Pain Fetish

The doctor who was attacked that day, surnamed Zhong, was thirty-five years old and an expert in gland treatment, every year saving hundreds of patients whose glands were innately defective or suffered from a disease. He was also in charge of the follow-up treatment of Qi Han’s glands.

However, when the man’s wife was taken to the hospital, her condition was too serious. The glands were festering due to the infection, and the entire back of her neck was dripping with pus. The necrosys continued to spread inward, the infection eating up the intact flesh. It couldn’t be removed and hanging on to life with medication was also a living hell.

The man’s wife finally chose euthanasia.

The man agreed at first, the two signed the documents together, holding hands, and he even helped his wife with her make-up before she left. The day after she was cremated, he came to the hospital with a knife.

Since my wife couldn’t be cured, no one else who also suffered from this disease should be cured either, right?

The first blow slashed the doctor’s right shoulder with a 3mm bone-cutting knife; the cut split the skin and flesh, and it was a fantasy to pick up the scalpel again.

The second blow slashed Qi Han’s back, a horrific cut extending from the left shoulder blade to the right lumbar; if it had landed any closer to the glands, he would have been dead.

After being rescued in the surgery room for more than three hours that night, Qi Han was admitted to the intensive care unit. It was two days later that Fu Ge heard from him again.

Finally out of danger, Qi Han was transferred to the general ward.

During this period, the pheromone infusions to Fu Ge were never interrupted.

After asking the doctor, he found out that Qi Han had increased the frequency of pheromone extraction for a week before the accident, at most four tubes a day, and by the end of the day, his glands were so dry that they were concave and he had to be pushed out of the extraction room.

In this way, he had saved up for at least five days of infusions ahead of schedule.

Under no circumstances and for no reason would Fu Ge be deprived of pheromone infusions. If he was really sent to prison by his lover, Qi Han was going to try his best to cure Fu Ge’s illness before that.

He did everything he said when he traded the rings for the USB flash drive, and he was really using his life to make up for the mistakes he made back then.

The day after he was transferred to the general ward, Qi Han woke up.

Apart from the countless old injuries, the most serious ones were his back and glands.

He could only lie on the hospital bed, naked, and the newly replaced gauze would be soaked with blood in a few hours. His inflamed glands were purulent, and some yellow discharge oozed out of the tender pink circle of flesh.

Fu Ge didn’t dare to think about how much pain he must have been in.

When Qi Han woke up, Fu Ge was sitting by the bed, and he had been sitting in silence like that for a long time.

The Alpha on the bed was not surprised when he opened his eyes and saw him. Except for being a little dazed, his reaction was mild.

It was as if Fu Ge was supposed to be sitting here and he was used to it.

“Why did you come so early today? Didn’t you come here at night before…” Qi Han moved his lips, straining his vocal cords every time he said a word. Without waiting for Fu Ge to answer, he smiled: “Are you here to lecture me?”

“I just dreamed that I blew up the oven when I baked a cake for the baby. He was so scared that he cried non-stop. Gege grabbed me by the ear and scolded me endlessly…”

Fu Ge didn’t understand what he was saying, so he just looked at him with red eyes, and it took two minutes before he realised what exactly was going on with Qi Han.

He thought he was still unconscious and the Fu Ge sitting by the bed was just his dream.

“Sure enough, marriage is the grave of love! After gege married me, he is not gentle at all…” Qi Han winked, his finger reaching out and nudging the tip of Fu Ge’s nose, “I scraped your car before, and you asked me if I was okay first. Now it’s just an oven and you have to pull my ears off.”

As he said that, he paused for a moment, and the expression on his face froze: “Actually, I know… you are so angry with me that you don’t even want me to feel better in my dreams.”

Fu Ge clenched his hands tightly, his lips bitten to the point of bleeding. “No…” he said.

A glimmer of light immediately lit up in Qi Han’s eyes. Looking at Fu Ge, expectant and aggrieved, he asked, “No?”

Fu Ge narrowed his eyes and repeated, “No.”

We are not married, we have no baby, and have no home with an oven.

Everything in the dream is fake, and the happier and warmer those fantasies are, the deeper the knife of reality will stab after waking up.

Fu Ge was the most experienced with this.

Qi Han was obviously still trapped in his dream, and at the sound of Fu Ge’s voice, he braced himself to get up; but he was already so weak that he rolled off the bed when his arm gave out, and Fu Ge rushed to support him.

The moment his palm touched Qi Han’s arm, both of them were startled.

Qi Han lowered his head and remained motionless, managing not to fall for two or three seconds, until the gauze on his back was dyed red again and he woke up as if from a dream and said, “Not a dream?…”

Fu Ge helped him back to the bed, “Right.”

The Alpha flopped back onto the pillow, a lot of emotions flashing in his reddened eyes: embarrassment, shame, and then trepidation.

“I’m sorry…” He lifted his finger to point at Fu Ge’s arm and said, “I probably got it there just now, I’m sorry… I wasn’t paying attention…”

Fu Ge was puzzled, “What?”

Qi Han sniffled, his gaze focusing on Fu Ge’s elbow. He said in a very small voice, “It’s stained with my blood… I know you hate this…”

Only then did Fu Ge see the half of the blood-red fingerprint on his arm, and when he looked at Qi Han’s body, he saw that the Alpha’s glands were torn open and began to bleed again.

The blood, mixed with pus, was orange, like the white of a diseased egg, running down Qi Han’s neck and dripping onto the pillow.

Qi Han ignored it, his scarlet eyes staring at the half-fingerprint on Fu Ge’s arm from beginning to end, full of apology and embarrassment.

It was as if he had accepted that he was something dirty.

But Fu Ge didn’t wipe it with a wet wipe in disgust this time.

He just lowered his eyes and looked at the fingerprint quietly, occasionally touching it with his hand.

The crimson fingerprint on the pale skin was uncomfortable to look at, as if the owner of this arm had been subjected to some atrocity again.

Qi Han gritted his teeth and straightened his upper body, trying to help him get a tissue, but suddenly heard Fu Ge ask: “I attended a summer camp in the summer of my senior year and recognised Old Master Qi as a teacher, do you still remember?”

Qi Han didn’t know how the topic had changed so quickly, but he half sat up and whispered, “Yes, Mr. Qi Delong, I was with you the whole time.”

At the end of the sentence, dismay flashed in his eyes, “What is Qi Chuan’s relationship with him?”

Fu Ge said, “Teacher is Mr. Qi’s maternal grandfather.”

His eyelashes fluttered; Qi Han’s heart suddenly dropped like a ball of lead. He didn’t even dare to ask the hypothetical question: “So… so you and he… you…”

“We have nothing to do with each other. The snacks were made for Teacher, the red-beaked bird was painted for him, only the nourishing soup was stewed for Mr. Qi as a thank you. But it won’t be in the future. The thirty tubes of pheromones are all yours, I already know that.”

Explaining everything in one fell swoop, Fu Ge raised his eyes and asked Qi Han, “Is there anything else you want to ask?”

“I… I… Xiao Ge… I don’t need… “

Hit by such a big surprise, Qi Han was so excited that he was incoherent. He stared at Fu Ge in a daze, like a pet that had fallen into the water and was fished out by its owner with a tree branch. His arms and legs were all numb, only his heart was beating wildly.

“You don’t have to explain to me, really, no need for that… I’ll do whatever I can, as long as gege can be happier and more comfortable…”

Fu Ge, however, looked straight at him, his lips trembling, his eyes wet and flushed. He pursed his lips and sniffled, looking like an aggrieved cat.

“No need to explain?”

“I explained to you five years ago and you didn’t listen, and now I’m explaining to you and you still won’t listen? Qi Han, after all this, you haven’t grown up at all?”

The Alpha panicked in an instant and eagerly grabbed his hand: “I’ll listen! I’ll listenI listen to everything gege says, I’m listening with both ears, I have grown up— ouch…”

The wound was ripped open again, and he panted in pain, his weak body shaking as if he was about to fall. But as soon as Fu Ge’s arm was extended the Alpha immediately lunged for it.

Qi Han was lying on Fu Ge’s arm like a big dog; the mumble squeezed out of his throat was extremely aggrieved: “It’s not that I don’t want to listen, it’s that I don’t dare to listen. What face do I have for you to explain to me? If I listen to gege coax me in two sentences, I’m going to float to the sky…”

Fu Ge pulled back his hand with a stiff face. Qi Han wouldn’t let him go. As soon as Fu Ge tried harder, he cried that he hurt and hugged his arm, rubbing against it weakly.

“I didn’t mean to tear your painting. I really regret it. No one wants you to pick up the brush again more than I do. I was so happy to see that you could draw again that I wanted to scream out loud, but then I couldn’t control myself and went crazy again.”

“Because… that’s my little bear…”

He sniffled, his eyes slowly filling with tears as he pressed his face against Fu Ge’s arm. A whimper was mixed with a nasal sound, hoarse and incoherent—

“Can you not give my little bear to someone else… only it can prove that I was once special in gege’s heart…”

The diamonds had been smashed to smithereens, the sketch book had been burned, and even the silk ribbon that Fu Ge had told him to keep safe that year had been cut.

Apart from his body full of scars and his festering glands, Qi Han had nothing left.

He had been alone since he was fourteen, and now by the age of twenty-three, he had only earned more nightmares and the hatred that his lover would never be able to let go of.

Apart from the bear that Fu Ge would never draw for him again, Qi Han couldn’t find any proof that he too had been loved and saved.

There was silence for a long time, and even the ripples of the evening breeze stagnated.

A second before Qi Han accepted his fate and let go, Fu Ge suddenly said, “I didn’t give it.”

I have never given anything I promised to you to anyone else.

He took something from his pocket, pressed it hard on Qi Han’s forehead, leaving the Alpha on the bed dumbfounded, and said quickly, “You rest first,” then opened the door and ran away.

Qi Han hadn’t yet regained his senses, still sitting in the pose as if hugging someone and looking at the door. Three seconds later, he didn’t know which joint was suddenly set right, but he somehow realised there was a bit of shyness in Fu Ge’s back.

Just then, he smelled the smell of the red ink paste used for stamps slowly spreading from his forehead.

“Chen Xing! Chen Xing, get your ass in here! Chen Xing!”

“Ah, coming, coming! Crikey, on your forehead—”

“Don’t say it! Shut up!” Qi Han was so nervous that his palms were sweaty, and he shivered as he pointed to the cabinet, “Mirror, bring me the mirror!”

Chen Xing hurriedly did as he was told, throwing it to him from a distance. Qi Han clutched the mirror, not daring to look at it first.

He exhaled and took several deep breaths, muttering something as if looking for a way to cope, then lay down on the bed and closed his eyes.

The mirror and his eyelids were raised at the same time, and Qi Han only glanced at it for a second before he flopped back onto the pillow. Half a minute later a pitiful, funny sob came from the bed.

His forehead was stamped with a bear holding a honey jar.

The drawing of the little bear was gone, but he had an upgraded version of the bear stamp.