Chapter 39
Watching his eyelids gradually close and his consciousness fall into darkness.
Pei Huai wanted to leave, but the words of persuasion held him back.
It's not like he hasn't seen persistent pursuers before. Even if he has clearly expressed his rejection, the other party will still try every means to get close to him.
They appeared downstairs with carefully selected bouquets of flowers, and took it upon themselves to cover breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They held his hand, whispered in his ear, and expressed their love in letters, business cards, and everything they could—of course, Pei Huai rejected them all.
He didn't like that. Love and hate were a very clear-cut topic; liking was liking. No matter how much he forced or begged, disliking wouldn't change anything.
Xiang Mingqi, this junior, seemed to be desperately trying to gain his favor. He was so enthusiastic and full of energy that Pei Huai was a little... unsure how to deal with it.
He could still vividly remember the last time he rejected a boy: his eyes were wide open, as if he had been devastated. He burst into tears in front of everyone, and before leaving, he clutched the corner of his clothes, begging him to look at him just one more time.
That was the first time Pei Huai felt at a loss.
He simply expressed his "dislike" directly, but it made others disregard their image and burst into tears on the street. It's not that he can't accept a relationship, but he can't accept the fading of passion and the possibility of separation.
A relationship should be cherished and should be the result of the mutual understanding and willingness of both parties.
Pei Huai knew very well that it wasn't that he disliked his junior. At least, they weren't at the stage where they could date.
But Xiang Mingqi said that he would pursue himself with all his strength.
He doesn't understand.
Wanting to pursue, liking. Is it a choice made after careful consideration?
If that's the case, he...
His phone buzzed, bringing him back to reality. He picked it up and saw it was a WeChat message from the head of the legal department.
The other party explained that the boy they had rescued earlier at Jingshan Real Estate had woken up and provided several key clues. Furthermore, the files he had previously retrieved from the USB drive had been decrypted. They had now compiled them into a compressed file and sent it to his email, asking him to verify the contents as soon as possible.
So Pei Huai moved a chair over and clicked on the video file in the upper menu.
The boy confessed a lot of things. He believed that his identity information might have been leaked by the loan platform. He hesitated at this point, and the camera recorded it.
He had taken out a loan to cover his mother's acute kidney disease, including all the medical expenses after surgery. He was short on cash at the time, juggling school and construction, and could only afford the minimum installment payments. That's why Jingshan Real Estate Company approached him.
They promised him a sum of money, a generous reward sufficient to cover subsequent treatment and surgery, but the price was that he had to provide his ID card, household registration, and other information.
Later, he was taken to a company and signed a contract in his own name. There was no receipt, no copy for himself, and he received the money without knowing why.
After the surgery, his mother's condition improved. Just as he was actively raising funds to repay the loans, he unexpectedly received a collection call. The caller said the repayment date was the day after tomorrow and asked him to prepare 170,000 yuan as soon as possible.
For this reason, he rushed to Jingshan Real Estate Company overnight, but was detained in the basement before he could explain his purpose.
There were two or three other people imprisoned with him, and all of them had their organs removed before him.
The person in charge of handling the corpses accidentally revealed that before following the orders from his superiors to destroy them, he would first remove their healthy organs and sell them on the black market for a lucrative profit.
The video file ended, and it was time to read the list of victims in the next directory. There were a lot of them, and he had to be patient to read them all.
Jingshan Real Estate mostly chooses people with low education level and poor family conditions, who have no medical insurance and are illiterate. They are often facing major decisions such as illness, bankruptcy and disaster.
When they are at their wit's end, as long as they can grab a life-saving straw, those poor people who have hit a wall everywhere will not care about anything else.
By exploiting this mentality, Jingshan Real Estate Company easily achieved what it wanted. Poverty has never been a scarce resource, and neither have people. This is why it succeeded. The value that people can create is far greater than one can imagine.
The files are divided according to occupation, and deaths and missing persons are marked in red and blue.
The last folder contained a batch of student materials. By the time Pei Huai reached the end, his eyelids were heavy with sleepiness, but he persevered for the sake of work.
Just as his index finger touched the second-to-last document, his hand stopped in mid-air.
The first thing I saw was a photo. Within the frame was a face with a slightly innocent smile. The right eye was single-lidded, while the left eye had two or three distinct wrinkles. This youthful face had a healthy tan, with the stray hairs between its eyebrows reaching all the way to the center.
It was a face that would be hard to erase from his memory.
It was his brother's face.
...Yu Mingrui.
Why is he on this red list?
Before he fell into complete and utter shock, Pei Huai finally saw the amount of debt in the lower right corner. Four million was an astronomical figure he dared not even think about.
A feeling of suffocation came over him, making everything within his sight blurry and indistinct.
What happened? For the first time, Pei Huai felt the heaviness of his thoughts. He swallowed and gasped in a daze, and his heart began to stall.
Was this money owed by Yu Mingrui? Why? Why? All his tuition, textbook fees, and even living and travel expenses were earned by himself day and night, and were paid to him according to the living standards of other students.
Why.
Why did he owe this money?
Just when the handrail was about to be broken, a knock on the door interrupted his breath.
A nurse knocked on the door and came in: "Sir, someone downstairs wants to see you."
Pei Huai's chair fell over as he stood up, cold sweat breaking out on his back. He held onto the guardrail and slowly moved towards the window.
Passing the cables and security windows, he saw a Bentley parked in front of the hospital, completely black.
Outside the car, surrounded by medical staff, stood a man in a suit, holding a bouquet of fiery red roses. As if sensing the gaze from the second-floor window, the man raised his head, and their eyes met.
That gaze was like wildfire, coated with a layer of luxury and refinement, as if it could hide the tender affection in one's heart.
Shan Li smiled slightly and performed a standard bow.
-
Xiang Mingqi felt that he might have had a dream. He dreamed of... something that happened a long time ago.
The four white walls were both his room and not quite it. It was locked, a complicated padlock with several pins. It was only opened for medication and medical examinations.
He sat on the bed by the window, fiddling with the small branch that protruded into the room with his index finger, and continued to paint the wall with crayons.
He spent every day like this, and the occasional trip outside was only allowed for two things: to meet physiological needs, or to have his blood drawn after taking medication, or to check his pupils. Once confirmed to be normal, he would be taken back to his bed, where he would sit, lie down, and probably lie there for the whole day.
Sleeping and drawing were his best ways to while away the time, but as the days went by, his crayons became increasingly worn out, with only the dirty shell of the black one remaining.
So he lay on the carpet, looking at the stick figures on the wall and the cats mating in the shade of the trees in the yard. He opened his arms and smiled happily.
From that night on, he began to have wet dreams. In his dreams, he was like a male who smelled the scent of a female cat, riding on the other's tail, pinching her fleshy breasts, touching her seductive waistline, and shaking his hind legs.
At the time, my brother's hair hadn't grown long yet, and his eyes had a natural allure. He was slender and straight-backed, like a cluster of newly blossoming light-colored osmanthus flowers on a summer night, their fragrance lingering. This almost became the source of his sexual addiction.
One day, someone who came to visit him saw the boy lying on the ground and the pictures on the wall, and he clicked his tongue in disgust.
He hadn't been locked up in this room from the beginning. It was after that incident that someone sent him to a private nursing home under the guise of psychiatric treatment. It was called desensitization therapy, but in reality it was a form of surveillance.
Because he also has the right to inherit the estate.
The person who came to visit him was his cousin, who was considered the one with the best chance of inheriting the family business.
The other party was explaining his purpose in a condescending manner: "I can release you and guarantee that you will have no worries about food and clothing in the future, but you need to do a few things for me."
He was still fiddling with his crayons, his eyes downcast and silent.
The visitor continued, "First, give up your inheritance rights. Second, help me get someone. Someone you and I are very familiar with."
The crayon broke. He looked up with a dull look in his eyes: "Who?" He felt something was wrong, that something important was being taken away, that something was being coveted.
"I want you to get close to Mr. Pei. Make him trust you and respect you." The name undoubtedly gripped his heart. "I have a contract with his brother, and he's unaware of it. So things will be very troublesome later. I hope you can handle this matter single-handedly. I want him, but I hope I can be a support in his eyes, a support after you betrayed me."
He asked, his voice as if he had been thirsty for nearly a century: "Can I go to him?"
"Can."
"Can I look at him?"
"Okay. But you absolutely cannot fall in love with him, have a relationship with him, or pursue him."
"Okay." He nodded, not quite understanding.
This oath was actually violated from the very beginning.
From the moment he heard his brother's name, he was overwhelmed by love, and every word he signed was vague. His fingers were burning, his heart was beating so fast that it seemed to burst through his chest, and blood rushed to his cerebral cortex again and again.
As long as he can leave this cage and be with his brother, he doesn't care about the cost or the consequences.
—He was born for this, wasn't he?
Xiang Mingqi's eyelids twitched as he opened them, and outside the window he could hear birds chirping.
He glanced around wearily, the anesthetic effect having worn off, making it easy to recall the events that had occurred. His gaze shifted slightly, and immediately focused on the pink piggy keychain beside his pillow.
Suddenly, as if remembering something, he sat up abruptly. Ignoring the stinging pain from the sutures on his abdomen, he tore off the IV needle and limped downstairs.
"Where is my brother?" he asked the front desk clerk excitedly.
"At the door, someone's looking for him..." The nurse at the front desk was already sleepy. After seeing his appearance, she quickly stood up and said, "Wait a moment, don't go out like this!"
Xiang Mingqi pushed the door open as if he hadn't heard anything. He walked into the night, embracing the cool air of dawn, his eyes bright with anticipation.
But the next second, that joyful smile completely froze on his face.
He saw two figures standing in front of the passenger seat of the Bentley. Without even thinking, his brain reacted automatically.
Shan Li put an arm around Pei Huai's waist, his gesture intimate. Pei Huai was looking down at a stack of papers, the contents of which made his wrist tremble.
The man whispered a few words soothingly, leaned down, kissed the clear and attractive neck, and glanced at Xiang Mingqi out of the corner of his eye.
——He kissed him.
With his right arm propped against the car door, his muscles tensed, Shan Li lowered his posture and sucked Pei Huai's lips flatteringly.
They are kissing.
Kissing.
"...Brother." He heard his voice hoarse and felt his blood cooling down.
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