Chapter 141: Ch 141: The Mask Cracks

On the other side of the village, Lin Xuanyu panted as he ran. The wild sprint had long since collapsed into something heavier and less coordinated. His lungs burned. Each breath arrived late and left too quickly. Still he kept moving, driven by the thin, stubborn hope that Gu Chengze would somehow magically appear and fix the entire afternoon back into the shape he preferred and favored.

Tears tracked down his face. Just you all wait, he seethed inwardly. The usual harmless, obedient expression had cracked wide open; what sat underneath was sharp, furious, and entirely uninterested in looking pitiful for an audience that was not present.

He had bitten his lip hard enough that blood had begun to seep out, a thin bright line against porcelain skin. I’ll make them pay. Tenfold. No—a hundredfold. The vow repeated itself with every uneven step, feeding on the grievances he refused to set down.

He did not see the large rock in the path.

Fury and tears had narrowed the world to the next few meters of packed earth and the imaginary figure of Gu Chengze waiting somewhere ahead. The collision was abrupt. "Ack—!" His hands flew out on instinct, momentum did the rest. He slid across the village path, stone and grit grinding into his palms and the front of his clothes, until he came to an undignified stop.

For a second he only lay there, stunned by the impact. Then the crying returned at full volume, louder and less controlled than before.

"This is the worst!" he choked out. Dirt clung to the tear tracks on his face and turned the whole picture more wretched. The carefully maintained image of delicateness had become actual, undignified mess.

"Teacher Lin!"

The assistant director’s voice cut in, sharp with shock. He limped forward at once, one hand still protectively near the injury Han Jiho had left him with. A single wrong step sent a fresh spike of pain up through him, his face darkened.

That fucker Han Jiho, he thought, the old fury flaring. I swear I’ll—

The private tirade was only half-formed when Lin Xuanyu’s wail dragged him back to the immediate problem. "Te-Teacher Lin!" The assistant director forced the rest of the distance and hauled the fallen omega into a more upright position, adjusting him with the careful hands of a man who understood exactly what kind of protection this kind of particular omega enjoyed.

Lin Xuanyu allowed the assistance—until he was properly seated. Then he turned the full force of his distress on the nearest available target.

"It’s all your fault!" He jabbed an accusatory finger at the assistant director’s chest.

The assistant director stared, confused. "Ho-how is—"

Lin Xuanyu’s glare shut the sentence down. The assistant director’s mouth closed. Seeing the compliance, Lin Xuanyu only cried harder.

"It’s all your fault!" He jabbed again. "All yours!" The words dissolved into fresh weeping, bitter and theatrical, and completely sincere in its self-pity.

Annoyance flickered hard behind the assistant director’s eyes. However, he bitterly swallowed it. Gu Chengze’s shadow sat too close to this omega for any honest reaction to be safe. "I’m sorry. I’m sorry." He reached carefully for Lin Xuanyu’s wrist, the gesture meant to soothe.

Lin Xuanyu yanked his hand away as if the touch itself was another injury. He kept wailing, muttering curses between breaths, the fit gathering momentum instead of releasing it.

"This day is ruined because of you!"

The complaint landed with the exact pitch of a child whose favorite candy had been taken—except the child in question was an adult omega covered in path dirt, bleeding from a self-inflicted bite on the lip, and the candy in this case, was control, attention, and the lost narrative he had expected everyone else to follow.

Meanwhile, the assistant director sighed, then ran a hand through his greasy, sweat-damp hair and tried again.

"Look, Teacher Lin," he said. "I’m not sure what I did, but I’m sorry, okay?" The words were meant to soothe a ticking fuse. But they landed on someone who had no interest in being soothed.

Lin Xuanyu turned on him with a glare, sharp enough to cut the apology short. "I don’t care about your apologies. I don’t want them," he said, fury saturated every syllable. "What I want is for you to get CEO Gu right here—and make those bitches and you pay." He finished, then burying his face in his hands and crying with fresh, practiced pitifulness.

The assistant director sighed. The sound of it was softer than he would have liked. The anger and annoyance that had been building since the chase began loosened at the sight of the omega folded in on himself, shoulders shaking, dirt and tears mixed across his face. "There, there, Teacher Lin," he said. The gentleness in his voice would have given Han Jiho and the others immediate physical discomfort if any of them had been present to hear it.

"I’ll personally get revenge for you," he continued, crouching so he could carefully pry Lin Xuanyu’s hands away from his face. Dirt transferred at once from the omega’s palms to the wet tear tracks, turning the mess into something that looked less like a fall on a village path and more like a full collapse into mud.

However, in the assistant director’s eyes, the effect only heightened the pathos. The ruined makeup, the blood at the bitten lip, the way the grime made the remaining clean skin look almost luminous—he found himself thinking.... "Poor thing," with complete sincerity. Whatever irritation he had felt toward Lin Xuanyu drained out of him on the spot.

Lin Xuanyu sniffed and hiccupped. "Yo-you will?" The tone had shifted without warning. Still pitiful, but threaded now with something coquettish, as if the shouting and finger-jabbing of a minute ago belonged to an entirely different person.

The assistant director smiled. The greasy, strained face rearranged itself into something almost blissful at the simple fact of being needed. "I will, Teacher Lin."

He then wiped Lin Xuanyu’s tears with his own hands. Lin Xuanyu allowed it. "You promised? Really?" Lin Xuanyu said, his voice softening further.

The assistant director nodded, the reassurance immediate and total. "Really. I promise. Not even a strand of their hair will be left untouched." He patted his own chest for emphasis, as if the gesture itself could notarize the vow.

It was a remarkable transformation. The same man who had built a career on ruthless calculation—who took interest in people only when they served benefit or pleasure—had, in the span of a single muddy tantrum, volunteered himself as a starlet’s lapdog.

He had agreed, without negotiation, to become a puppet whose strings ran straight to whatever Lin Xuanyu asked next. However, he did not appear to notice the absurdity of his unusuality. He only continued murmuring reassurances, hands careful on the omega’s dirt-streaked face, already halfway into a revenge he had not yet planned and a loyalty he had not intended to offer.

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Meanwhile, back at the crowded table outside the village restaurant, Su Wanyan and the rest of the group were listening to Shen Guoxing narrate her earlier playtime with the village children. The story had already covered several rounds of chase and at least one dramatic near-escape. Shen Guoxing’s hands moved as she talked, mapping the playground in the air.

"And then I went zoom—and I tagged the kid!" Her eyes shone with the full force of a heroic retelling. Beside her, Leilei nodded with firm, serious agreement, lending the account a gravity that only another child could supply.

The adults around the table watched with open affection. The performance was pure and unselfconscious; even the smallest details—Shen Guoxing’s bright emphasis on zoom, Leilei’s solemn confirmation—landed as something worth protecting. In the stroller, Mo Yan slept through all of it, undisturbed by volume or excitement, one small fist still loosely curled against the blanket.

PD Xu Cui, who had been smiling along with the rest, suddenly remembered the unfinished conversation waiting for him. He stood, rested a hand on Su Wanyan’s shoulder, and tipped his head toward the path. Su Wanyan read the signal at once. She nodded, then turned to Mo Xingxue.

"Hold on, Xuexue. We’ll just take care of something," she said, as a light pat accompanied her words.

Mo Xingxue’s smile was soft and unsurprised. "I’ll be waiting," she replied, then turned her attention back to Shen Guoxing’s story without protest.

Su Wanyan rose and paused long enough to ruffle Shen Guoxing’s hair. The child broke off mid-sentence and looked up, questioning.

"Remember to tell me the whole story later, okay?" Su Wanyan said.

Shen Guoxing’s face brightened further. She straightened and saluted, energy climbing another notch. "Okay, Aunt!"

Su Wanyan chuckled, then left the table and followed PD Xu Cui.

They walked in silence for a short stretch before the familiar narrow space between buildings opened on their left. PD Xu Cui stepped into the alcove first and set his back against the wall. When he looked at Su Wanyan, he was smiling—but the expression sat differently on his face than it had at the table. There was something colder underneath it, something she could not immediately name and did not like.

He cleared his throat. The sound pulled her attention fully into the present.

"So," he began. The teasing light that usually lived in his eyes had been replaced by something flatter and bleaker. "What happened there?" The question was simple. The way he asked it was not.

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Early update because ya girl is tired. Also! I apologize for the inconsistency in updating y’all. I’m currently busy with school, and I’m teaching the way of feature writing to new feature writers in my... club (I already left but I’m still being told to do some shi, which actually just ruined the whole, "I’ll leave this club because I’m too damn tired of all this shi!" scene I made, but whatever).

Anyway, those might take up my time as I have to plan my lessons, do the PPTs I’ll use, and crying in the mirror wondering when this shi will e—OOP! Must’ve been the wind. So yeah! Thanks for understanding y’all!