HL 51

After Wang Heng put down his phone, A-Long asked him, “So, what did Brother Sheng say?”

“He warned me not to do anything unnecessary.”

Inside the club’s break room, all the employees fell into dead silence.

Ling Ling was the first to stand up. She grabbed her jacket and headed for the door. “I can’t take this anymore.”

“Where are you going?” someone asked her.

“To the police.” Ling Ling didn’t look back.

As if following a command, Wang Heng stood up too. The words that had been weighing on his heart had finally been spoken by someone else, so he gathered his courage and chased after Ling Ling. “I’m coming too!”

But suddenly A-Long blocked their way, kicked the break room door shut, and roared, “I dare anyone to try!!!”

He grabbed Wang Heng by the collar, yanking him off balance. “Jobs are hard to come by now—I was unemployed for eight months and almost ended up homeless. Brother Sheng’s paying us forty thousand a month now. Put your hand on your heart and tell me—hasn’t he been good to us? Without that money, you want your sister to come crawling back from the UK halfway through her studies, huh?”

Then A-Long turned to Ling Ling. “And you—don’t act like you weren’t on your knees thanking Brother Sheng for paying your mom’s medical bills. You’re the last person who gets to talk about going to the police!”

“Then what do you suggest?” Teng Zi stepped between A-Long and Wang Heng. “Just leave the boss to die? Remember when you accidentally injured a student’s back? Didn’t the boss cover that for you? Was that nothing?”

“The fuck you—”

“Besides, Ying Yusheng only pays us to keep an eye on people. He never said anything about kidnapping!”

“All of you who are tight with Xu Nanxiao—if you want to die, go jump in the river yourselves. Don’t drag us down with you.” Another coach shouted, “Even Ying Baiying doesn’t dare stick his nose into this, and you think you can? With Ying Yusheng’s temper, if we actually take Xu Nanxiao away, none of us will end up well! We’re all screwed!”

“What did you say?!”

“Did I say anything wrong?!”

“Talk nicely, no fighting!”

“Stop it, stop it—what time do you think this is?!”

Just as the group was descending into chaos, the break room door suddenly swung open, and a handsome man around thirty poked his head in.

“There was no one at the front desk, and I heard noise over here, so…” Meng Zhao looked at the coaches who were about to come to blows and gave an awkward smile.

“Sorry, no classes today.” Ling Ling quickly stepped in to smooth things over.

“I’m not here to train,” Meng Zhao said. “I’m looking for someone. Does Xu Nanxiao work here?”

Everyone froze.

“I need to see him about something. His phone’s been off, and he’s not at home either. I found that a bit odd.” When no one answered, Meng Zhao suddenly remembered something and quickly fished out his police badge from his pocket. “I’m not some suspicious person—I’m a police officer.”

On Christmas Eve, Ying Yusheng carried a wrapped gift into Xu Nanxiao’s room.

The room was dim, with only the small nightstand lamp providing any light. It was past seven, but Xu Nanxiao wasn’t asleep. He sat on the bay window ledge, one leg drawn up, his face buried deep in his knee.

He’d been like this for many days.

The housekeeper had once told Ying Yusheng, with concern, that Xu Nanxiao barely ate anything, and the rest of the time he did nothing but sit by the window in a daze, or sleep. If this kept up, he’d waste away completely.

How could Ying Yusheng not have noticed.

After that cruel revelation, Xu Nanxiao’s pride had been utterly shattered. Under the violent impact, he had briefly become an “empty shell.”

But the human spirit is far stronger than one might imagine. After surviving the initial breakdown, people tend to adapt to new survival strategies to reduce fear and pain. And attaching himself to Ying Yusheng, obeying him—that was the only option laid out before Xu Nanxiao.

So everything would get better.

This was just the necessary pain of reaching that goal.

With that thought, Ying Yusheng’s mood lightened somewhat.

He walked over to Xu Nanxiao and handed him the gift in his arms, saying gently, “Merry Christmas, Nanxiao. I got you a VR headset. Before we started fighting, you kept saying you wanted one, remember?”

“I don’t want it. Get lost.” A muffled voice came from within.

“Open it and take a look. I had the clerk load it up with lots of games.”

Ying Yusheng held it out, but Xu Nanxiao slapped it away. The gift slipped from his hand unexpectedly and crashed hard to the floor.

The precision machine had taken a fall—would it be broken? Thinking this, Ying Yusheng bent down and picked up the gift.

He looked at Xu Nanxiao, who hadn’t moved at all, like a frozen statue.

“What would make you feel a little better?” Ying Yusheng set the gift down and asked. “The flowers you used to keep all died. I replaced them with new ones—do you want to go see them? Or go out for a walk? We could go fishing at the lake nearby. If you want to exercise, I can buy you some fitness equipment…”

“When are you going to let me go?” Xu Nanxiao interrupted him softly.

Ying Yusheng fell silent.

He paused for a long moment, then asked helplessly, “If I let you go, where would you go back to? Do you even have anywhere to go?”

Xu Nanxiao said nothing.

A suffocating silence settled between them again.

“Alright, alright.” Ying Yusheng rallied his spirits and pressed Xu Nanxiao down onto the bay window by his shoulders.

He pushed up the hem of Xu Nanxiao’s shirt, revealing his taut waistline. His abdominal muscles rose and fell with each breath, like living mountain ranges. Because his waist was so slender and narrow, it made his hips look all the more full.

Ying Yusheng looked at him silently, then his eyes curved into a smile. “Let’s do it. If your body feels good, your mood will follow.”

The next day, a female colleague noticed with surprise that a scab had formed at the corner of Ying Yusheng’s mouth.

She couldn’t help but ask with concern, “Professor Ying, what happened to your mouth?”

Ying Yusheng touched the wound, then smiled wryly. “It’s nothing. I tried to kiss my cat yesterday and got bitten.”

“You have a cat, too?” The female colleague was intrigued.

“A stray I picked up by the roadside. Ever since it came to my place, it’s been listless. I’ve been wondering how to cheer it up.”

“Is it not used to staying indoors?”

“Yeah, at first it was constantly stressed, and now it still won’t interact with people.”

The colleague thought for a moment. “But some cats really can’t be kept indoors. It’s in their nature to love being free outside. It’s no good forcing them. If it comes down to it, maybe you should just let it go and buy a purebred from a pet store.”

As she spoke, the colleague looked at Ying Yusheng with a smile, but suddenly caught her breath.

Ying Yusheng’s eyelids were half-lowered, the corners of his eyes drooping heavily, staring at her without blinking.

“Impossible,” he said slowly, then smiled again. “I want this one. I don’t want any other.”

When he came home that evening, Ying Yusheng brought freshly baked bread for Xu Nanxiao.

As he got out of the car at the front gate, he noticed a stray dog lying by the steps. It looked like a Bichon Frise, dirty and very small. When it saw him approaching, the puppy let out a little whimper and scurried away out of sight.

As he handed his coat to the housekeeper, Ying Yusheng mentioned it and asked why there were stray dogs near the house.

The housekeeper thought for a moment, then said, “It’s probably here for Xiao Xu.”

“Nanxiao? What do you mean?”

“I don’t know where it came from, but it suddenly showed up near the house. I’ve often seen Xiao Xu talking to that dog, sometimes even arguing.”

Ying Yusheng was curious. “How do you argue with a dog?”

“It’s just barking back and forth. It goes ‘woof woof’ at Xiao Xu, and he goes ‘woof woof’ back at it. They could go on for an entire afternoon.”

When no response came from Ying Yusheng for a long while, the housekeeper turned and saw his expressionless face.

She immediately realized—the last cook had been dismissed for simply talking a bit too much with Xu Nanxiao, so this dog probably wouldn’t escape the same fate.

“I’m sorry, I’ve been busy lately and forgot. I’ll have someone get rid of it right away.” The housekeeper, feeling she’d failed in her duties, hurried to make amends.

But Ying Yusheng shook his head, only asking, “Can you catch it?”

Ying Yusheng staked it out for three days and finally used a piece of beef to successfully capture the stray Bichon.

He brought the little dog to Xu Nanxiao as a gift.

In fact, Ying Yusheng was prone to allergies—chocolate, pollen, and dog fur included. But he thought Xu Nanxiao liked this dog, and that receiving it would make him happy.

Unexpectedly, when he presented the puppy to Xu Nanxiao, Xu Nanxiao wouldn’t even spare it a glance. He even named the dog “Ying Yusheng”—a deeply humiliating name.

So Xu Nanxiao hated this dog. Ying Yusheng realized.

After the puppy came to the house, Xu Nanxiao didn’t take care of it either. He still leaned by the window in a daze. The puppy was probably a lost pet—friendly, always carrying a ball in its mouth, wanting Xu Nanxiao to play. But Xu Nanxiao would just toss the ball far away and ignore it.

A puppy that didn’t please Xu Nanxiao had no value living in this house either, so Ying Yusheng decided to get rid of it.

But after days of sleeping in a comfortable dog bed and enjoying the housekeeper’s attentive care, the puppy was in no hurry to go back to being a stray. Seeing Ying Yusheng grab it, the dog panicked and bit down hard on his arm.

After the sting, the teeth marks on Ying Yusheng’s arm began to bleed. His face immediately darkened, disgust rising in his eyes.

But just then, Xu Nanxiao behind him suddenly praised, “Ying Yusheng, good dog.”

Ying Yusheng froze and turned around.

But Xu Nanxiao was calling the little Bichon. As if understanding human speech, it scurried past Ying Yusheng, striding proudly over to Xu Nanxiao, rubbing furiously against his pant leg for a reward.

Xu Nanxiao stroked the dog’s head, expressionless.

Ironic, wasn’t it?

The puppy Ying Yusheng had brought had earned the right to stay—by hurting Ying Yusheng.

No matter how accommodating Ying Yusheng was with Xu Nanxiao in daily life, there were two things Xu Nanxiao could not refuse.

One was sharing a bed every night.

The other was having sex every few days.

While Xu Nanxiao was in the detention center awaiting trial, his cellmate was a rapist. He’d often boast animatedly about his crimes, especially the victims’ suffering, his smile smug and arrogant.

Xu Nanxiao found the bastard’s expression disgusting, and the people who gathered around to listen disgusting too. So he quickly beat them all up and got put in solitary confinement for it.

But now, Xu Nanxiao wished Ying Yusheng preferred it rough.

Being fucked by Ying Yusheng—to use words he’d picked up from reading online—felt like spiritual contamination, a sanity drain.

Ying Yusheng didn’t give him pain; he gave him pleasure instead, making him struggle desperately in a sea of lust, forcing him to acknowledge his own depravity and shame, and bit by bit, breaking his spine.

Xu Nanxiao gripped Ying Yusheng’s hair tightly, trembling as he tried to pull him off, barely able to form a complete sentence. “No… I’m about to come! Let go!”

“Why did Nanxiao name a dog after me, hm?” A muffled voice came from below. “If you don’t apologize, I won’t stop.”

“Fuck! I’m not joking! I’m about to come—let go!!!”

“Then just let it happen.”

No, absolutely not. This wasn’t the usual kind—this time it was going to be…

Xu Nanxiao practically screamed, “I’m sorry! I was wrong! I’ll change its name from now on—please, Ying Yusheng, stop, please…”

But Ying Yusheng went back on his word and ignored him.

“Why?! I apologized! I already apologized!” Xu Nanxiao couldn’t bear it any longer and broke down sobbing. “I already said I’m sorry!!!”

In the end, Ying Yusheng forced Xu Nanxiao to finish in his mouth.

It wasn’t the usual kind after all, but a thin, dribbling release.

Xu Nanxiao let out a silent scream, covering his face with both arms, his chest heaving violently.

Ying Yusheng paused for a moment, then said excitedly, “That really caught me off guard, Nanxiao. So it feels that good, huh. Mmm… to this extent, you probably won’t ever be able to hold a woman again, will you?”

Xu Nanxiao suddenly felt a bone-deep terror. Even though he’d been locked up by Ying Yusheng, he’d always held onto the hope that one day, after he left, he could forget everything and start over.

But the brand Ying Yusheng had left on him seemed to have changed something—permanently changed something. He could no longer lie to himself, no longer pretend none of it had ever happened.

“Bullshit!” Xu Nanxiao, who had been shutting down his senses all these days, finally exploded. He shouted back in defiance, then scrambled on all fours to crawl off the bed, but Ying Yusheng grabbed his ankle and dragged him back.

“I’m not talking nonsense.” Ying Yusheng smiled as he spread his fingers, insisting on showing him the wetness. “Does that still count as a normal man?”

Xu Nanxiao stared blankly at Ying Yusheng’s palm, frozen for a long time, then suddenly curled up tightly, breaking down into uncontrollable sobs.

“Ying Yusheng, if you want revenge on me, there are a thousand ways to do it! If you just want to toy with me, you could have done whatever you wanted while I was hypnotized!” Xu Nanxiao wept loudly and asked him, “Why did you get close to me in the first place?! Why did you lie to me?! Why did you have to provoke me?!”

Ying Yusheng froze. In the midst of Xu Nanxiao’s crying, he lowered his gaze and thought for a moment, then answered cruelly:

“I’m sorry, Nanxiao. I don’t know either.”