Chapter 118: Chapter 118: What Remains
*Bael’s POV*
*We don’t have to pretend between ourselves.*
Bael stays still.
The words settle into the silence almost harder after Runze leaves than they did while he was standing there saying them.
*Or have you forgotten what this marriage actually is?*
The study door closes softly.
Then nothing.
For several long seconds, Bael doesn’t move at all.
One arm remains half-lowered from where it had been wrapped around Runze’s waist moments earlier, warmth still lingering faintly against his hand in a way that feels strangely difficult to ignore.
Eventually he lets the arm fall back to his side.
The room feels wrong now.
Not visibly. Everything looks exactly the same as it did ten minutes ago. The lamp beside the bookshelf still casts soft light across the desk, financial reports remain stacked neatly beside Runze’s laptop, one pencil left slightly crooked near the edge of the table where he’d probably set it down absentmindedly before standing.
Nothing changed.
And yet the absence left behind feels immediate enough that Bael notices it physically.
His eyes shift toward the closed door again.
Quiet.
Too quiet.
Runze’s presence has altered the atmosphere of this study so gradually over the past months that Bael hadn’t fully registered it happening. Not until now. Not until the room suddenly feels emptied of something that normally exists here automatically.
Bael walks back toward the desk slowly.
His laptop still sits open where he’d abandoned it earlier, spreadsheets waiting for approval, messages unanswered, numbers arranged into clean manageable structures that normally require very little effort from him.
Tonight the screen might as well be blank.
His attention keeps returning unwillingly to the exact moment Runze pulled away from him.
Not angrily at first.
That had been the problem.
For one brief second before stepping back, Runze had simply gone still in his arms instead, breath catching softly enough that Bael felt it against his chest the moment he said:
*Come back to our room tonight.*
At the time, Bael hadn’t thought carefully about the wording.
Now he realizes perhaps he should have.
*It’s not our room. It’s yours.*
The sentence settles unpleasantly somewhere low in his chest again.
Bael sits down slowly in the chair across from Runze’s abandoned workspace.
The reaction itself irritates him almost immediately, because he cannot fully explain why the words affected him at all.
Objectively, the arrangement between them has not changed much. Runze moved rooms weeks ago after the argument involving Xue Lian. The decision remained unofficial afterward, temporary in the practical sense even if neither of them addressed it again directly.
But Runze hadn’t meant the room literally.
Bael understands that much.
The frustrating part is that he still cannot clearly identify when the distance between them became something capable of bothering him like this.
His phone buzzes once against the desk.
Bael ignores it.
Silence stretches through the study again.
Normally silence feels comfortable to him. Useful. Quiet leaves room to think clearly without unnecessary interruptions complicating situations that should remain straightforward.
Tonight the silence feels heavy instead.
Because for perhaps the first time in years, Bael finds himself unable to neatly separate his thoughts into understandable pieces.
Runze’s emotions usually make sense eventually.
Even when difficult.
Anger was manageable.
Frustration was manageable.
Distance after conflict was manageable.
But tonight—
Tonight Runze hadn’t sounded angry underneath the sharpness.
Just tired.
Like every interaction between them had started costing him something.
That realization unsettles something in Bael immediately.
He closes the laptop abruptly after realizing he’d been staring blankly at the same report for several minutes without reading a single line.
The quiet click echoes softly through the room.
His mind shifts backward instead.
The hospital earlier today.
Runze sitting beside him during the examination trying very obviously not to look at him directly.
The tension that entered his shoulders the second Dr. Xi mentioned massage helping the back pain.
Then later upstairs in the study, stepping away from Bael’s hands almost immediately despite the fact that the pressure had clearly been helping.
Bael understood the refusal itself.
What he hadn’t expected was the unpleasant hollow feeling that followed afterward.
*You’d rather take pills than let me help you.*
At the time, he hadn’t intended the words harshly.
Looking back now, perhaps they sounded that way anyway.
Bael rubs a hand slowly across his jaw before standing again.
Restlessness sits beneath his skin tonight in a way that feels unfamiliar enough to immediately irritate him.
He leaves the study.
The upper floor is dim and quiet now, most of the estate settled fully into nighttime silence. Soft lighting glows against the hallway walls while distant sounds from downstairs have long since faded away entirely.
Normally the house feels calming at this hour.
Tonight it just feels empty.
Bael reaches the bedroom and opens the door quietly before stepping inside.
Then pauses automatically.
The room remains immaculate as always. Curtains half-drawn against the city lights outside. One side of the bed untouched. Faint traces of Runze still scattered naturally throughout the space despite the weeks apart.
A sweater folded carelessly over the chair near the window.
One of his books left beside the couch.
The tea blend he prefers still stocked near the cabinet because Bael continued replacing it automatically whenever supplies ran low without consciously deciding to.
The room still carries Runze’s presence.
Just not him.
For some reason, that distinction lands harder tonight than it ever has before.
Bael unbuttons his shirt slowly while crossing deeper into the room.
His attention catches briefly on the couch near the window and another memory surfaces unexpectedly.
Several months ago.
Runze asleep there after working too late, laptop still open beside him while rain hit the windows softly outside.
Bael remembers standing there for a moment considering whether waking him would be easier than carrying him to bed. Eventually he’d lifted him carefully instead because sleeping there would’ve left his neck aching by morning.
Runze had stirred halfway across the room.
Not fully awake.
Just enough to murmur quietly against Bael’s chest:
*"You always catch me."*
At the time, the words hadn’t seemed important.
Now the memory leaves something unexpectedly tight in Bael’s chest.
Because tonight, for the first time, it feels like Runze genuinely stopped believing that.
Bael sits slowly at the edge of the bed.
His thoughts circle back again despite himself.
*We don’t have to pretend between ourselves.*
Pretend.
Runze truly believes that’s what this has been.
Pretending concern, pretending closeness, pretending attachment.
The realization bothers Bael more than it should.
Because from his perspective, none of it has felt false.
Not recently.
He stays home more often now without really thinking about it first.
He notices when Runze eats poorly, when he sleeps badly, when discomfort settles into the way he moves. His attention follows Runze automatically in crowded rooms now.
At the gala, Bael had known where he was standing almost constantly without consciously trying to.
That realization returns sharply enough that Bael goes still for a moment.
The gala.
Runze talking quietly with Elliot while warm lighting spilled across the ballroom, expression relaxed in a way Bael had not seen much lately.
Jun Haowei speaking beside them.
Xue Lian arriving later in the evening.
And underneath all of it, the constant awareness pulling Bael’s attention back toward Runze again and again regardless of who else stood nearby.
At the time, none of it had felt unusual enough to examine closely.
Now he realizes perhaps it should have.
Then the sitting room before it surfaces clearly in his mind.
Runze standing near the doorway in ivory formalwear, looking tired and distracted and far too beautiful for Bael’s thoughts to remain entirely steady around him.
Bael crossing the room, touching his jaw, kissing him.
The memory still unsettles him every time it resurfaces.
Not because he regrets it.
Because he still cannot fully explain the instinct behind it.
He simply wanted to.
The decision bypassed the careful internal process Bael normally relies on before acting. There had been no weighing consequences first, no strategic thinking, no structured reasoning.
Just immediate certainty.
And afterward, not even the smallest trace of regret.
That part remains the most disruptive of all.
Because Bael is beginning to understand something uncomfortable now.
The issue is no longer that Runze misunderstands him, the issue is that Bael himself still cannot fully define what changed between them.
Only that something clearly has.
His attention returns to tonight again.
Runze standing in the study looking emotionally exhausted in a way Bael rarely sees openly.
The unsteady sharpness in his voice when he said:
*"We don’t have to pretend between ourselves."*
Then later:
*"Or have you forgotten what this marriage actually is?"*
At the time, Bael hadn’t answered immediately because the words caught him off guard more than he expected.
Not because Runze was entirely wrong, because part of him suddenly realized he no longer viewed the marriage the same way.
And he still doesn’t know when that happened.
Bael exhales slowly through his nose.
For one brief irrational moment, Bael considers getting up and walking to Runze’s room anyway.
Not to argue, not even to continue the conversation. Just—
The thought stops there.
Because he genuinely does not know what he would say if Runze opened the door.
That uncertainty feels deeply unfamiliar to him.
After several long seconds, Bael dismisses the impulse entirely and stands instead.
He changes slowly, the silence inside the room pressing heavier the longer it stretches.
When he finally lies down, the empty side of the bed draws his attention immediately despite himself.
Sleep doesn’t come quickly.
And sometime deep into the silence of the night, staring upward at the darkness while Runze sleeps somewhere else entirely, Bael realizes something quietly unsettling.
He no longer reaches for Runze because obligation tells him to.
And whatever this has become between them now, it is no longer something Bael can dismiss as practicality alone.
