Su Yiyi’s fair instep glistened, slick with moisture, reflecting a humiliating yet decadent sheen under the harsh light.
Bending down, Su Yiyi used the hand she considered “unstained” to gently grasp Lan Yucheng’s sweat-soaked hair, forcing her to lift her head.
Lan Yucheng’s face was crisscrossed with tear tracks, her eyes still clouded with the lingering chaos and hollowness of desire’s burn. Wet marks clung to the corners of her lips, a picture of utter disarray.
Yet, Su Yiyi’s gaze was unnervingly tender, even tinged with a pitying appreciation. With her other hand, she gently stroked Lan Yucheng’s burning cheek, her fingertips erasing the mingled traces of tears and saliva.
“So pitiful…” she murmured with a soft sigh, her voice betraying neither mockery nor tenderness. “And… so beautiful.”
Beneath this gentle facade lay an icy scrutiny and absolute control. Ignoring Lan Yucheng’s instinctive flinch, Su Yiyi, still in that position, reasserted her possession in an unquestionable, almost ‘comforting’ manner.
Her movements remained methodical, carrying a rhythm almost charitable, like an act of condescending mercy.
Lan Yucheng’s body betrayed her reason. The lingering power of the drug raged on, and caught between shame and primal instinct, her consciousness drifted. Finally, in that precisely manipulated, granted—not demanded—surge, she briefly reached a fleeting climax.
As the tide receded, the overwhelming hunger brought on by the drug seemed to temporarily subside.
Lan Yucheng collapsed to the floor, her body still trembling faintly, but her mind found a moment’s reprieve.
The immense exhaustion, coupled with the deeper shame and self-loathing that swept over her in the wake of clarity, made her instinctively want to curl up, to distance herself from the source that had reduced her to such a wretched state.
She scrambled backward, using both hands and feet, creating a minuscule distance between herself and Su Yiyi. Her eyes stared blankly into the void, her body shivering slightly from the cold and intense emotional upheaval.
This small, almost instinctive gesture of escape did not go unnoticed by Su Yiyi.
The feigned tenderness on her face vanished instantly, replaced by a cold, faint irritation at her disrupted pleasure. She said nothing, merely opening the exquisite small box once more. With practiced precision, she withdrew another syringe, its liquid a deeper, unsettling dark red.
Lan Yucheng saw it. Her body jolted violently, and extreme terror flared in her eyes. “No… please, no…” She uselessly shrank backward, but her escape route was already blocked by the wall.
Su Yiyi easily subdued her weak struggles. The icy needle tip pierced her skin precisely at the side of her neck, injecting the dark red liquid.
The drug’s effect was astonishingly swift. Almost the instant the needle was withdrawn, that familiar, yet many times more intense, itching and burning sensation erupted from the injection site like a virulent serpent, instantly coursing through her limbs and bones! An even fiercer emptiness engulfed her once more, making her writhe and contort uncontrollably, guttural whimpers escaping her throat like a trapped beast.
Su Yiyi calmly stepped back, then crouched down, observing Lan Yucheng’s agonizing struggles as if admiring a masterpiece nearing completion. She leaned closer, whispering into Lan Yucheng’s ear, her voice soft but laced with poisoned coldness:
“Does it hurt? Do you want it?”
“Look at you now…”
“If… your precious Xiao Xue saw you like this, twisting on the ground like a **dog**, unable to live without me… what would she think?”
“Would she still want you?”
“A… toy utterly broken by me?”
Each word was like a searing brand, fiercely scorching Lan Yucheng’s already shattered soul. Qing Xinxue! That name, that figure she had personally ‘killed,’ yet who relentlessly haunted her dreams! How would Xiao Xue see her? With what disgusted, contemptuous gaze would she look upon her?! No! This couldn’t happen! Xiao Xue couldn’t see this! She would rather die!
It was an erosion that willpower could not resist, surging from the depths of her body, instantly swallowing all conscious perception. It felt as if every nerve was being scorched over a faint flame, provoking a hollow, searing tremor. She wasn’t doing it intentionally, but her body had slipped beyond her control, curling up as if struck by an invisible current, her fingertips unconsciously digging deep into the fabric beneath her.
Su Yiyi unhurriedly produced an inconspicuous soft tube and squeezed out a small dollop of transparent, odorless cream. In Lan Yucheng’s blurred, unfocused vision, the cool, viscous touch, imbued with an irresistible implication, gently landed on her lips. The cream was spread evenly, slowly caressing her lower lip with a meticulousness that bordered on cruel.
Lan Yucheng jolted, wanting to turn her head, but even the strength to move her neck seemed glued by the cream. Initially cool, her entire mouth, even her throat, soon became a parched, cracked wasteland. Saliva flowed uncontrollably, only to be swallowed with difficulty and indignity; this futile action only intensified the terrifying thirst.
“…No…” She uttered a short, broken gasp, physiological tears rapidly filling her eyes, spilling down her temples and into her hair. She wanted to close her lips, to bite down on something, to resist in any way this strange, maddening torment rising from within, but she found all her attempts to be utterly useless, only making the sensation sharper and clearer.
Su Yiyi’s fingertips paused, hovering inches from Lan Yucheng’s lips, but no longer touching. She simply gazed down, watching Lan Yucheng’s eyelashes tremble slightly from extreme discomfort, watching her cheeks flex faintly as she clenched her jaw, watching her vulnerable throat make uncontrollable swallowing motions, again and again.
The silent torment continued, festering and expanding in the stillness. Lan Yucheng’s breathing grew more rapid, more erratic, her body twisting in small, uncontrollable movements, as if bound and tightened by invisible threads. All dignity, all attempts to maintain a numb facade, peeled away in fragments under this pure, alien sensory assault.
Finally, after another violent, spasmodic gasp from deep within her throat, she utterly crumbled.
She couldn’t even manage a complete crawling motion. Instead, she used her last vestiges of strength to reach out, her trembling fingertips grasping Su Yiyi’s hanging pant leg. She lifted her face, tears already blurring her vision, her eyes vacant and despairing, holding only the most primal plea.
“P-please…” Her voice was a hoarse, tuneless whisper, every word steeped in salty tears and the tremor of impending collapse. “…Su Yiyi… give it… stop it… make it stop…”
She spoke incoherently, only repeating fragmented words, as if the person before her were her only lifeline.
“I was wrong… I’ll listen to you… I’ll listen to everything you say…” Her knuckles, gripping the pant leg, were white with strain, as if it were a drowning person’s last chance at life. “Anything… please… make it stop… I can’t take it anymore…”
Su Yiyi finally bent slightly, meeting Lan Yucheng’s completely unfocused eyes. In those eyes, usually calm and placid, Lan Yucheng’s wretched, utterly surrendered form was now clearly reflected.
“Anything?” Su Yiyi repeated her words, her voice soft, yet like a piece of ice dropped into still water, stirring a deeper, heart-stopping chill. There was no pity in her tone, only a hint of playful, cold scrutiny.
She reached out, very slowly, and brushed away a strand of Lan Yucheng’s damp hair that clung to her temple with cold sweat and tears.
“Yes! Yes! Anything!” Lan Yucheng nodded frantically, speaking incoherently.
“Then… what if I want you to completely forget her?” Su Yiyi’s toe gently lifted Lan Yucheng’s chin. “Forget Qing Xinxue. From now on, in your heart, in your eyes, in your body, only I am allowed to be there. Can you do that?”
Forget Xiao Xue? The thought caused Lan Yucheng a soul-shredding agony far greater than her physical torment.
But… the fire in her body had burned away all capacity for thought. She only wanted release! Now! Immediately!
“I… I…” Lan Yucheng gasped violently, her eyes flickering wildly between extreme pain and struggle.
Ultimately, the instinct for survival—or rather, the instinct to escape this torture—overwhelmed everything. She closed her eyes, using her last ounce of strength to hoarsely, brokenly cry out: “I’ll let go! I’ll let her go! I’ll be with you! Only you! Su Yiyi! Please!”
This declaration, like the final straw, crushed the last remnant of her past obsessions within her heart.
The moment the words fell, she felt as if she heard something deep within her soul shatter completely.
In Su Yiyi’s eyes, a truly satisfied smile finally flickered. She bent down and carried the almost depleted Lan Yucheng towards the bedroom.
“Remember what you said today,” her voice whispered in Lan Yucheng’s ear, like a demon’s promise.
The following day and night became the longest, most chaotic period in Lan Yucheng’s memory. Su Yiyi no longer needed the additional stimulus of drugs; Lan Yucheng’s body and consciousness had already been thoroughly ‘calibrated’ to their most submissive state.
She no longer offered any resistance, even beginning to clumsily, unconsciously accommodate, solely to earn those fleeting moments of solace that could temporarily pull her from the abyss of emptiness.
Su Yiyi, like an unwearied monarch, reveled in her surrender, branding her with her own mark in countless ways, confirming her ownership.
When everything finally ceased, Lan Yucheng felt like a doll that had been disassembled and reassembled countless times. Every bone screamed with aches, and she lacked even the strength to lift a finger.
She lay sprawled on the disheveled bed, staring blankly at the ceiling, her soul seemingly having drifted away, leaving behind only an utterly exhausted shell.
Su Yiyi’s state, however, was entirely different. She was radiant, even exuding a languid charm born of satiation.
She meticulously cleaned Lan Yucheng, her movements gentler than ever before. Then, she personally cooked light, easily digestible food, feeding it spoonful by spoonful to Lan Yucheng, who struggled even to swallow.
She carried Lan Yucheng to the bathroom, carefully washing and wiping her body, as if tending to a precious, fragile possession.
Lan Yucheng mechanically accepted it all. After the extreme breakdown and indulgence came a bone-deep weariness and void.
She knew that some things had changed forever the moment she uttered, “Let go of Xiao Xue.”
She could not go back. The Lan Yucheng who had once risked everything for Qing Xinxue, even plotting to harm others, the Lan Yucheng whose heart still held a trace of struggle and pride, had died in endless shame, the ravages of drugs, and physiological surrender.
And now, Su Yiyi’s meticulous, almost obsessive care enveloped her like an impenetrable net.
Within this net, she didn’t need to think, didn’t need to choose; she only needed to accept.
A strange, twisted sense of security quietly blossomed in this extreme exhaustion and void.
Perhaps… this was how it would be. Letting go of those painful obsessions, sinking into this sole, intense, ‘belonging’ to someone else. At least, the hands holding her now were warm, and this all-encompassing ‘love’ was real.
She closed her eyes, burying her face in Su Yiyi’s neck, inhaling her faint, reassuring scent, allowing the last trace of conscious awareness to sink into a dark, dreamless sleep.
Even in the abyss, perhaps, there was a twisted dependency.
And she was powerless to break free.