Sir, Room Service

Ten o'clock at night.

Exactly one hour had passed since the cigarette Li Mao had bummed in an alley had burned out.

Someone gently knocked on the door of Room B1306 at the Green Woods Hotel.

"Knock, knock!"

"Hello, gu—guest room service."

Wan Fuqi had just been about to take off his hearing aid and go to bed when he heard the voice outside. His gaze darkened.

He walked quietly to the door and bent down to peer through the peephole.

Standing in the hallway was a handsome young man with light blond hair, dressed in the Green Woods Hotel's room service uniform.

He had the kind of face that was hard to forget, but that only made Wan Fuqi more certain he hadn't seen the young man during the two days he'd been staying at the Green Woods Hotel.

Wan Fuqi didn't open the door. He simply replied through it, "I didn't request room service. You have the wrong room."

The young man's smile stiffened at his words. He stepped back and looked up at the room number above the door.

He took out his phone and snapped a picture of the number, then lowered his head to type, apparently checking with someone.

Soon, he put his phone away and resumed his professional smile.

"Sir, I just checked with the front desk. I—I haven't got the wrong room. B1306 reported a pipe repair."

As he spoke, the young man lifted the toolbox in his hand and gave it a shake, as if to prove he was telling the truth.

Wan Fuqi remained unmoved. "The pipes aren't broken."

Li Mao's smile didn't falter. "M-maybe there's a leak somewhere out of sight."

Wan Fuqi straightened up, his voice cool. "Then come back during the day tomorrow. I'm going to bed."

"Si-sir, for your safety and the quality of your stay, you should still let me come in and take a look. I'll just check for leaks. It'll be quick."

"It's fine. I'll call the front desk and explain the situation. You don't need to take responsibility if anything goes wrong."

Li Mao hadn't expected the man to be so wary, but the situation was still under control.

Li Mao smiled, his eyes curving. "Sir, please cooperate with our wo—work. We have to take photos of all past repair requests and write a re—report. The front desk can't exactly overrule our supervisor. Just let me in to take a photo, and that'll be all."

Wan Fuqi had thought that since he'd only arrived in Willow City two days ago and had kept a low profile, he shouldn't have gotten into any trouble.

But now he knew he'd been wrong.

He hadn't gone looking for trouble, but trouble had come looking for him.

Wan Fuqi stopped responding to the person outside and turned to use the hotel phone to contact the front desk.

If the young man really was there to fix the pipes, he'd have the hotel send someone to call him back.

If he wasn't, he'd have the hotel send someone up to check things out.

The young man outside looked harmless, with an innocent, guileless face, but Wan Fuqi wasn't stupid.

Who knew what might be lurking outside his field of vision? In this situation, his best option was to stay put and do nothing.

Wan Fuqi had just turned around when the young man's voice came from outside again.

His cheerful, lilting words carried a chill.

"Sir, you're making this very, very difficult for me..."

The moment he finished speaking, the door behind Wan Fuqi let out a beep as a keycard unlocked it.

Before Wan Fuqi could react, there was a thud, and something seemed to strike him in the back.

His body immediately convulsed under the high-voltage electric pulse, and his mind spun in a daze.

It wasn't until he crashed hard to the floor that Wan Fuqi regained some awareness.

A pair of white canvas shoes stepped into his now terribly narrow field of vision.

This time, the handsome young man's voice reached him without any obstruction.

"Sir, I told you. When you don't cooperate, it makes things very, very difficult for me."

After those words, the hearing aid in Wan Fuqi's right ear failed from the electric shock, and his world plunged into a terrifying silence.

The handsome blond young man didn't say anything else. He locked the room door, crouched down, and took a length of mountaineering rope from his toolbox.

Grabbing Wan Fuqi by the collar, Li Mao dragged the man, who was temporarily unable to move, over to a chair with a backrest. With practiced ease, he used professional knots to secure him to it with his hands behind his back.

The moment he'd opened the door and seen the man's back towering a head above his own, Li Mao had already been shocked to discover that this Omega stood over 1.9 meters tall.

But as he dragged him over, he couldn't help marveling again at what this Omega had grown up eating. He was not only taller than Li Mao, an Alpha, but built like a wall of muscle, too.

He didn't look especially bulky, but he was solid muscle. Li Mao only realized how heavy the Omega was once he got his hands on him.

He was a man who could deadlift 120 kilograms in his everyday routine, and even he was struggling to handle the guy.

Now he understood why that older guy had reminded him to stay alert and bring some equipment to the meeting.

Without the element of surprise, taking someone with this kind of build down would've been a lot more trouble.

To be safe, Li Mao pulled the knots tight with all his strength, stopping only when the man's arms had turned pale and bloodless.

Wan Fuqi couldn't hear anything at the moment, and he didn't try to talk to Li Mao to buy time.

Aside from the brief moment of panic when Li Mao had ambushed him, he remained almost unnervingly calm.

He simply kept his face expressionless and grim, his eyes fixed on Li Mao as the young man worked.

Li Mao paid no mind to the Omega tied to the chair, whose glare seemed ready to tear him limb from limb.

Humming to himself, he picked up a glass at random and poured in some water.

Then he took the packet of nameless white powder out of the toolbox.

Li Mao was just about to pour all the powder into the glass when he stopped himself in time.

He lowered his eyes and studied the packet for a while, then poured only half of it into the glass.

These days, anyone who believed everything they were told was a fool.

For one thing, he didn't know whether that older guy had left anything out about the drug's effects.

And Omegas were generally delicate, easily startled by the tiniest things. Being tall and burly didn't prove this one had an unshakably strong constitution.

What if the dose was too strong and the man died on him?

He'd only been paid to drug him. He hadn't been paid to dispose of a body.

There was no food safety regulator for Li Mao's shady operation, so he casually stirred the contents of the glass with a finger.

Once the powder had mostly dissolved, he took the doctored water and turned toward the Omega tied to the chair, who could do nothing but repeatedly flay him with his eyes.