Bird Escaping the Cage

"No!"

Ryuseki let out a loud roar and snapped his eyes open, only to see his older brother Kouhi sitting by his bed with a smile, looking right at him.

"Waaah~" Ryuseki's immediate reaction to seeing his brother was actually to scream and shudder.

This was Ryuseki's home; he was in his own house right now. The feeling just now had clearly been so real, yet the moment he woke up, he realized it had been a dream. But that dream had felt so real, real enough to terrify him and make his scalp tingle.

"What's wrong?" Kouhi looked at Ryuseki with a smile. "Must've had a nightmare!"

Even though Kouhi's smile was so sunny and gave off a warm feeling, Ryuseki's reaction was intensely severe. Come to think of it, Kouhi's aura always gave people a very reassuring feeling, completely different from his rash younger brother.

"N-Nothing at all!" Ryuseki hurriedly wiped the sweat from his forehead and carefully sized up his brother Kouhi again.

To say the least, the person who had been about to take his life in the dream was right before his eyes; even with the closest of kin, some misgivings were bound to arise. What was more, he was still lingering in fear—what if he hadn't been able to wake up...

"Bro? What are you doing here?"

"I heard you yelling and screaming in your room, so I ran over to take a look. What's the matter?"

As he spoke, Kouhi walked over to the window and pulled back the curtains. The soft morning sunlight streamed through the window, shining on him and casting a warm glow.

"No, nothing's wrong!" Despite the warm sunlight shining down, Ryuseki's tone still carried a trembling quaver like a frozen little bird. The fear in his heart had not completely vanished just because he had woken up.

Though he did not know what Ryuseki was afraid of, Kouhi understood that staying here any longer would do no good, so he went out to let him calm down by himself.

"Alright then!" Kouhi gave a warm smile. "If you're fine, come downstairs for breakfast in a bit!" With that, he headed toward the hallway and closed the bedroom door.

Ryuseki turned his head to look out the window and let out a sigh of relief. Just then, a bird flew up to the window ledge, tilted its head to look in Ryuseki's direction, and then darted away. Ryuseki reached out to touch his pillow, and was surprised to find that it had been soaked completely through with sweat.

It's actually soaked through!

Having eaten breakfast in a hurry and unable to wait a moment longer, Ryuseki hurriedly called for Meisha, and the two of them rushed off to the hospital to visit Lin Yingbin and Ryuu Mufei. Along the way, Ryuseki remained silent, his mind still dwelling on the scene from the dream.

"What's wrong with you? Why doesn't your complexion look good? Are you catching a cold?" Meisha stared at Ryuseki's face and asked cautiously.

"N-Nothing. I just didn't sleep well last night, would you stop staring at me like that!"

Taken aback and feeling rather awkward under Meisha's gaze, Ryuseki deliberately avoided looking at her.

Hearing this, Meisha put on a feigned look of surprise and replied, "Eh? Really? You actually have times when you can't sleep."

Chatting and bantering, the two of them arrived at the hospital and took the elevator up to the fifth floor. Yet in the dim, cramped elevator space, that slight feeling of terror washed over Ryuseki's heart once again.

The elevator doors opened, and the fifth floor had arrived. The two of them stepped out of the elevator one after the other.

"I really hope those two get better soon!" Ryuseki said to Meisha with a forced smile.

"Hey, hey, hey! How come I never see you care about me like that?" Meisha pouted with an expression of dissatisfaction.

Ryuseki chuckled and said, "You?! You aren't even hurt!"

Realizing something a moment later, Ryuseki suddenly changed his expression and looked at Meisha with a lecherous-looking grin.

"Hey! I say, are you jealous?" Then he put on an affectionate expression and gazed at Meisha. "Hey! Meisha! Are you doing well?"

"Cut it out!" Meisha shoved Ryuseki away all at once.

Nearby nurses who saw their flirting covered their mouths and giggled!

As they talked, the two of them reached the door of the hospital room.

Squeak... Whoosh... The door opened! A gust of cold wind blew out! Hospital rooms were usually warmer than the outside, so how could there be a cold wind?

"You were complaining about the heat, and yet you still turned on..."

Before she could finish her sentence, both of them were dumbfounded by the scene inside the room. The two hospital beds were completely empty, the blankets on them were tossed about in a mess, and Lin Yingbin was sprawled facedown on the floor looking as though he had passed out. Ryuu Mufei was nowhere to be found, and the glass on the window had shattered into smithereens; however, there were no fallen shards of glass on the floor.

"How can this be? Could it be that he (Lin Yingbin) went crazy again?! And then threw Ryuu Mufei out the window!" Meisha deduced.

"I don't think so!" Ryuseki paused as he cast his gaze around their surroundings.

The surroundings weren't particularly messy; things were still in their original places. Then, he spotted something on Ryuu Mufei's bedside table. As he spoke, he walked over toward it.

"Ah?! How do you know?" Meisha asked.

"If Lin Yingbin had gone crazy, the entire hospital probably..." Then, Ryuseki handed the slip of paper from Ryuu Mufei's bed to Meisha. "And look at this!"

Meisha took the note and stared at what was written upon it!