Pain Fetish

It wasn’t until the night had washed away the sunset that Fu Ge woke up leisurely. By then Qi Han had already taken hundreds of photos of the two of them together and was diligently retouching them.

The young Beta caught his hand, “Ah Han…”

Qi Han immediately put down his phone, “Gege is awake! How is it, does it still hurt?”

Fu Ge frowned, as if suppressing pain, “A little. I don’t have any strength. What’s wrong with me?”

“The same old thing, inflammation of the inner cavity. Gege is intolerant to my pheromones.”

“Intolerant? How come, aren’t you my Alpha?”

Qi Han was struck dumb by these words and his eyes turned red in an instant, “What did gege just say? I’m your what?”

Fu Ge finally reacted and blushed, “Do you want to tease me about this? Where did you learn to be so bad?”

Qi Han leaned close to him with a smile, grabbed his hand and panted anxiously, his voice trembling, “I’m not teasing you, I really want to hear it. It’s been a long time since you said love words to me. Can you say it again?”

Fu Ge hummed and nudged the tip of Qi Han’s nose, as gentle as a little cloud, “What kind of love words are this, how can you be so easy to please now? Qi Han is my Alpha, my boyfriend, my lover, my family, my soul mate, my—”

“All right, all right! That’s it! Stop talking!” Qi Han interrupted incoherently, rushing up like a big dog and half-lying on Fu Ge. His heartbeat reverberated through Fu Ge’s ribcage, wild like a drum.

He was so excited that his voice was laced with sobbing, “Gege, give me a break, don’t say so much at once, I’m literally going to die from tachycardia.”

He took out his mobile phone and turned on the recording, looking at Fu Ge, begging, his eyes moist, “Say it again, okay? I want to set it as an alarm.”

Fu Ge’s eyes widened in embarrassment, “You, are you not ashamed? What if you are heard by others?”

“If they hear, they hear.” Qi Han was even looking forward to that happening, “If someone hears it, there will be a second person who knows that gege and I confessed our love.”

No longer will I be the only one who knows about this bitter romance; even if it is only the result of a deception you have sugar coated with the falsest lies of all.

“Can you be any more childish, President Qi, how old are you?” The young Beta pinched both his cheeks and pulled them, amused and disgusted.

“Then will you record it for me?” Qi Han lowered his demands: “Gege, I’m sorry, I won’t set it as the alarm, I’ll just listen to it secretly.”

“What’s so nice about it?” Fu Ge asked casually: “When are you going to listen to it secretly?”

Qi Han smiled, leaned to his ear and whispered a few words softly: “I’ll listen to it when your hand strokes…”

“You!” Fu Ge’s cheeks flushed, and he pretended to push him away angrily: “In broad daylight, talking so boldly.”

“Okay, okay, I was wrong, I won’t talk about it in the future, okay?” He rubbed against Fu Ge as if he wanted to be glued to him, saying as he rubbed: “Good gege, record it for me, please, Bodhisattva, ancestor, please.”

Fu Ge couldn’t stand this kind of grinding, so he finally relented and recorded his words exactly as he had just said them, and was forced to repeat them several times to check for mistakes before being let go.

He had just woken up and was still very weak. He only chatted with Qi Han for a while and then was about to fall asleep again. The Alpha kissed his brow and smiled, stroking the corners of his curved mouth, “Good dreams, baby, I will help you get well.”

His voice was very low, and Fu Ge didn’t hear him clearly: “What?”

“Nothing, go to sleep.”

After covering him with the quilt, Qi Han walked out of the ward quietly. The moment the door closed, the smile on his face froze as if the pause button was pressed. After he remained in this state for two or three seconds, his expression slowly turned forlorn.

At this moment, in the room behind the door, the sleeping Fu Ge suddenly opened his eyes. He covered his aching heart and turned to lie flat.

This wooden door was like a barrier between reality and dreams. Inside, they were lovers who had gotten back together. Outside, they were engaged in an invisible murder and sacrifice.

Qi Han knew in his heart why Fu Ge suddenly showed kindness and agreed to record a lot of straightforward love words.

Because Fu Ge would give him a little sweetness every time his plan advanced.

No need to mention his condition or the gland trade; with the sentence “You are my Alpha”, Fu Ge had already won.

Because not mentioning it meant that Qi Han had decided to go ahead with it, and to trumpet the difficulties and dangers would be a sign of retreat.

Qi Han edited this recording together with the previous audio clip of Fu Ge caring about Qi Chuan, and listened to it many times over and over again, even in his dreams, imagining the young Beta’s mood when he said these words.

Fu Ge was lying to him, and he was also lying to himself.

Early the next morning, Chen Xing rushed back in a hurry, with blue shadows under his eyes, and pulled Qi Han into the bathroom as soon as he entered the door.

“Any news?”

“Yeah.” Chen Xing glanced out and made sure there was no one, before half-covering his mouth and whispering: “An Omega died in a car accident last month. His family agreed to donate his glands, but I don’t know how these glands got into the black market. Should have been sold by unscrupulous doctors. I inquired, a week later there’ll be an auction at the black market, the starting price is three million.”

“A week later…” Qi Han murmured with a wry smile, “He just can’t wait.”

“What? Who can’t wait? Why can’t I understand what you are talking about recently?”

“Never mind.” Qi Han considered for a moment and said to him: “There are three things that you need to do immediately, and I want them done within a week.”

Chen Xing looked serious: “You say.”

“First, find the Omega’s family and give them three million. They shouldn’t know that their child’s glands have gone to the black market.”

Chen Xing nodded, “This matter must be concealed, I have to open a new account.”

“No,” Qi Han refuted: “You have to do it with great fanfare.”

“What the hell? Are you crazy?” Chen Xing looked at him like he was a fool: “Afraid people won’t know it’s you? Then I can just give money in your name.”

“Not in my name.”

Qi Han said with a serious expression: “In the name of my father.”

Qi Han’s father, Qi Ji, had devoted his life to inhibitors and gland research. He had established the Omega Gland Protection Foundation to help Omegas with gland defects, and the foundation had been in operation for more than ten years. While he was still alive, Qi Ji invested more than five million yuan and helped hundreds of Omega anonymously. After his death, Qi Han continued to do so.

A trace of surprise flashed across Chen Xing’s face, “You’re trying to get Uncle Qi into this?”

“Well, there is the second thing.”

He took his mobile phone and transferred a document to Chen Xing, “I have a list of all the recipients of the foundation in the past twenty years. Help me contact them. If they are willing, please ask them to write a thank-you letter and then contact the Publicity Department to publish it online. Within a week, I want everyone to know what my father has done for Omega gland protection.”

Chen Xing’s eyes twitched, and he understood everything, “You are determined to do it, but you are afraid that when it comes to light, Uncle Qi will be dragged into it, so you want to put him on a pedestal first. So that when things fall apart, others will say at most that Uncle Qi’s son is worthless.”

“It’s also… it’s okay.” Chen Xing’s voice was a little hoarse: “Uncle Qi, he kept a low profile all his life, and it’s time to highlight what he’s done. What about the third thing?”

Qi Han paused and then said very slowly: “The last thing, the report of the accident in my house nine years ago. Turn it up and let it explode again.”

“What… what?”

Chen Xing choked, his eyes full of disbelief: “Why? There’s no need for this. It hasn’t come to this, has it?”

The tragic murder case nine years ago had been a sensation in the capital for more than half a year.

A scientist and his son were imprisoned in their own home and brutally beaten, with the scientist shot dead and the child tortured half to death, while one of the main culprits managed to escape.

At the time, the story was all over the news, and the photos of the crime scene, even if coded, showed how brutal and bloody it was. The heat didn’t subside until Qi Han returned from treatment in a sanatorium two years later.

He was sixteen years old at the time. Countless reporters went to his house to interview him under the banner of condolences to the victim, surrounded him in the living room and asked about every detail of those events, and then used exaggerated language to post their reports online, calling on everyone to sympathise with the child.

This was what Qi Han feared most when he was young, even more than being pierced by a needle.

No victim wants to be torn apart repeatedly. Qi Han never needed sympathy from others. What he needed was to forget.

But everyone said lightly: “How are you doing now?” It was like taking him back to that little house and torturing him again.

It had taken him many years to clean up those reports, so Chen Xing really didn’t understand why he wanted to turn them up again.

Qi Han seemed to think of those things too. His breathing slowly became difficult, and his right hand that had been pierced dozens of times was trembling.

“The foundation alone is not enough.”

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and said: “Once the matter is revealed, my father will definitely be implicated. A reasonable person will say that he failed to teach his son well and sigh at most. But there are always people who will speculate indiscriminately, thinking that the foundation is not clean. Other things must be used to completely block their conjectures.”

And the tragedy of that year was an excellent tool to divert attention.

A tragic childhood and inhuman torture are enough to change a person’s character. Qi Han would rather uncover his scars to shift the focus to himself, and the result he wanted was that the day things fell apart, everyone would know—

The scientist who devoted his life to gland protection didn’t fail to educate his son properly. It was the torture that Qi Han suffered that caused his personality to become distorted and psychopathic.

From the moment he decided to help Fu Ge send him into the abyss, he had no intention of implicating anyone else.

“Failing to educate his son” was not good either; he wanted his father’s name to be clean forever.

And leave the verbal abuse and condemnation to himself.

At ten o’clock in the evening, the moon was shining brightly and the stars were sparse.

Qi Han drove alone to the cemetery, the resting place of his father.

“Here we go, Dad.” The beer bottle knocked on the tombstone. He sat on the ground without any thought of his image, raised his head, took a sip of beer and began to report on his work as usual.

“I’ve been here less this year, too busy with work. My proposal was officially launched at the beginning of the year and is now halfway through implementation. If it is successful, the price of the inhibitor you designed can be reduced by a quarter, and more people will be able to buy and use it.” 

That was his father’s last research result. Qi Han couldn’t use it himself, so he wanted others to be able to benefit from it.

He reported his work in detail, month by month, and then suddenly talked about a trivial matter, laughing at himself: “For my birthday when I was twenty-one, I invited two actors to play you and Mom. I never intended to tell you, for fear you would laugh at me. Such a big guy is still doing this kind of thing.”

He took a sip of beer as he said that, lowered his head and was quiet for a long time, then suddenly smiled: “They didn’t look like you at all. Half a year’s salary was wasted…”

His father was a scientist and his mother was a dancer, but the two actors acted like they were pimps.

“Then in September, my… boyfriend came back.”

He hesitated for a while but still settled on this word, “Xiao Ge, do you remember? I have told you about him many times.”

There was no one to share his feelings and his heart with when he was young. When he was seventeen or eighteen, he often came to his father’s tomb to show off the surprises Fu Ge gave him.

“We made up.” Qi Han’s tone was very brisk, and he opened another bottle and said, “In February next year, we should… get married. It’ll be in the little winery. No one is coming. If you have time, you can take a look and take Mom with you.”

The night breeze was very quiet, and there was only his own voice all around. He took his mobile phone and called for a substitute driver, and then clinked a glass with the tombstone.

As he was getting drunk, some words couldn’t be hidden.

“Dad, actually I lied, Xiao Ge didn’t come back to make up with me…”

He came to send me to hell.

“I did to him what happened to us that year.”

“I don’t know how I could have done it. It was like I was crazy at the time, I didn’t have any reason left at all. But I did what I did, so now I am not wronged at all. I deserve it.”

Yet until now, he was still hoping that those plans were all his own imagination.

After sitting for a while, he drank the last sip of beer, got up, tidied himself up and stood in front of the tombstone to say goodbye to his father.

“I’m all right, don’t worry about me.”

“Next year’s Qingming (Tomb Sweeping Day, celebration for the dead (in early April)), I… won’t be able to come. If you are still there, just look for me casually. I may not be able to find the way home by myself…”