Volume One, Chapter 34: Bo Xingzhou, Tonight... I’m Staying.

Warm water slid down his burning throat, bringing a fleeting relief.

At that moment—

The LCD television mounted on the hospital room wall, which had been silently displaying a nature documentary, suddenly switched its image!

A glaring red banner flashed the words “Breaking News,” as a stern news anchor spoke at a rapid pace:

“…Latest update from our station! Police have launched a swift operation, successfully cracking a major case involving commercial defamation and incitement of violence! Senior executives and chief planner Wang of Starlight Media have been taken into custody according to law! Reportedly, this group maliciously slandered competitors and the artist Xie, fabricating evidence, hiring online trolls, and inciting the misinformed public, severely disrupting market order and causing an extremely negative social impact! The case is currently under further investigation…”

Accompanying the report were swift flashes of the Starlight Media building surrounded by police cars, blurred footage of related personnel being escorted away, and a brief statement from a police spokesperson.

The news was uncompromising in tone, its judgment severe, nailing Starlight Media’s crimes onto a pillar of shame.

Yet there was not a single mention of the chaos at the contract signing, or the stabbing incident, nor a word about Bo Xingzhou’s injuries.

As if that harrowing assassination attempt, that gushing blood, had never happened.

Fu Yuting’s hand paused midair, the cup hovering as she stopped feeding him water.

Her gaze drifted from Bo Xingzhou’s lips to the television screen, her eyes instantly sharpening to a glacial edge.

Starlight had been dealt with?

So quickly?

The news had been released?

But everything concerning him… had been wiped clean?

Who possessed the power to so thoroughly suppress any leak about the Bo family heir’s grievous injury, and in such a short time?

Bo Xingzhou lifted his eyes as well.

He glanced first at the chaotic images of Starlight Media on the screen, his expression indifferent, as if watching a speck of dust irrelevant to himself.

Then, his gaze slowly shifted to Fu Yuting, so close at hand. In those deep eyes, there was no surprise, only a calm that seemed to see through everything.

“Was it you?”

Was he asking about the suppression of information?

Or the swiftness of Starlight Media’s downfall?

Most likely the latter.

When she looked up again, her face had already resumed its usual cool composure. The corners of her lips even held the faintest trace of self-mockery.

“I’m not nearly that capable.” Her voice was steady, her gaze meeting his with equal candor.

“Perhaps some… upstanding ‘champion of justice’ couldn’t stand by any longer. After all, Starlight went far too far this time.”

She weighed the phrase “champion of justice” with a subtle emphasis, a hint of tacit understanding in her tone.

Bo Xingzhou watched her in silence, the depths of his eyes flickering with a trace of mirth—so fleeting it might have been a trick of the light.

He did not press further, nor did he expose her words, merely nodding ever so slightly, as if accepting her answer.

Then he closed his eyes, perhaps still under the lingering effects of anesthesia.

The room lapsed into a strange, heavy silence.

Unnoticed, dusk had fallen outside. In her chest, a tangle of emotions surged: heavy guilt over his wounds, lingering fear from the day’s ordeal, and—watching him lying there so vulnerable—a strange, unfamiliar ache that welled up uncontrollably within her.

She looked at the tired shadows beneath his closed eyes, at the cold, chiseled lines of his face made starker by blood loss, at the hand swathed in thick gauze—one that might bear a scar forever… All her calculations, negotiations, and icy boundaries blurred in this moment.

Fu Yuting drew a deep breath, heavy with the sterile tang of the hospital and the weight of her own resolve.

She leaned slightly closer to the bedside, her voice barely above a whisper, yet piercing the thick silence:

“Bo Xingzhou.”

It was the first time, fully conscious, that she uttered his name so naturally—without title, without honorific.

“Tonight…” She paused, as if testing her decision, as if bracing for his possible rejection.

At last, her cool, clear voice fell into the hush of the room, steady as surrender:

“I’m staying.”

It was not a question, nor a negotiation.

It was a declaration.

She did not wait to see his reaction, but turned away and walked to the spacious caretaker’s sofa in the corner.

On the hospital bed, Bo Xingzhou remained motionless, eyes shut as if in deep sleep.

The line of his lips, tightly pressed together, seemed to curve—imperceptibly—into the faintest of smiles.

———

Meanwhile,

The Su family villa.

The room was a wreck; shattered porcelain and twisted metal glinted coldly under the lights.

Su Yu’s chest heaved, the fleeting catharsis of breaking things already crushed by the news her mother brought—leaving only a deeper, gnawing jealousy and a sense of having been played for a fool.

“Bo Xingzhou… in love?” Her voice was hoarse, squeezed out through clenched teeth, each word laced with incredulous pain. “How could he possibly…”

No wonder he treated me this way!

In her mind flashed the face of Fu Yuting, always wearing that faint, detached smile, as if untouched by the world.

He’d rather be hurt himself to save her.

Was it her?

It had to be her!

That aloof, enticing air—men always fell for that type, didn’t they?

“It’s not Fu Yuting.”

Her mother’s voice carried a subtle trace of exhaustion, as if her daughter’s hysteria was wearing her thin, but she delivered the bombshell nonetheless: “Lu Ye said it himself, Fu Yuting is Lu Jingyan’s fiancée, it was arranged between their families long ago.”

“Fiancée?” Su Yu jerked her head up, her swollen eyes wide with shock, like she’d been struck by lightning.

The flames of jealousy that just moments ago had burned for Fu Yuting sputtered under this dousing, temporarily snuffed out, replaced by an almost absurd sense of irony.

“Lu Jingyan’s fiancée?”

That identity was like a key, clicking open another sealed box of anger.

“Xu Qian!” Su Yu nearly screamed, her nails digging deep into her palms. “That wretch! She lied to me! She told me herself she was Lu Jingyan’s girlfriend.”

She’d been fooled!

Played for a fool by Xu Qian, as if she were a puppet on strings.

Yet this hatred for Xu Qian did nothing to lessen her loathing for Fu Yuting.

“But Mom,” Su Yu’s voice suddenly sharpened, strident with a kind of neurotic stubbornness, “I just can’t stand her—always so fake, so holier-than-thou, she makes me sick just by existing!”

Even she couldn’t say where this intense hostility truly came from.

Her mother frowned deeply, looking at her daughter’s bloodshot eyes and the face contorted by rage, sighing, “Yuyu, calm down! What has Fu Yuting ever done to you? She’s a perfectly good girl…”

“She hasn’t done anything? Just her existence gets in my way.” Su Yu cut her off harshly, abruptly standing and kicking aside the remains of a stuffed toy.

But right now, what she needed most was to vent the fury of Xu Qian’s betrayal!

She snatched up the only unbroken phone left on her desk.

Her fingers trembled with rage, yet still managed to find Xu Qian’s number with perfect accuracy.

“Xu Qian!”