’s name again.”

Lin Zhenghai shifted uncomfortably. “Wanqing… he’s still my—”

“Your what?” She turned to look at him. “Your son? Since when?”

He said nothing.

She smiled and slid a second envelope across the desk, this one toward her daughter.

“And this one is for Mr Gu.”

Lin Yue’s breath caught.

“A man doesn’t remember much after a drink like that,” Su Wanqing said softly. “He’ll wake up with you beside him. And a man like Gu Yanchen takes responsibility. He’ll have no choice.”

Lin Yue slowly picked up the envelope. Her hands were trembling. But her eyes were shining.

✦✦✦

The Grand Imperial Hotel’s ballroom glittered like the inside of a jewel box.

Crystal chandeliers. Champagne towers. A string quartet. Three hundred of the city’s richest people in silk and diamonds, all wondering the same thing: why is the Lin family throwing a welcome-home party for a son they’ve ignored for twenty years?

At the centre of it all, under a huge banner that read WELCOME HOME, XIYAN, stood Xiyan himself in a plain dark suit Auntie Wang had pressed for him that morning.

He looked like he would rather be anywhere else on earth.

“Smile,” Su Wanqing murmured, gripping his arm with painted nails. “Your mother’s urn is still at home, remember.”

Xiyan did not smile. But he stayed.

At exactly eight o’clock, the ballroom doors opened.

The music faltered. Conversations died mid-sentence. Three hundred heads turned at once.

Gu Yanchen walked in.

Black suit. No tie. The faint shadow of a healing bruise still at his temple. Chen Mo two steps behind him. The whole room rippled toward him like a tide. Bankers, chairmen, wives with marriageable daughters, all of them reaching out, smiling, bowing.

“Mr Gu! What an honour!”

“Mr Gu, my company would love to discuss—”

“Mr Gu, have you met my niece?”

He shook hands. He nodded. He said nothing.

And all the while, his eyes were moving across the ballroom. Searching.

“Mr Gu!”

Lin Yue appeared out of the crowd like a white butterfly, in a pale silk gown that had cost more than a car. She held a glass of champagne out toward him with both hands, cheeks pink.

“Thank you so much for coming. Please, a drink, to celebrate my brother’s return.”

Gu Yanchen took the glass without even looking at her.

Because he had just found him.

Over by the dessert table, half-hidden behind a tower of cream cakes, Lin Xiyan was quietly eating a slice of strawberry cake. Very seriously. Very focused. As if it were the only honest thing in the room.

There was a smear of cream on his cheek. He hadn’t noticed.

Gu Yanchen walked straight past Lin Yue.

She stood frozen with her hands still raised, staring at his back. Around her, a few guests had seen. A woman behind a fan whispered. Someone laughed.

Lin Yue’s face burned.

Gu Yanchen stopped in front of the dessert table.

Xiyan looked up, a forkful of cake halfway to his mouth.

And went still.

That face. Pale against an orange sky. Blood on his temple. You’ll live.

“You,” Xiyan said slowly.

“Me,” Gu Yanchen agreed.

For a moment neither of them said anything at all. Three hundred people were watching, and neither of them noticed.

Then Gu Yanchen lifted his hand and, very gently, brushed the cream off Xiyan’s cheek with his thumb.

Xiyan’s ears turned bright red.

Across the ballroom, a glass shattered on the marble floor. Lin Yue had dropped her own drink.

“You saved my life,” Gu Yanchen said quietly. “And then you ran away before I could thank you.”

“You didn’t need to thank me.” Xiyan put his fork down, flustered for the first time in years. “Anyone would have—”

“A hundred people stood there and watched. Anyone didn’t.”

Xiyan had no answer to that.

At that moment, Lin Hao appeared beside them with a bright, friendly smile and two glasses of juice. “Brother! You haven’t had anything to drink all night. Here. Mr Gu, you too, please.”

Xiyan took the glass absently. He was still trying to figure out why his heart was beating so strangely.

Gu Yanchen raised the champagne Lin Yue had given him, his eyes still on Xiyan.

They drank.

Across the room, Su Wanqing lifted her own glass in a tiny private toast, and smiled.

✦✦✦

It started twenty minutes later.

The ballroom tilted. The chandeliers blurred into streaks of gold. Xiyan gripped the edge of a table and felt heat flood through him so fast his knees nearly gave way.

Drugged. His medical mind worked even as his body failed. Fast-acting. Strong. And…

His stomach dropped.

And it’s breaking through my suppressants.

Nobody in the world knew Xiyan’s last secret. Not his family. Not Lele. Not the hospitals that whispered about Ghost Needle.

He was an omega. A male omega, a trait so rare that most people believed it was only a legend: one in a million men, born with the ability to carry a child. He had known since he was fourteen. He had made his own suppressants since he was fifteen, and taken them every single day, and never once let anyone close enough to find out.

And now, with whatever was in that glass burning through his blood, his body was betraying him.

“Brother? Are you okay?” Lin Hao’s voice was close, oily with fake concern. “You look tired. Let me take you upstairs to rest.”

A heavy arm closed around Xiyan’s shoulders. Not Lin Hao’s. A stranger’s. Thick, rough, smelling of cigarettes. Boss Qiang’s man.

Xiyan tried to pull away. His arms wouldn’t work.

They half-carried him out of the ballroom, down a side corridor, toward the service lift.

✦✦✦

On the other side of the ballroom, Gu Yanchen set his empty glass down very carefully on a passing tray.

Something was wrong.

His vision was swimming. His skin was burning. He had grown up in a world of business rivals and poisoned deals, and he knew this feeling.

The champagne.

“Mr Gu?” Lin Yue was at his side again, her hand on his arm, her voice sweet. “You don’t look well. There’s a suite upstairs, let me help you—”

Gu Yanchen wasn’t listening. Through the blur, his eyes had found the side corridor. A slim figure in a dark suit, stumbling. Two big men holding him up. Lin Hao walking in front, glancing back over his shoulder.

Every instinct in his body went cold.

He shook Lin Yue off so hard she staggered, and went after them.

✦✦✦

The service corridor on the eighth floor was quiet and dim.

“Room 808,” Lin Hao said, swiping a keycard. “Boss Qiang’s waiting. Put him on the—”

He never finished the sentence.

A hand caught his collar and slammed him into the wall so hard the plaster cracked.

The two thugs spun around. In the dim light, Gu Yanchen stood with his jacket gone and his sleeves pushed up, swaying slightly, breathing hard, and looking more dangerous than any man they had ever met.

“Let. Him. Go.”

The first thug swung at him. Gu Yanchen, drugged and with two cracked ribs, broke the man’s nose with one blow. The second thug took one look at his partner and ran.

Lin Hao slid down the wall, white as paper. “M-Mr Gu, this is a misunderstanding—”

“Get out of my sight.”

Lin Hao ran.

Gu Yanchen caught Xiyan just as his knees buckled. The boy was burning up, eyes unfocused, gripping Gu Yanchen’s shirt with shaking hands.

“Not safe,” Xiyan whispered. “They… drugged…”

“I know.” Gu Yanchen’s own voice was rough. The corridor was spinning. “Me too.”

His own suite was at the end of the hall. The one Lin Yue had booked for him, with the key she’d slipped into his jacket pocket. He fumbled it out, got the door open, pulled Xiyan inside, and turned the lock.

Ten minutes later, Lin Yue arrived at the door in her white silk gown, lipstick freshly applied, heart pounding.

She tried the handle.

Locked.

She knocked. No answer. She knocked again, harder. Nothing.

She stood there in the empty corridor for a long time, slowly realising that something had gone very, very wrong.

✦✦✦

Inside the dark suite, the world had narrowed to heat and breath and the sound of two heartbeats.

“You should… go,” Xiyan managed, pressed back against the door. “Lock yourself… in the bathroom… I’m not… you don’t understand what I…”

“I’m not leaving you alone tonight.” Gu Yanchen’s forehead rested against his. They were both shaking. “Not after what they tried to do.”

Xiyan looked up at him. At the face that had haunted him since the accident. At the man who had walked past three hundred people to wipe cream off his cheek.

Gu Yanchen’s hand came up to cup his face, warm and unsteady.

And then, slowly, helplessly, he kissed him.

After that, the night dissolved. Into the dark. Into the drug. Into something neither of them would ever remember clearly, and neither of them would ever quite forget.

✦✦✦

Xiyan woke at 4:52 a.m.

For a few seconds he didn’t know where he was. Grey light at the edge of heavy curtains. Expensive sheets. A dull ache everywhere. And a warm, heavy arm draped across his waist.

He turned his head.

Gu Yanchen was asleep beside him. In sleep, the Iron Wall of the city looked younger. Tired. His hair was a mess and there was a faint crease between his brows, as though even in his dreams he was worrying about something.

The memories came back in pieces. The cake. The juice. The corridor. The door. And then…

Xiyan closed his eyes.

They drugged us both.

His family had planned for him to wake up in a gang boss’s bed. Instead, he had woken up here, with the one man in the city who had walked past three hundred people to find him. Who had broken a stranger’s nose with cracked ribs to get him out of that corridor.

And who would wake up any minute, remember nothing clearly, and feel trapped.

Xiyan knew exactly what came next. His family would use this. They would use him, and his mother, and this night, and squeeze every drop of profit out of it. And Gu Yanchen, who had only ever been kind to him, would be tied forever to a night he hadn’t chosen.

No.

Very carefully, he lifted the arm from his waist. He dressed in the dark with shaking hands. At the door, he hesitated and looked back once.

Gu Yanchen stirred, murmured something too low to hear, and didn’t wake.

Xiyan slipped out and closed the door without a sound.

In the back of the first taxi of the morning, he opened his battered laptop. His fingers were still unsteady, but they knew the way. The hotel’s security system took ninety seconds. Every camera on the eighth floor between 8:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. Every keycard log. Every trace of Room 808 and the men who had been waiting there.

Gone.

Then he picked up his phone.

Xiyan: Lele. I need your help. Today. And I need you not to ask questions.

The reply came in four seconds.

Lele: I’m already putting my shoes on

✦✦✦

At 6:30 a.m., Lin Yue crept down the eighth-floor corridor in last night’s silk gown, holding a second keycard her mother had bribed out of the front desk.

She eased the door open.

Gu Yanchen was alone in the bed, still asleep. The other side was empty, the sheets cold.

Lin Yue’s heart was hammering. She didn’t know where Xiyan had gone. She didn’t care. All that mattered was that he wasn’t here.

She slipped off her shoes, messed up her hair, and lay down on the empty side of the bed.

When Gu Yanchen opened his eyes an hour later, she was sitting up against the pillows with the sheet pulled to her chin, tears running down her cheeks.

“Mr Gu,” she whispered. “Last night… you… you wouldn’t let me go…”

Gu Yanchen stared at her.

His head was pounding. His memories were a fog of heat and darkness. A locked door. A voice saying you should go. A hand clutching his shirt. A face he couldn’t quite bring into focus.

And a scent. Faint, clean, like herbs and medicine and rain.

Lin Yue smelled of rose perfume.

“Get dressed,” he said, his voice like ice. He got up, pulled on his shirt, and walked to the door without looking back. At the threshold, he stopped.

“If it was you,” he said, “I’ll take responsibility. I’ll marry you.”

Lin Yue’s tears stopped instantly.

“But if I find out it wasn’t,” Gu Yanchen continued, quietly, “you will regret the day you were born.”

The door closed.

✦✦✦

“Chen Mo. The hotel CCTV. Eighth floor. All of it.”

By noon, Chen Mo was back, his face strange.

“Sir. It’s gone. Not deleted. Erased. Every camera on that floor, every keycard log, ten full hours. The hotel’s IT team says it’s impossible.” He hesitated. “Whoever did it was very, very good.”

Gu Yanchen sat motionless behind his desk.

“And Lin Xiyan?”

“That’s the other thing, sir.” Chen Mo swallowed. “He’s gone too.”

✦✦✦

At that exact moment, the Lin mansion was in chaos.

A delivery van had crashed through the front gate. Not badly. Just badly enough. A short, round young man in a delivery uniform and a fake moustache was standing in the middle of the driveway, waving his arms and shouting about a seafood emergency while two hundred live crabs scuttled across the Lin family’s pristine lawn.

Su Wanqing was screaming. Lin Hao was trying to catch crabs with a tennis racket. Lin Zhenghai was yelling into a phone at the security company. Every servant in the house had run outside.

Nobody noticed a slim figure in a hoodie slip in through the side door.

The ancestral hall was cold and quiet. Xiyan walked straight past the gleaming tablets of the Lin ancestors to the small, dusty shelf in the corner, the place they’d shoved her, out of sight, the way they’d shoved him.

His mother’s urn. Plain white porcelain, a little chipped.

He lifted it gently into his arms.

“Sorry I’m late, Mum,” he whispered. “Let’s go.”

On his way out, he passed Auntie Wang in the corridor. She froze. Saw the urn in his arms. Saw his face.

Then, very deliberately, she turned around and walked the other way.

Outside, the delivery van’s engine was already running. Xiyan climbed into the passenger seat with the urn on his lap. Lele peeled off his moustache, threw it out the window, and floored it.

Behind them, Lin Hao fell into the fountain.

“Where are we going?” Lele asked, breathless and grinning.

“Airport.”

Lele’s grin vanished. “How long?”

Xiyan looked out the window at the city flashing past. The university. The bus stop. The road where he’d knelt beside a broken car with silver needles in his hands.

“I don’t know.”

At the departure gate, Lele hugged him so hard his ribs creaked. “You’d better call me. Every week. And when you come back, you’re buying me hotpot for a year.”

“Deal.”

By that evening, Lin Xiyan was thirty thousand feet above the ocean, his mother’s ashes on his lap, and nobody in the country knew where he had gone.

That same night, the hacker known as Zero vanished from every ranking in the world.

✦✦✦

Three weeks later, in a small rented flat in a quiet town in Switzerland, Xiyan sat on the edge of the bathtub and stared at a little white test in his hand.

Two lines.

He sat there for a very long time.

On the phone beside him, a news app was open. The headline was in Chinese.

GU GROUP CEO ANNOUNCES ENGAGEMENT TO LIN FAMILY DAUGHTER.

Under it, a photograph: Lin Yue in white, smiling, clinging to the arm of a stone-faced Gu Yanchen.

Xiyan closed the app.

He put one hand on his stomach. It was still flat. Still nothing. Still impossible.

“It’s alright,” he said softly to no one. Or to someone. “I’ll take care of you. I’ll take care of everything.”

✦✦✦

Back home, the engagement became the story of the year. And then the mystery of the year. Because no wedding ever came.

The Lin family pushed. The newspapers pushed. Gu Yanchen’s own grandmother, the terrifying Old Madam Gu, summoned him to the family estate three times and told him that a Gu man always honours his word.

Every time, Gu Yanchen said the same thing.

“Not yet.”

A year passed. Then two. Then five.

Lin Yue wore her engagement ring to every party in the city and smiled for every camera, while the whispers behind her back grew louder every year. Lin Corporation borrowed against the Gu name until it was swimming in debt.

And in a locked drawer in Gu Yanchen’s office, there was a single thin folder that Chen Mo updated every month without being asked.

Inside it was an old student ID photograph. A pale, serious face.

And a list, five years long, of every city, every airport, every hospital where they had searched for Lin Xiyan, and found nothing.