Chapter 125: Chapter 125: Realization
*Bael’s POV*
The quarterly performance report sat open on Bael’s desk.
He had been staring at the same page for nearly five minutes. He’s neither reading nor processing it. He’s just looking at it while his mind wandered somewhere else entirely.
The realization irritated him enough that he closed the report and pushed it aside.
Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city stretched beneath a gray afternoon sky. Traffic crawled through the financial district. Construction cranes dotted the horizon.
Normally, work made everything simpler.
Work had structure, predictability, problems that could be solved through logic and effort.
Lately, however, even work wasn’t functioning properly.
His attention kept drifting.
Back home, back to Runze, back to a study where two people sat on opposite sides of a room pretending everything was normal.
Bael leaned back in his chair.
Three days.
Three days since Runze had asked for distance, three days since he’d stopped looking at Bael directly unless necessary, three days since every interaction had become polite, measured, and frustratingly brief.
Exactly what Runze wanted, and Bael had agreed to it. The problem now was that Bael hated it.
The intercom buzzed.
Shen Rui’s voice comes through the intercom with the particular careful neutrality he uses when something requires Bael’s attention but he’d prefer not to be the one delivering it.
"Dr. Xue is here, sir."
Bael sets down his pen.
He’d been expecting this, not today specifically, but eventually. Xue Lian has been patient in the way someone is patient when they believe patience will be rewarded. But patience has a limit, and apparently today is where his ran out.
"Send him in."
The door opens immediately, and Xue Lian entered without hesitation.
He looked exactly the same as always. Impeccably dressed. Attractive enough to draw attention in any room. The kind of omega people noticed immediately.
Years ago, Bael had noticed too.
Now the feeling was strangely absent.
Xue Lian closed the door behind him.
"What’s going on, Bael? You’ve been avoiding me."
Bael returned his attention to the document on his desk.
"I’ve been busy."
"You’ve been avoiding me," he repeats, pleasantly, like he’s simply correcting an inaccuracy.
Bael leans back in his chair.
Outside the windows, the city moves in its usual afternoon rhythm, traffic and light and the quiet drone of everything continuing regardless.
"What did you want to discuss?" Bael asks.
Xue Lian’s expression shifts slightly. Not hurt, not yet. Something more careful.
"You told me about the merger yourself," he says. "I told you it was fine to go ahead and secure the inheritance, and divorce in five years. We had an understanding, Bael."
"We did."
"And now?"
Bael says nothing.
Xue Lian watches him for a moment, reading the silence with the fluency of someone who has known him a long time.
"At first I thought you were punishing me," he says, quieter now. "For not coming back sooner. I thought you were making a point, keeping your distance, making me wait the same way I made you wait."
"Was I now?"
"...Bael" Something crosses his face then. "I don’t understand you anymore."
He leans forward slightly, elbows on the arms of the chair, and looks at Bael with an expression that’s trying very hard to stay controlled.
"Even at the gala..." he says. "You kept looking at him even when I was right there talking to you."
Bael doesn’t confirm or deny it.
There was something searching in Xue Lian’s voice, something uncertain.
Bael disliked uncertainty. Especially this kind.
This conversation should have been simple. At one point in his life, it would have been simple.
But now every interaction with Xue Lian felt strangely exhausting.
As if he were participating in a discussion that should matter but somehow didn’t.
Xue Lian leaned forward slightly and looked directly at him.
"Did you... Did you actually fall in love with Li Runze?"
The question came quietly without accusation or anger, almost like he was afraid of the answer.
Bael opens his mouth to say something
But then everything stopped.
The city outside disappeared, the office disappeared, even Xue Lian’s face seemed to blur at the edges.
But the words remained.
*Did you actually fall in love with Li Runze?*
*Love.*
The word echoed strangely in his head.
*Love.*
Bael stared at him, for a moment he couldn’t hear anything else.
Love. The frustration, the jealousy, the constant awareness of Runze’s presence, the way empty rooms felt wrong without him, the way he compared everyone else to him without realizing it, the way he left Xue Lian’s apartment because he wanted to go home, the way Runze’s absence made the house unbearable, the way three days of distance felt infinitely worse than months of conflict.
Love.
The answer arrived with terrifying simplicity.
Not confusion, not attachment, not responsibility, not habit.
Love.
Everything suddenly made sense.
Every irrational reaction, every contradiction, every frustration he’d spent months trying to explain away. Every piece of evidence assembled into a conclusion so complete it leaves no room for alternative interpretation.
The answer was so obvious now that he almost laughed.
He should have recognized it much sooner.
He’s in love with Runze.
Of course.
Only Runze could do this.
Only Runze could dismantle years of certainty without Bael noticing until the damage was already complete.
Across the desk, Xue Lian was still talking.
Saying something.
Bael couldn’t hear a word of it.
Because for the first time in months, his thoughts were perfectly clear.
He loved his wife.
The realization should have felt catastrophic. Instead it felt strangely relieving. As though a puzzle piece had finally clicked into place. As though an argument he’d been having with himself for months had finally ended.
Bael stood.
Xue Lian stopped speaking.
"What?"
Bael reached for his phone.
His movements were calm, deliberate, certain.
Xue Lian stared at him.
"Bael?"
Xue Lian sounded distant. Bael wasn’t listening.
Bael ignored the question, ignored the confusion, ignored everything except the overwhelming need to see Runze.
Because the question had already been answered.
He pressed a number.
The call connected immediately.
"President Wuchen?"
"Bring the car around."
A brief pause.
"Sir?"
Bael’s gaze drifted toward the office window, toward the city beyond it, toward Dingshan.
"Now."
He ended the call.
And for the first time in months, every step forward seemed perfectly obvious.
