When Lin Hui noticed that Zhuo Yue’s hand holding the cup was trembling unconsciously, he finally couldn’t bear it anymore and dialled Fang Mingyan’s number.
The drama of the TV series finally came to an end, and Lin Hui drove him back to his apartment.
Zhuo Yue leaned in the back seat in a daze; his head was groggy and exhausted even though he was resting. It wasn’t until the car left the city centre that he noticed something wrong with the route and asked, “Where are we going?”
Lin Hui spoke hesitantly, “Chairman Fang said he wanted to see you.”
Zhuo Yue froze and frowned, “Did you tell him about me taking some medicine?”
“Ge, I can’t see you going on like this.” Lin Hui gritted his teeth helplessly, “Those medicines are bad for your health, you can’t take them anymore.”
The person in the back seat was quiet for a long time and said softly, “He can’t help me.”
When Zhuo Yue stepped into Hanguan No. 15, Fang Mingyan frowned slightly.
He had lost weight all over; the flesh he had gained at this place was all gone, his chin sharpened, his face devoid of any colour, and the vitality in his black eyes was gone entirely, leaving them empty and lifeless.
“Chairman Fang.” Lin Hui greeted in a low voice.
“I’ll give you a week’s leave.” Fang Mingyan, who was wearing a loose-knitted sweater, put down the stack of documents in his hand and said, “He has been staying at my place recently. I have already asked Shen Luo to cancel all his recent schedules. Please go and verify.”
Lin Hui responded, secretly looking at the face of the person next to him and whispering, “Ge, I’m leaving first.”
Zhuo Yue did not respond and just stood quietly. After Lin Hui left, he looked at the man in front of him and said, “There is nothing wrong with my body.”
“It’s not up to you to decide.”
“It’s not up to you to decide either.” Zhuo Yue frowned, “You have no right to cancel my schedule without permission.”
Fang Mingyan looked at him calmly, “The contract you signed stated that the company designated all your activities. As the current president of the company, I don’t think I don’t have that right.”
“That doesn’t make…any sense at all!”
“Whether it makes sense or not, you have no right to object. From today on, you will be under my direct control. The company will not arrange any itinerary for you without my permission.” Fang Mingyan’s uncompromising attitude left no room for negotiation.
“It took a lot of effort for me to gain my current popularity. What’s the difference between doing this and ruining me?” He gritted his teeth and asked.
There was a joking smile in the man’s dark eyes, “It doesn’t need to be so complicated to destroy you. I just need to find a doctor to issue a mental evaluation of you. An artist with psychological issues, dependent on addictive drugs to control his emotions—who else do you think would be willing to film with you?”
Zhuo Yue’s heart trembled, and there was a bit of panic in his eyes.
“In the next period of time, I will handle your problems my way. During this process, I need your absolute cooperation.” Fang Mingyan said slowly, “I will no longer treat you with the courtesy of a landlord treating a tenant. I am your master, in control of you, and you, as my sub, are at my disposal.”
As Zhuo Yue’s mind flashed with the image of Nick crying out in climax, his face suddenly flushed red. He muttered ‘boring’ under his breath and turned to leave. The door wasn’t locked, but just five minutes after he pushed it open, he was intercepted by two tall security guards and forcefully escorted back in front of the man.
The two of them bowed and said, “Mr Ming, according to your request for full-day perimeter surveillance and repatriation services, we have returned your guest.”
“Quite efficient.” The man said with a leisurely smile, “It seems that this guest has been leaving without permission quite frequently recently.”
“We will focus on surveillance and assign special personnel to patrol outside your residence.” After saying this, the two of them nodded and left without saying a single unnecessary word. They were very well-trained.
Fang Mingyan looked at him calmly, “Are you going to cooperate, or are you going to continue to resist?”
“I’m not interested in playing that ridiculous game.” As soon as Zhuo Yue finished speaking, the man grabbed his wrist and pulled him straight upstairs. The other party’s strength was astonishing, and his resistance was completely futile. He was clumsily dragged up to the fourth floor and then had his arms locked into handcuffs hanging from the beam while his legs were bound to the semi-circular steel ring set into the floor.
He roared angrily, “Fang Mingyan! Are you crazy? This is illegal detention!”
The man approached slowly, standing before him. There was still a cynical smile playing at the corner of his lips, but his eyes, as deep as the night, held no trace of amusement, emitting a solemn and chilling aura.
He didn’t care about the charge of ‘illegal detention’ at all, but he really wanted to lock him up here.
Zhuo Yue, who was restrained by the shackles, felt cold all over, and there was a hint of compromise in his tone, “…let me go, I will go to the hospital and stop taking the medicine.” Seeing that the other party was unmoved, he gritted his teeth and said, “Even if you lock me here and give me hundreds of lashes, I won’t comply.”
“You don’t necessarily need to use a whip to make people obey.” Fang Mingyan said calmly, “I have many faster ways to make you obey my rules. Today we will try the fastest one.” With that, he turned and walked to the side of the door. Something was covered with cloth, with only a triangular frame visible underneath the fabric.
Zhuo Yue looked at the outline of the thing and intuitively had a bad feeling in his heart. He shook his head hastily and said, “Don’t…”
However, the moment he made the sound, the man had already raised his hand and pulled off the grey velvet fabric covering it.
A camera with a dark lens was pointed squarely at him.
His blood seemed to solidify.
It felt like a bucket of ice-cold water had been poured directly over him in the midst of winter. His body was frozen stiff by the irresistible cold, devoid of sensation. His breathing became heavier and heavier, and his neck felt as if someone had choked him, making him unable to breathe. That dark lens was entangled with his nightmares, wielding a blade of torment and burying his deepest fears within him. The continuous suppression and excessive medication hadn’t made it disappear; instead, the madness grew and spread wildly, entangling him tightly and dragging him deeper into darkness.
Medicine…
He needed the medicine; he wanted to escape, but at this moment, he could only be trapped in place, forced to face the dark lens, unable to do anything.
“Let me go, let’s talk…” Zhuo Yue tried his best to calm down, but there was an uncontrollable tremor in his voice.
“There is no need for us to talk before you agree to obey my rules.” The man turned on the camera, and the green indicator light appeared.
The machine was turned on.
Then, the electronic screen in front of Zhuo Yue also lit up, and what was displayed on it was a picture of him captured by the camera in real-time.
“Do you like the way you are tied up?” Fang Mingyan raised the corners of his lips, “Besides that one, there’s a camera in each of the four corners of the room, and they’re all covered now. Until I hear the answers I want, I’ll activate one every twenty minutes.”
Zhuo Yue turned pale and said intermittently, “You can’t do this… Fang Mingyan, you can’t do this…”
“I’ll give you plenty of time to think it over without interruption. When you have an answer, you can call me at any time.” After saying that, he neatly left, leaving Zhuo Yue alone in the ‘cage’.
The sky outside the window was hazy, and there were no lights on in the room, making the whole space look gloomy and dark.
The camera was like a huge black eye socket that had been hollowed out, staring blankly at him, with a strange green light glowing from time to time. He closed his eyes and tried to hypnotise himself, but such self-deception didn’t work at all. Fear, like a swarm of tiny insects, emerged from the depths of his heart, gnawing away at his sanity, inching him closer to despair.
The mental oppression brought about a chain reaction in the body, and as time passed, little by little, the trembling became more and more intense. Cold sweat dripped down his forehead, and his throat was filled with a bitter and sour taste. He began to retch, unexpected dizziness followed, and the image in front of his eyes appeared as a shaky shadow.
“Fang Mingyan!” Zhuo Yue shouted the man’s name in a hoarse voice. When he saw him appearing in front of him again, he begged sadly, “I need to take medicine, give me medicine… I will die if this continues… “
Fang Mingyan’s eyes were very indifferent. He spread his right hand, and there was a small white medicine bottle in his palm containing the pills that Zhuo Yue had been taking. “Want it?” he asked.
Just like a thirsty traveller in the desert seeing a clear spring, Zhuo Yue looked at the medicine bottle with trembling eyes and nodded his head.
The man unscrewed the cap and slowly tilted the bottle under Zhuo Yue’s gaze. The white pills fell to the ground one after another, making a slight sound. When the bottle was empty, he threw it on the ground, turned to the left corner, pulled off the covering, and started the second camera.
Despair enveloped everything, and Zhuo Yue began to struggle like crazy.
“Fang Mingyan! Believe it or not, I will kill you!” He screamed with red eyes and pulled the chain loudly. However, the special steel shackles were indestructible, and the thick soft rubber wrapped in the inner ring only added some faint red marks on his wrists and ankles. Lack of sleep and dependence on drugs nearly emptied his body. After struggling for a while, he lost strength and hung his head, breathing heavily.
He didn’t dare to raise his eyes to look at the two machines. The fear he felt was like that of someone afraid of heights standing thousands of meters above ground, of someone afraid of snakes being wrapped by a python, of someone afraid of darkness walking in pitch-black night, or of someone afraid of ghosts passing through a vast graveyard. Every time he saw a camera, he felt like he was back in that moment of he was molested, plunged once again into that despair and helplessness.
The quiet, enclosed space intensified these emotions.
The nightmares were everywhere, like maggots attached to bones.
Excessive fear finally crushed his spirit. He vomited uncontrollably, cursed, screamed, and laughed nervously, venting all his pent-up emotions like a true psycho. Finally, he burst into tears—like a trapped animal that had given up its struggle, trembling in a snare, sad and helpless.
The light was fading, and in the dim room, he could vaguely make out the outline of the person in front of him through his tear-blurred eyes. He lowered his head and said in a hoarse voice, “Please… let me go…”
The man raised his chin, “I need an answer.”
At this moment, Zhuo Yue was exhausted. He trembled and said, “I can do anything… please, let me go…”
“Okay, the contract is established from now on.” Fang Mingyan unlocked his shackles. Due to his arms being suspended, Zhuo Yue couldn’t bend over, and there was a lot of vomit stuck to his lapel. However, the man seemed oblivious to it, holding him in his arms and carrying him away from that terrifying room.
Many years later, Zhuo Yue still clearly remembers that evening.
The man who held him in his arms said earnestly, “Zhuo Yue, I will make you feel better.”
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