Some wounds were old, and some were new.
The doctor approached and crouched down for a clearer look.
The boy's black hair was matted with blood into several clumps. His eyes were tightly shut, beads of blood clinging to his long lashes. His lips were so badly split they were a dreadful sight, the tender flesh inside faintly visible. Rings of bruises overlapped around his slender neck.
Could he really still be alive like this?
The doctor called softly to him. "Can you hear me, child?"
Only after a long while did the boy manage a response. His lips moved, his voice barely audible. "Water..."
It took the doctor a while to make out that he wanted water. He took a thermos from his bag, dipped a cotton swab in water, and carefully brought it to the boy's mouth.
The boy sucked greedily.
By the time the night had passed, the boy's wounds had been treated, but he still slept curled up on the floor.
Except at designated times, he was not allowed into the main villa and could only stay in this small room. He had at least had a blanket before. This time, even that was gone.
The doctor hesitated, wanting to urge the boy to call the police, but knowing it would be useless.
No one dared intervene against the immensely powerful Lu family.
Besides, this boy named Yan Heqing suffered from severe Stockholm syndrome. He did not believe he was being abused.
The doctor sighed helplessly.]
So the world he lived in was a danmei novel about an abusive romance.
The protagonist shou was his twin brother, Lin Fengzhi, and the protagonist gong was Lu Muchi, the man who now wanted to keep him.
And he was a stand-in supporting character.
At five, he gave up his chance to be adopted by a wealthy family to Lin Fengzhi.
At eighteen, he became Lu Muchi's kept lover.
At nineteen, he developed Stockholm syndrome and fell in love with Lu Muchi.
At twenty, when Lin Fengzhi suddenly developed keratoconus, he was forced to donate his eyes.
At twenty-one, he shielded Lu Muchi from a car and died in the accident.
His whole life had been laid out neatly: kind, miserable, lowly, and dead without an intact corpse.
Twenty-one years in all.
And today was Yan Heqing's eighteenth birthday. He was just about to sign his own death warrant.
Unable to have the Lin Fengzhi he loved, Lu Muchi discovered that Yan Heqing looked like him and offered to keep him. After he refused, Lu Muchi approached his adoptive parents.
Overjoyed at this windfall, his adoptive parents agreed. That was why he was sitting here now.
This section of the novel matched Yan Heqing's life so far in every detail.
Yan Heqing turned his face toward the torrential rain outside, which seemed to be scouring the world clean.
Something deep inside his body suddenly churned and boiled. The food he had eaten mixed with stomach acid and surged violently up his throat.
He rose and rushed to the restroom. In the empty restroom, he braced himself against the sink, bent his head over it, and vomited out all the revulsion filling his stomach.
After vomiting for nearly a minute, Yan Heqing cupped some water to rinse his mouth, then washed his face with cold water.
It was late autumn, the weather cold enough to seep into his bones, and he wore only a thin sweatshirt.
He lifted his head. The face in the mirror was sickly pale, its cheeks slightly sunken, without a trace of flesh on them.
Icy drops of water trickled down his wispy bangs and slowly fell into his eyes.
His light-brown irises, tinged with sandy gold, glistened with water. His eyes were long and narrow, their outer corners tilted slightly upward, serene and pure yet naturally alluring. Despite his malnutrition and haggard complexion, those fox eyes were still dazzlingly beautiful.
Yan Heqing raised his hand, his fingers as withered and thin as bamboo joints, and slowly touched his eyes.
The passage from the novel surfaced in his mind again.
[Lu Muchi slowly brushed the pad of his finger over Yan Heqing's eyes, his voice gentle and beguiling. "You'll agree, won't you?"
Tears shimmered in Yan Heqing's eyes. Terrified, he pleaded pitifully, "No, I... I can't lose my eyes..."
Thinking of Lin Fengzhi crying at that very moment, Lu Muchi lost all patience. He seized Yan Heqing's hair and yanked it upward.
"Ah!" Caught off guard, Yan Heqing was forced to crane his neck. He cried out in agony, "It hurts, Lu Muchi. Please let go, okay?"
"Zhizhi is hurting worse than you!" Lu Muchi tightened his grip.
Yan Heqing felt as though Lu Muchi was about to rip his scalp off. The pain grew so extreme that suddenly he no longer felt it. His gaze was dragged up to the crystal chandelier on the ceiling.
Blinding. Dazzling.
He could not see Lu Muchi.
He struggled to move his eyes. "Lu Muchi... I, let me look at you..."
He tried to gain even the slightest scrap of pity from Lu Muchi.
Lu Muchi sneered. "You think you're worthy? Yan Heqing, don't forget, you're a thing I bought for nine million. Never mind your eyes-even if I wanted you dead, you'd have to die."
Tears spilled from his eyes as Yan Heqing made one last struggle. "Why does it have to be my eyes?"
"You're Zhizhi's biological older brother." Lu Muchi leaned close to his ear and whispered like a demon, "You share the same blood. They'll work better for Zhizhi."
...]
He retched.
Yan Heqing vomited again.
Even though there was nothing left in his stomach.
Lin Fengzhi, his own younger brother.
The only family he had, whose name he had not known, whom he had still been missing so deeply just ten minutes ago.
When they were little, their parents had died in an accident. No one was willing to adopt the two brothers, so they had no choice but to go to an orphanage.
A few months later, a family came to adopt a child. The couple were both kind and wealthy. They chose Yan Heqing, but while they were completing the adoption paperwork, he quietly hid somewhere no one could find him.
When he came out late that night, his younger brother had indeed been adopted.
I'm sorry, little brother.
Little Yan Heqing's tears fell in streams. He silently vowed that he would study hard and earn lots and lots of money to find his brother.
Later, after his adoptive parents took him in and abused him, he remained optimistic and positive, full of hope for the future.
Because he knew his younger brother was waiting for him.
Starting in middle school, he worked whenever he had time. By now, he had saved fifty thousand yuan.
Only yesterday, he had still been planning to look for his brother during the winter break of his first year of college.
But-
Even you can't take my eyes.