Pei Guangji's expression was cold, and he gave no answer.
The manager swallowed and fell quiet.
But before Pei Guangji could react, the young man who had entered the private room had quietly sat down on the sofa.
As silently as a cat.
Like a white cat that had wandered onto an opera stage or into the middle of a shootout, curled its tail, and calmly settled on the sofa to stake out its territory.
The black-clad bodyguards standing nearby had received no signal from Pei Guangji. Unsure what the young master wanted, they stood frozen in place.
Xin Hexue's gaze was somewhat vacant. The drug slipped into his tea had left his body burning hot.
The ears peeking through his dark hair had already turned a vivid red.
That splash of red caught Pei Guangji's eye.
His restlessness phase was approaching, and his head was splitting with pain. He had no attention to spare, which was why he hadn't immediately thrown the young man out.
Fortunately, the other man had only sat down on the far side of the sofa, some distance away from him.
That much he could tolerate.
Pei Guangji soon noticed the young man leaning toward him. Just as he thought the man was foolish enough to press up against him, he heard Xin Hexue ask politely, "Hello, could you pass me a glass of water?"
His voice was soft and light, with a slight huskiness.
Pei Guangji caught the scent coming from the young man.
It was a faint fragrance of green sandalwood, mixed with the astringent smell of medicine.
Strangely, it calmed his throbbing nerves.
The tea table was farther from Xin Hexue and closer to Pei Guangji.
Xin Hexue said, "Plain boiled water is fine."
A black-clad bodyguard poured him a glass of water.
Xin Hexue said, "Thank you."
The cool water moistened his parched throat.
His normally pale red lips had been flushed a lurid red by the drug, and the remaining moisture glistened faintly.
The young man seemed simply to have mistaken this place for a public room where customers could rest.
So when he saw Pei Guangji beside him pressing a hand to his temple with a pained expression, he even asked kindly, "Does your head hurt a lot?"
It felt as though a blunt knife were repeatedly gouging and twisting through Pei Guangji's brain. His eyes were bloodshot. "Yes."
To ensure the purity of their bloodlines and produce the finest Alpha heirs, many of the wealthy and powerful families in the Core District arranged marriages between closely related Alphas and Omegas.
After all, the Core District's medical technology could prevent all manner of genetic diseases. The only exception was that the Alpha heirs bred through such extreme and twisted means suffered especially painful restlessness phases.
After marriage, this pain transformed into a surge of desire, as though the perverse genes selected over generations were continuing their efforts to breed the next generation.
Pei Guangji hated this condition.
He heard the young man beside him say, "I've learned some massage techniques that help with headaches. If you don't mind, I can give it a try."
Pei Guangji neither agreed nor refused, his eyes dark.
If this man dared to go any further, he would throw him out.
Pei Guangji smelled the faint scent of sandalwood and herbs.
Soft fingertips pressed against both sides of his temples.
They were so close that he could almost count the other man's overly long eyelashes.
Pei Guangji's jaw tightened. For some reason, the thought flashed through his mind that the other man shouldn't be doing this.
Xin Hexue imitated the way the great treacherous minister You Yi had once attended to him. "Is this all right?"
Even the Nine-Thousand-Year Lord never received this treatment.
Xin Hexue thought indifferently.
The manager had been watching the situation closely. Seeing that Pei Guangji showed no obvious resistance, he brightened. "Young Master, about the pharmaceutical factory in West City..."
The pharmaceutical factory in West City of the Sixth District lay on the outskirts, where the two districts met. It had its own designated manager and was highly lucrative. The manager had been eyeing it for a long time.
The young man's lashes fluttered as he looked around, sluggish and bewildered, as though he sensed something was slightly amiss.
Too noisy?
Pei Guangji shot the manager a cold glance. "Shut up."
The manager gave an awkward smile.
Suppressing the discomfort caused by the drug, Xin Hexue stood up and said somewhat awkwardly, "Sorry, did I come into the wrong private room? The waiter said just now..."
He raised his hand to check his watch again, looking uneasy. "I'll be going now."
If he didn't leave soon, he wouldn't be able to withstand the drug's effects.
He set down the empty glass.
Pei Guangji said nothing, which was taken as tacit consent, and no one dared stop Xin Hexue as he left.
Pei Guangji got up and left.
He paused at the private room's door and said to the bodyguard accompanying him, "Seize the one inside and interrogate him. If you can't get anything out of him, dispose of him. Keep it clean."
He thought again of the young man he had just met.
The words he wanted to say rose to his thin lips, but he swallowed them again.
Forget it. The man was probably just an innocent person caught up in that fool's affairs.
Pei Guangji had been born in the Core District. Even if he hadn't witnessed all the sordid dealings among wealthy families himself, he had heard plenty about them.
Just as he was about to step out of the restaurant, a waiter hurried over, looking apologetic. "Hello, Mr. Pei. The original guest at table 035 said to put the bill on your tab."
Pei Guangji frowned. "Who?"
The waiter gave Xin Hexue's name. He had assumed the young man and Pei Guangji had some sort of intimate relationship.
When Pei Guangji seemed puzzled by the name, the waiter described the young man's appearance, making a point of mentioning that he had come out of Pei Guangji's private room.
Pei Guangji agreed. "All right."
It seemed his impression of the young man had been mistaken.
Playing hard to get?
Pei Guangji spoke to the bodyguard again. "Look into his identity."
According to the original script, "Xin Hexue" should have been unable to resist the drug and ended up in bed with Pei Guangji for a one-night stand.
But he had now sidestepped that plot.
Otherwise, the protagonist gong would probably have committed the crime of desecrating a corpse.
Xin Hexue sank into the icy water of the bathtub.
His whole body was burning hot, and his nerves had already grown somewhat numb. He wished he could lie down in a pile of ice and snow.
K couldn't resist asking, "Why did you make a point of telling the waiter to have Pei Guangji pay before you left?"
The cold seeped into every part of his body.
Yet Xin Hexue's throat still felt as though it were on fire. He drew a breath of cold air and unexpectedly began coughing.
Water churned and splashed out of the tub.
K watched Xin Hexue lean against the side of the tub and gradually curl forward.
His host's body was exceptionally fair and smooth, so white it was dazzling.
But he didn't look excessively frail. A thin layer of muscle gave his body subtle definition, showing that this was the body of a young man who had yet to fully mature.
K knew that Xin Hexue had lived for eighteen years in his first life. In his second, his soul had been incompatible with the small world, leaving him conscious only rarely before the age of eighteen. All told, he had lived consciously for only two years.
That made him twenty in total.
In the greater world, the age of adulthood for men was twenty-two.
His host was still young.
That was what K thought.
His body was weak, too.
The coughing had brought involuntary tears to Xin Hexue's eyes, and the rims had turned red.
Xin Hexue leaned back and lay down in the water again.
His slender, pale neck stretched out, his Adam's apple bobbing.
His voice was soft and slightly hoarse as he said, "Because I gave all the money you gave me to Xin Bao, big brother."
K had prepared that card for Xin Hexue according to the script. It held nearly everything the character owned.
K hadn't expected that answer.
Was it simply because he didn't have enough money and didn't want to dine and dash?
He had thought...
It was his host's way of attracting the target's attention.
While K was pondering this, Xin Hexue was still in the mood to joke. "Are melodramatic scripts like this popular in the greater world? You're not going to give me a pregnancy-and-escape plot in the next world, are you, big brother?"
"When I took the job, I never said I could have children."
Xin Hexue was a quick learner, and the dazzling array of skills listed on his résumé was one of his strengths.
During the interview, he had indeed said he knew a little of everything. Xin Hexue had assumed it was common knowledge that men couldn't become pregnant naturally.
But now he was a little worried.
K said, "No, there's no script like that."
After saying that, K asked in an unnatural tone, "Why do you call me big brother?"
"I thought being more affectionate would quickly bring us closer," Xin Hexue said. "If you don't like it, I can just call you K."
K didn't respond.
And so the conversation between the man and the system ended.
The cold water wasn't enough to relieve the effects of the drug.
Xin Hexue still felt as though he were being roasted alive.
He lowered his lashes and reached his right hand deep into the bathwater, moving it.
He didn't regard K as an outsider—or even as a person—so he had no need to feel embarrassed in front of a nonhuman program made of code.
Only soft breathing and the sound of water filled the late-night air.
Xin Hexue rarely did such things, and his movements were somewhat clumsy.
It took some time.
He clenched his white teeth, biting a red mark into the knuckle of his left thumb.
A low moan.
Like a feather tickling the tip of one's heart.
K didn't look.
Out of courtesy, he had blocked his vision as soon as he guessed the purpose of Xin Hexue's movements.
He waited until, judging by what he heard, it seemed to be over.
Only then did he restore his vision.
...His host seemed to have passed out in the bathtub.
A tall, transparent human figure appeared in the bathroom and lifted the young man from the tub, one arm beneath his back and the other under his knees.
K could feel his astonishing temperature.
He called emergency services.
Chapter 3: Face Blindness (3)
When he opened his eyes, all he saw was white.
Huh?
Am I in heaven?
Xin Hexue braced himself against the edge of the bed and struggled to sit up. Every muscle in his body ached in a way it shouldn't have after ascending to heaven.