CHAPTER 55: YOU’RE NOT FINE.

"Speak. What the hell happened to you?"

When Taras let go of Le An’s chin, Le An swallowed like a child caught in the act, sniffled, and wiped his face roughly with his hand, looking around as if searching for an explanation. "I-I..."

But his eyes were still tense, as though he hadn’t recovered from whatever had happened. Grief, brought on by seeing Taras, joined the frustration in Le An’s eyes; but Taras, focused on his condition and the explanation to come, didn’t notice.

"N-nothing happened," Le An stammered. Taras finally looked away from his neck, where he’d been focused, and met his eyes.

What he saw... didn’t match what he heard. Taras instinctively took a deep breath, and once again, that disgusting scent of foreign pheromones filled his lungs, so far from Le An’s natural scent. How could nothing have happened? Taras’s eyes lit up, sharp and alert. It was blatantly clear that Treasure was lying.

And as Le An remained silent after that, Taras was left alone with the possibilities forming in his mind, and his expression grew even angrier. Le An, unsure of what to say, just stared into his eyes. "I’m fine. I mean..."

Had he misunderstood what Taras had asked? Le An trailed off for a moment and wondered.

Because Taras only looked more displeased with that answer. "I suppose you’ve grown bold enough to lie to me now?" he muttered coldly, and unsure of what to say, Le An froze again.

It felt as if... he was speaking to Taras for the first time. Even telling him he was okay had felt strange enough, and for a brief second, Le An couldn’t understand why Taras was questioning what had happened to him at all.

The bewilderment on his face only fueled Taras’s rage.

This time, he grabbed Le An by the arm and started dragging him toward the bathroom. "Don’t stare at me like an idiot, as if you’ve forgotten what I look like..."

Until Taras flipped on the bathroom light and pulled him inside, Le An just stared at the hand gripping his wrist with a dazed expression. Maybe because it was the first time Taras had held him like this, firmly, but without excessive force or sudden movement, Le An could actually feel the roughness and callouses of his palm against his own skin.

As Le An’s wrist tingled with the new sensation, Taras tightened his grip, and with a slight shove, he tossed Le An into the shower stall. A faint gasp escaped Le An’s lips.

Taras ignored it. All he could think about was getting rid of that scent that was stabbing pain into his temples. From outside the shower, his hand grabbed the faucet handle with force, and Le An’s face clenched tightly in anticipation of the cold water about to strike his body.

But just then, Taras paused. Images of just a few days ago, when Le An had flailed helplessly in ice-cold water in that very bathtub, flooded his mind.

Though the redness on Le An’s tear-streaked cheeks made him look a little more alive, he still wasn’t resisting Taras’s grip.

He wasn’t pulling his wrist back. He wasn’t asking why he was being dragged into the bathroom. He wasn’t questioning why Taras was about to pour freezing water on him. He was just waiting in silence, the warm breaths he took brushing against Taras’s torso. Taras’s gaze dropped to Le An’s wrist in his hand, and then to Le An’s clenched fists.

No matter what he did, Treasure had no intention of resisting him. Why? Was it because he expected anything from Taras? Or was it the opposite, because he expected nothing at all?

Was it because he thought the one who tried to kill him in the attack... was Taras? Taras’s lips parted slightly. But no word came out.

Le An flinched ever so faintly when the metal of the faucet creaked under the pressure of Taras’s hand, and his shoulders rose. His body, already seeming cold, leaned slightly forward as if seeking another source of warmth. With a visible unease brought on by waiting, Le An bit his lower lip.

At last, Taras withdrew his hand from the faucet and released Le An’s wrist. Then, Le An opened one eye and looked at him.

Taras, towering over him, was closer than expected. "Shower," he said, stepping away from Le An inside the stall.

Le An’s shoulders slowly relaxed. With a cautious look in his eyes, he nodded. "Ah, yes. O-okay." As Taras turned to leave the bathroom, Le An snapped out of his daze for a moment and parted his lips. "You-"

"Hurry," Taras said, anticipating what he was about to ask. "You’re going to guide me after that."

Le An, now gripping the hem of his shirt tightly, nodded at him with a nervousness like he’d miss something vital if he didn’t meet Taras’s eyes. "Okay."

Taras couldn’t hold his gaze for long, Le An was looking at him with the same reluctant awe as on the first day they met. So he turned his head first, to step out of the bathroom.

Treasure must have truly believed he was the one who’d tried to kill him in that attack. Hah.

That’s why he was this afraid of him. That was why his gaze had changed so suddenly, wasn’t it?

Why was he now afraid of someone he knew had hated him, even before the attack? Why now? Taras sighed, aware of how ridiculous the thought sounded, as his hand reached for the doorknob.

’...Because you’re a good person.’

When Taras remembered the words Le An had once mumbled while barely conscious, his feet froze.

The doorknob creaked under his grip. Something inside Taras’s heart felt as if it had dropped, and in that moment, he realized what had been bothering him all along.

He was about to turn around when his eyes caught Le An’s reflection in the mirror. Just beneath the shirt he’d lifted, a massive bruise had formed.

Taras looked away before Le An took off his shirt completely and turned toward him. He left the bathroom and shut the door.

A rush of thoughts overwhelmed him.

Le An... was no longer holding on to the belief that he was a good man. And once that belief was shattered, so was the last anchor of resistance. He wasn’t moving, not out of calm, but out of instinct. Like someone who had learned that struggling only tightened the snare. His silence wasn’t peace. It was survival.

The heart that used to slow and relax whenever he saw Taras, now, it beat like it would burst out of his chest.

Taras stood for a while, looking into Le An’s room, gripped by a sense that something inside him had been lost.

---

When the sound of water filled the bathroom, Taras shifted into his shadow form. He silently slipped downstairs among the household staff in search of the answers Le An wouldn’t give him.

Though they couldn’t sense his presence, some felt a chill crawl up their spines. Others shivered as if cold air whistled right past them.

The answer could only lie with Theo and Tracker, those who were never far from Le An’s side. Taras wasn’t just wondering what had made Treasure cry like that, but why no one had been able to stop it.

Had they been unable to? Or had they chosen not to? That was another question entirely. Taras had come to understand that Treasure’s authority in this house was so fragile that even his say over something as personal as his own heat could be torn away by others’ hands.

"Mr. Theo, I’ve delivered my report. Including how we convinced Mr. Qui to cancel the guards assigned to Treasure, the omega, and his sister." Tracker said, as he loosened his tightly knotted tie like a man at the end of a long shift. He was leaning against the railing next to Theo on the front veranda as he spoke.

Theo nodded, looking up toward the lights of the upstairs room where Le An was now. "Do you think... he’s still crying?" Tracker asked.

Theo replied calmly, "He’s in the shower."

"I..." Tracker took out a leather cigarette case from his jacket and slipped a cigarette between his lips. "I never thought the sponsors -or anyone, really- would treat dear Treasure this way," he said, still sounding shocked. "He... really struggled."

"This wasn’t the first time," Theo said, his face taking on a terrible expression as he stared off into the distance, remembering something. "This time... he actually held out better than before."

"Because they kept touching him," Tracker trailed off, the tension in the air too thick to finish his sentence. Theo’s face twisted with fury.

The shadow also stopped swirling and stilled in the darkness after that unfinished sentence.

After a while, Tracker took a long drag of his cigarette, exhaled, and looked at Theo. "Seeing him treated like that... it must upset you too."

Theo turned to look at Tracker, his lips curling into a strained, broken smile. "It’s killing me," he said, looking him in the eye. His smile vanished as he continued. "It’s slowly killing him too."

Though Tracker hadn’t known Treasure long enough to truly grasp the weight of it, he nodded as if he understood. Theo continued, "He won’t even be able to sleep tonight. He’ll tear himself apart over not being able to protect that omega."

"If not for keeping you and me out of it-"

"He would’ve never let that omega leave tonight," Theo finished, shaking his head with conviction. "He would’ve ripped him right out of the deputy minister’s son’s hands. But he backed down... out of fear that something might happen to us. And that left him powerless."

The shadow moved closer when it heard "deputy minister."

Tracker took the cigarette from his lips, staring off into the distance. "It was the only way," he murmured.

"I know," Theo replied. "You used the right thing. If Le An gets involved in this mess, the GAC’s backlash... would be disastrous. It always has been."

"Le An... has been stopped over and over. When he tried to make donations with his own wealth, when he made close friends, when he bonded with staff... Even when people reached out to him in secret and he helped and, when he wanted to visit places... somehow, he was always stopped."

Tracker slowly nodded, a sympathetic look on his face. Now it made sense, the GAC increasing his workload with temporary special regulations, only to silently retract them days later and erase them from media records. There had also been rumors that the staff around Treasure were constantly changed, and those dismissed shortly after getting close to him later received generous job offers elsewhere. All of this now matched Theo’s words.

GAC was punishing him, and whenever Le An backed down, the punishment was lifted, both from him and from those affected.

As Tracker recalled Le An’s tear-stained face, his tightly shut hand covering it, and as the words spoken in that moment rang in his ears, he turned to Theo and, after glancing around, spoke in a low voice. "About what dear Treasure said regarding Mr. Qui... You know I won’t say anything. I couldn’t even if I wanted to."

Theo looked at him as if to say, of course.

As Tracker lit another cigarette and started toward the garden, he said one more thing. "Still, I’d suggest warning Treasure to keep silent about it," he said cautiously. "This could really have serious-"

"He said it because he knew you couldn’t tell anyone," Theo cut in as he turned to head inside. "Or rather, it’s one of those secrets... even if a hundred people witnessed it, not one would dare speak. Even if it reached the media, the police wouldn’t move. Le An knows this. So... don’t worry." A weary look fell over Theo’s face. "Just forget it. He will too, in time."

"How can you forget something like that?" Tracker muttered wryly, locking eyes with Theo one last time. "Someone like Treasure... he’ll want to remember it, precisely because he can’t live with forgetting."

Theo just looked at him.

And the shadow turned back toward the bathroom, where the water had stopped a while ago. In a form too faint for even Le An to perceive, Taras slipped into the room.

Just like the night before, Le An had changed clothes and was now sitting on the edge of the bed, waiting for him.

His face, cheeks, and body had taken on a pink flush from the warm water, but his eyes were still bloodshot.

Taras took a moment before fully forming in front of him.

In just a few days, just a few days where I hadn’t kept an eye on Treasure, everyone had swarmed him.

He emerged from the shadows and took on his form right in front of Le An.

"Don’t get up," he said as Le An began to move. He pressed him back down onto the bed. "You’re not fine. And don’t even think about lying to me again."