SDT 62

Chapter 62: This Is Where It Ends

The closer he got, the clearer the “voices” became.

“You’re kind, gentle, and beautiful…”

He stood at the entrance to the living room.

“You’re the best.”

Before the words faded, a flash of lightning lit the window. It was close, and the thunder that ripped through the sky was equally deafening. Its instant, blinding white light illuminated a dark figure standing dead center in the room. The figure was cloaked in black, but its face was as pale as paper. Against the gloomy, damp backdrop, it resembled both the grim reaper wielding fate and a drowned ghost.

Yu Xiaowen felt a chill run from the top of his scalp to the soles of his feet. His first instinct was to frantically feel along the wall until he found the switch. With a flick, he flipped on the light. The dark figure was instantly exposed to the glare.

…It was him.

The figure was black because Lu Kongyun wore his pitch-black waterproof raincoat. He sat on a wooden chair in the center of the living room, rainwater pooling in a large puddle at his feet. It flowed around his military boots, spreading outward. Yet he sat there in his raincoat, seemingly oblivious to the biting cold and discomfort, or perhaps simply indifferent. His wrists hung limply, faintly revealing two white medical wristbands beneath.

Lu Kongyun lifted his head, his eyes narrowing beneath the shadow of his raincoat hood as the sudden light made him squint.

The two locked eyes as the “voices” continued.

“…You have my WeChat. You won’t lose touch with me.” Lu Kongyun’s calm, probing voice came from the phone in his hand.

“We meet again so soon,” Lu Kongyun said, looking at him in person.

Then, Yu Xiaowen’s voice on the recording uttered another shameful piece of nonsense: “…. Should I help you? Anyway, you’ll forget it when you wake up. We can pretend it never happened.”

In reality, Lu Kongyun heard this and found himself laughing along for no apparent reason.

Yu Xiaowen was stunned. He knew this scene… because he’d spent so much time ruminating on the details of his interactions with his crush, and this night was undoubtedly the most crucial. But how could he have no memory of this recording? How could such a thing exist?! Who recorded this?! Did Lu Kongyun record it back then? Had he been…

No.

A sudden image flashed through Yu Xiaowen’s mind.

“Aren’t you afraid I’ll record evidence of you assaulting an officer?”

.

.

.

It is himself.

Then Yu Xiaowen rolled around in bed with the victim, doing it until they were both exhausted. Afterward, he started cleaning up the “crime scene,” having completely forgotten about the recording.

Later, he fell asleep while charging his phone, which had automatically shut down… on the living room sofa. His body was worn out from illness and exhaustion, and he slept so soundly he couldn’t care less about anything else.

After the missing pieces of his memory were recovered, he was stunned by this incriminating evidence.

Before him, Lu Kongyun echoed the “Yu Xiaowen’s” voice from the recording: “I can help you manage your heat.”

After a pause, he continued in sync with the recording: “Just helping out.”

Yu Xiaowen listened as the grim reaper eerily echoed his own recorded words, her hair standing on end.

The voice in the recording paused for a moment. Yu Xiaowen remembered this was the moment the other party was silently rejecting him.

The recording paused for an arbitrarily long stretch of silence, which felt interminable in the oppressive atmosphere. Yu Xiaowen was contemplating whether he should make a move when Lu Kongyun suddenly spoke up, his voice overlapping his on the recording: “Didn’t you say truth serum boosts compliance? Why the hell are you being so stubborn?”

The recorded voice and the live voice sounded simultaneously, not a microsecond out of sync. The curse word came out slightly faster, the distinctive tempo of a habitual swearing officer like Yu Xiaowen, used as an interjection, yet it too ended precisely at the same moment. Thus, both voices began and ended in perfect unison.

Yu Xiaowen sucked in a cold breath, his arm going numb. Before he could say anything, Lu Kongyun’s voice echoed in perfect sync: “But what if it’s an order? Do you want it?”

The audio paused again. After a rustling sound, the two voices resumed their precise synchronization: “Don’t you want to get back to normal? Look at how foolish you are now, your aloof persona has completely collapsed. You’ve got a green onion stuck up your nose and you’re even drugging yourself…”

The scene was eerie. In the gloomy house deep in the mountain during a downpour, Lu Kongyun, like the Grim Reaper, repeated his own words from two years ago with AI-like precision. No matter how bold Yu Xiaowen was, his teeth chattered uncontrollably. His voice tightened and rose: “Lu…”

The other man’s recitation halted. He looked at him.

“Shh, don’t talk.”

His voice was soft, yet it carried an oppressive weight.

The pale grim reaper rose to his feet, advancing step by step toward Yu Xiaowen before lowering his gaze to look down at him.

Yu Xiaowen instinctively pressed his lips together.

Yu Xiaowen had so much he wanted to say. He especially wanted to explain that this time, he truly hadn’t run away on his own accord, he hadn’t meant to drag Lu Kongyun into this mess. He also wanted to ask Lu Kongyun how he’d come to possess this thing, and why he’d…

“From this moment on, I forbid you to speak. Don’t lie.” The person before him said.

Facing this adorable person he had always loved, Yu Xiaowen suddenly felt a bone-chilling coldness. Obeying an order, he fell silent and straightened his back.

Even though Yu Xiaowen had no regrets about his career as a detective, he really hadn’t treated Lu Kongyun well. He had deceived him too many times. That was the truth.

The rain outside seemed to be growing heavier, accompanied by the occasional distant rumble of thunder, dull and slow to emerge.

The recording continued, and it had already begun to enter the real deal, the unspeakable part.

Yu Xiaowen felt a prickling sensation on his back. He reached out to grab the phone from the other person’s hand. But the other person raised their arm, dodging his grasp.

Then he leaned closer to him and repeated slowly, “Yu Xiaowen. From this moment on, you will obey my commands. If I don’t permit it, you will not speak.”

Yu Xiaowen tried to step back. But his body, ravaged by the heat, wasn’t entirely under his rational control. He lifted his eyes, dizzyingly staring at the other’s face.

“…Hm?”

Lu Kongyun: “Am I that easy to fool sometimes?”

…These were the very words Yu Xiaowen had just spoken to Dai Jingxi in the car!

Yu Xiaowen immediately began searching his own body, trying to locate the tracking device. He instantly forgot the order to remain silent: “Lu Kongyun, you planted this on me while you were giving me a handjob in the car? I knew there was a reason you suddenly became so…”

Lu Kongyun: “Are you sure it was me? Maybe some people just aren’t worth trusting that much.”

Yu Xiaowen’s hand froze. His eyes widened with shock.

Lu Kongyun quietly observed his expression.

Then he said, “You disobeyed orders.”

Lu Kongyun raised his arm and removed his own wristbands. The moment both wristbands were off and clenched in his hand, Yu Xiaowen instantly felt the overwhelming surge of a S-class Alpha’s pheromones wash over him.

…This was different from every time Lu Kongyun had released it to him before.

It wasn’t the taste of happiness, but rather like an engine’s upper limit had spun out of control, overloading madly, teetering on the brink of explosion. What on earth was wrong with Lu Kongyun?

His mind reeled. Driven by an Omega’s primal instinct to flee its prey, he turned around to run.

The person behind him said, “Didn’t you just say you only liked me because my pheromones? That smelling it made you feel like you were going to heaven? Well, here you go. Don’t want it now?”

“No, it’s not… I said that because…” Yu Xiaowen felt his words becoming tangled, his speech slurring.

He had a premonition that today might be the day he died here.

“You’ve disobeyed orders again.”

Yu Xiaowen suddenly felt a tightening around his neck. He reached up to touch it and discovered it was a strap—or perhaps a collar of some sort. He couldn’t see it, but he felt the other person fasten a clasp at the back of his neck. Then Lu Kongyun’s voice echoed in his ear again: “I know. You only said those things to protect Ye Yisan’s safety, using me as a decoy. In truth, you don’t like me. To you, I’m just a workaholic Alpha, an easily fooled fool.”

“…” Bullshit! Yu Xiaowen clenched his jaw. He felt the collar activating. Low-current pulses bit into his nape like dog teeth, repeatedly heightening the sensitivity of his already aroused body. It was terrifying… Every sense had been amplified to the point he could almost touch, even hear and see, the pheromones in the air solidifying into tangible entities that squeezed, enveloped, and ravaged him.

He wasn’t sure what the punishment for a third violation entailed, whether it would escalate further. For now, he could only remain silent, curling his body, and glaring at Lu Kongyun with blurred eyes filled with rage.

You’re lying!

The intertwined voices in the recording, rising and falling, had become mere background noise to their confrontation, seemingly ignored by all. Now, in the brief, silent standoff, Yu Xiaowen’s breathless moans could be heard again: “Sweetheart, I… I really like you so much. Kiss me again…”

The recording ended abruptly at this point.

After a moment, Lu Kongyun said, “So all the confessions in this recording are fake?”

“Was wanting to go to Jiang City with the person you ‘love most’ fake?”

“You were dying, so you mustered the courage to come to me, wanting only to spend your final moments with the one you love most, is that all a lie?”

Each pause went unanswered. Only the thunderstorm outside filled the silence.

Yu Xiaowen：“……”

The intense emotional fluctuations seemed to deepen the neckband’s hold over him. His base, animalistic body was stimulated beyond control, and even his usually resilient soul could no longer sustain him. He collapsed to the ground, trembling all over. His mind was blank, unable to think, unable to argue or respond. He could only writhe like a worm, emitting a repulsive scent of heat.

Yu Xiaowen’s fingers tugbed futilely at the collar around his neck.

Lu Kongyun crouched down, watching him.

“This neckband is an aid for restoring my senses after undergoing sensory deprivation therapy at the hospital. Without it, I feel almost nothing post-treatment. For safety, it cycles off for thirty seconds roughly every five minutes. During those thirty seconds, my heightened perceptions vanish abruptly, it feels like death. But the real agony comes each time I come back to life…”

He paused here, leaving the sentence unfinished.

Yu Xiaowen：“……”

“I underwent this treatment continuously for half a year, so I had to wear it for several hours every day.” Lu Kongyun changed the subject. “My doctor said that if I can’t control the extraordinary advantages nature bestowed upon me, I’ll have to bear double the consequences. It’s like some useless person who inexplicably climbs to the pinnacle of power, when variables strike, their downfall will be far more miserable than that of ordinary people.”

…Why did you get so seriously ill? Yu Xiaowen let go of the hand tugging at his neckband, reaching out to grasp the other person’s fingers. Why did you get so seriously ill?

Lu Kongyun: “I always tried so hard just to be human, but in the end, I became a dog to pheromones.”

Yu Xiaowen brushed against the other’s fingers. Where his fingertips touched, he felt a stinging coldness like plunging into an icy pool. Perhaps because his senses were heightened, this chill shot from his fingertips straight to his heart, suddenly piercing him with pain. You should be perfectly fine, you should live the happiest life possible. How could you have fallen so gravely ill???

Lu Kongyun withdrew his finger. After a moment, he said, “I wore it for half a year. One day is enough for you.”

“We can call it even,” he murmured softly. Then he glanced at the time on his phone and added, “It’ll be here soon.”

Yu Xiaowen’s heightened sensitivity suddenly vanished.

The sound of rain, the background noise, all vanished. His uncontrollable body was no longer a burden, and darkness enveloped his vision. Only his spirit remained alive, existing in an airless vacuum. Liberated from the senses, it knew no boundaries, becoming hyperactive, neither time nor space could hold it back.

He returned to the day he lost his loved ones, to the day he learned of his illness, to that rainy night when he met his end, and even to certain surreal dreams. His thoughts and imagination exploded like a dense universe compressed to a singularity within his mind, driving him mad. Thirty seconds… Lu Kongyun had told him. He silently counted the seconds. During treatment, would this sensation also be measured in seconds? Yu Xiaowen didn’t know. He had no idea.

Death, as the subject, feels nothing. It is a peaceful departure, everyone knows that.

But death may first place it before you. As it did with Yu Xiaowen two years ago, who waited painfully for death. Or behind you, as it does with every survivor who has faced near-death. Or beside you… The ones you cherished most, the ones you owed the most, the ones you held as your creed, one day they return to dust and earth. Those living roots, planted in your heart at some known or unknown moment, are severed and torn away, never to meet again.

The true horror of death lies in its presence all around you.

If you have come close to “death,” you can grasp the concept of “living” more clearly, and thus feel more profoundly that it is a farewell and extinction that will never be reunited. It forces you to cling to the meaning of life in fear.

…or despair.

“And the most painful part is actually each time I come back to life”……

Every time, every time, over and over again.

Each time you “come back to life,” who do you see?

When Yu Xiaowen regained consciousness, he heard himself repeatedly screaming Lu Kongyun’s name in a shrill voice, his hands clutching his clothes tightly.

Lu Kongyun’s gaze toward him held deep, conflicting emotions. After a long, drawn-out sigh, he relented.

Then, a cool hand swiftly touched his burning nape, and the constriction around Yu Xiaowen’s neck vanished.

The other person’s voice was hoarse and weak: “Forget it. Let’s just stop here.”

As the icy hand tried to pull away, he kept rubbing against it. When Lu Kongyun stood up, he stood up too. Lu Kongyun must have genuinely meant it when he said it was over. But this blackmailer, now facing retribution, sensed something was wrong. It hadn’t even begun, how could it be over? He felt his body burning. A broken, inferior Omega, as if determined to consume every last drop of his dwindling fuel, ignited without restraint. He began to undress.

Lu Kongyun’s eyes widened slightly as he studied him for a moment. He reached out to touch his cheek and forehead, his voice rising slightly. “How do you feel?”

Yu Xiaowen: “You want me to disobey orders again. I won’t fall for it. I won’t say a word.”

“…” After a moment of silence, Lu Kongyun suddenly cupped his face and shouted his name: “Yu Xiaowen!”

Yu Xiaowen froze, staring at him.

They eyes met.

Yu Xiaowen: “You’re stringing me along, aren’t you? You released pheromone on me, stimulated me with tools, then said that’s as far as it goes. You’re a doctor, you know everything. You want to sleep with me.”

The other person’s lips parted slightly before clamping shut again. His expression hardened into indifference as he tried to pull his hand away.

Yu Xiaowen seized that icy hand and pressed it against his burning cheek.

“…” Lu Kongyun paused before saying, “No, I didn’t.”

Yu Xiaowen brushed his lips against the palm of the other’s hand, which immediately clenched. He buried his nose back into the unguarded wrist hidden beneath the sleeve. His nose touched the inner side of Lu Kongyun’s wrist, where a very soft pheromone scent lingered, different from the one in the air. So he slowly slid his nose along the wrist into the sleeve, breathing in deeply, captivated.

He murmured hoarsely, his warm breath muffled: “That means you like me.”

Yu Xiaowen was doomed. He’d probably blurted out nonsense that, in his right mind, he’d have reined himself in from thinking or saying. He wasn’t clear-headed now, but all he wanted was to hold the other person without any barriers. So, it turned out Dr. Lu could get sick too, and needed comforting.

Dr. Lu, victimized once more, tensed the muscles in his arm and tried to pull away. But his hand was weakly clutched, dragging him over with it. Lu Kongyun stumbled backward, crashing into the table behind him.

He braced Yu Xiaowen’s body with his other hand.

Even now, though gaunt, years of physical labor and training had left Yu Xiaowen’s chest firmer and more resilient than most Omegas. His soft skin, damp and slippery from heat, turned the simple act of support into a brutal caress. Lu Kongyun felt Yu Xiaowen tremble and spring like an electric shock wherever he touched him.

He knew he must have touched this spot in the recording. Yet it felt like the first time.

Lu Kongyun released the hand he’d been supporting and immediately reached urgently for the wristband he’d placed on the table.

But Yu Xiaowen embraced him.

Yu Xiaowen held him loosely, his fingers lightly gliding over his back in a soothing gesture.

Everything will be alright. He thought.

“Let me put on the wristband,” Lu Kongyun said.

His tone was urgent and strained, his dark eyes like the sky gradually darkening beneath rolling storm clouds in a fierce wind. Yet Yu Xiaowen, long exposed to high concentrations of pheromones, remained oblivious.