After My Rebirth, My Husband Pampers Me Everyday!

Chapter 233: TW: CAPTIVITY

TW: this scene contains references to captivity and past abuse (not depicted on page), threats of violence and forced medical intervention, and themes of suicidal ideation. Reader discretion advised.

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The room had no windows.

Ren Hao had counted the days by the meals that came, three a day if Shen Zihao remembered, sometimes only one if he didn’t. He had lost count somewhere around the second week, when the counting itself had started to feel pointless, like keeping a calendar for a life that wasn’t going to continue long enough to need one.

He sat curled against the metal frame of the bed, knees drawn to his chest, wrists raw where the cuffs had rubbed the skin over and over until it stopped healing between uses.

The raw places weren’t red anymore. They were a wet, shiny pink, and when he moved too fast, they split open again with a sting that made his teeth ache. The left one had started to weep a thin, cloudy fluid that smelled faintly of rot.

He couldn’t tell if it was infected or if his body had simply given up trying to repair itself. Bruises mapped his arms in shades of yellow and green, old ones fading into new ones before they’d had the chance to disappear completely.

His ribs ached with every breath, a deep bone-level throb that never fully quieted no matter how still he stayed. Sometimes he breathed too shallow on purpose, just to make it stop.

Other times he breathed too deep just to feel the grind of bone against bone, because at least that pain was something he could name.

The mattress beneath him was damp with old sweat and something darker he tried not to identify. The air smelled of stale copper and his own unwashed skin, and his tongue felt thick and dry in his mouth, coated with a film that no amount of swallowing could clear. He hadn’t had water in what felt like two days, maybe three.

His head ached with a dull, pulsing pressure behind his eyes, and when he blinked, the darkness behind his lids swam with tiny bursts of light.

He had stopped flinching at footsteps outside the door somewhere around the tenth day. Not because he wasn’t afraid. He was always afraid. He had simply run out of a body’s worth of ways to show it.

Anywhere was better than this.

The thought came to him often now, quiet and unbothered by its own darkness, the way a person might think about what to eat for dinner.

He thought of the accident, the one that had almost taken him months ago when he stepped in front of Guiying’s car without meaning to survive it.

He remembered the relief he’d felt in that half second before the impact, the strange peace of thinking it might finally be over.

The crunch of his own ribs against the hood, the wet taste of blood in his throat, and then the white ceiling of the hospital, still breathing.

He hadn’t gotten what he wanted then either.

Guiying had promised to keep him safe after that. Liuxian’s people had kept that promise, for a while. Ren Hao remembered the safehouse, the quiet, the first nights in weeks he’d slept without waking in a cold sweat.

He remembered thinking, foolishly, that it might actually last.

Then everyone’s attention had turned elsewhere, all at once, and Shen Zihao had found the gap.

Just when he was about to reach for the bowl of water, which was three desk away and being chained to the bed made it impossible to do.

The lock on the door turned.

Ren Hao’s whole body went rigid before his mind caught up to why, some animal part of him always faster than the rest. His breath stopped in his chest, and for one frozen second the only sound was the metallic scrape of the bolt sliding back, a sound that had come to mean the same thing as a blade being drawn.

His heart slammed against his ribs so hard he felt it in his throat, a thick, pounding pulse that made the room tilt slightly at the edges.

Shen Zihao stepped inside, jacket already off, sleeves rolled with the particular unhurried care of a man who had all the time in the world and knew it.

The scent of his cologne hit Ren Hao before his eyes did, sharp and cloying, layering over the stale air like a fresh coat of paint over rot. His eyes found Ren Hao immediately, the way they always did, hungry in a way that had nothing to do with wanting and everything to do with owning.

"You’ve been quiet today." Shen Zihao crouched in front of him, tilting his head, studying Ren Hao’s face like it was something he’d painted himself and was still deciding whether he liked the result. "I don’t like it when you’re quiet. It makes me think you’re planning something."

Ren Hao said nothing.

Speaking had stopped helping a long time ago. Words just gave Shen Zihao more to twist. His throat was too dry to form sounds anyway, the walls of it sticking together like old paper.

"Nothing to say?" Shen Zihao reached out, tucking a strand of hair back from Ren Hao’s face with something that might have looked gentle to anyone who didn’t know better. His fingertips grazed Ren Hao’s ear, and Ren Hao’s skin crawled so violently he almost flinched.

He caught himself at the last second, but the muscle beneath his eye twitched, and Shen Zihao’s smile said he’d noticed anyway. "That’s alright. You don’t have to talk. I like you better when you’re like this anyway."

Ren Hao’s breath caught, shallow and controlled, the only defense he had left. His stomach churned with a hollow, acidic ache, hunger gnawing at the inside of his gut like a living thing.

Shen Zihao crouched lower, close enough that Ren Hao could feel the warmth of his breath against his cheek, close enough that there was nowhere left to lean away from him.

The overhead light cast half his face in shadow, and for a moment he looked less like a man and more like something carved from old wax. His exhale smelled faintly of mint and coffee, a normal smell in a space that had long forgotten what normal meant.

"Are you planning on escaping?" His voice stayed soft, almost thoughtful, the tone of a man discussing the weather rather than a threat.