*Bael’s POV*

The message from Liang Feng comes through at 3:47.

*Young Master’s session has ended. Currently at the café on Fenglin Street with Mr. Jun.*

Bael reads it once, then looks out the car window at the traffic ahead.

*Again.*

He sets his phone down on the seat beside him without replying.

The café on Fenglin Street. He knows the one — he’d had it looked up after the second time Liang Feng’s reports mentioned it. Small place, mostly empty by mid-afternoon, window seats. The kind of café that becomes a habit without anyone deciding it should be.

His jaw tightens slightly.

Not because Runze is there. Runze goes there after every session, he knows this, it’s professional, it’s reasonable, it’s two colleagues debriefing over coffee, there is nothing objectively wrong with any part of that sentence.

He is aware of all of this.

He looks out the window.

"How far?" he asks.

"Twelve minutes, sir. Traffic is light."

Bael nods once.

Twelve minutes.

He picks his phone back up and puts it back down without doing anything with it.

***

The car stops across from the café at 4:09.

Through the glass he can see two figures at the far table. Runze with his back mostly to the glass, the particular set of his shoulders that means he’s talking about something he finds interesting. Elliot Jun across from him, leaning forward slightly with his coffee.

Bael watches for a moment.

Then looks away.

He should go in.

He doesn’t go in.

The reasonable thing would be to walk through the door, acknowledge them both professionally, and tell Runze the car is here. Clean, simple, no disruption to anything.

He stays in the car.

Because the moment he walks through that door something will shift, and he hasn’t yet decided what he wants that shift to look like.

He knows what he feels now — that part is no longer unclear — but knowing what you feel and knowing what to do with it are two different problems entirely, and Bael has spent the last twenty minutes in traffic realizing he hasn’t solved the second one.

So he waits.

The driver doesn’t ask questions, which Bael appreciates.

Inside the café, Runze says something and Elliot laughs. Bael can’t hear it through the glass, just sees the movement. Runze’s chin lifting slightly the way it does when he’s pleased with himself about something.

Something tightens in Bael’s chest that he doesn’t immediately examine.

He looks at his phone instead.

Puts it down again.

Four minutes pass.

Then the café door opens.

They come out together, Runze pulling his bag up on one shoulder, still talking, the conversation clearly not quite finished. The afternoon light catches his face and Bael goes very still in the back of the car.

He’s seen Runze nearly every day for months.

That’s why he doesn’t understand why it feels like seeing him for the first time.

The line of him, the way his hair falls slightly across his forehead. That particular combination of delicate bone structure and the stubborn set of his jaw that never quite matches how pretty he looks. The slight curve of his stomach visible now even in his coat, the way he moves through a space like he’s decided he belongs there and dares anyone to argue.

His heart is beating in a way that feels distinctly unreasonable.

Runze gestures at something across the street, still mid-sentence.

Elliot responds, nodding.

Then Runze takes a step forward off the low curb at the café entrance and his foot catches the edge wrong... just slightly, just enough, and his balance goes sideways.

Elliot’s hand catches his waist before he stumbles properly.

The door handle is in Bael’s grip before the thought is complete.

He’s out of the car.

He crosses the street with the particular efficiency of someone who has already decided and doesn’t need to think about it anymore.

He’s aware that this is not measured or controlled, that he crossed twelve feet of pavement in roughly four seconds, that his heart is doing something unreasonable in his chest.

He’s aware of all of it and keeps walking anyway.

Elliot sees him first.

His expression moves through several things very quickly, surprise, recognition, a rapid recalculation of the situation, and then he steps back, releasing Runze’s waist and straightening with the smooth professionalism of someone who understands exactly what just happened and is electing to be gracious about it.

"Mr. Wuchen," he says.

Runze, still getting his footing, goes still at the sound of his name.

Then he turns.

Their eyes meet.

"Bael?"

His voice is just surprised.

Nothing else yet — not guarded, not careful, not any of the controlled distance he’s been maintaining for days. Just the unfiltered reaction of someone who wasn’t expecting to see him here, in this specific context, looking however Bael is currently looking.

Bael does not answer immediately. His heartbeat is steady, but loud in his ears.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

Not from the walk across the street, not from the alpha instinct that had him out of the car before he’d processed the thought.

From this. From Runze looking at him with no walls up for exactly this one unguarded second, eyes wide, lips slightly parted, the afternoon light catching the sharp line of his cheek.

For a moment, neither of them says anything.

The city moves around them. Cars pass, someone exits the café behind Elliot, the ordinary sounds of the street continue as though nothing significant has happened.

But something has.

More than a month had passed since Runze stopped sleeping in their room.

Standing here now, looking at Runze across a few feet of pavement, he suddenly understood just how much he hated it.

The empty side of the bed, the quiet, the absence he’d taught himself not to notice.

Somehow he’d endured it for weeks.

And the three days of distance afterward had only made it worse.

Because every room Runze left behind felt emptier than it should have, because every silence stretched farther than it should have, because seeing him now feels less like finding someone he misplaced and more like finding something essential that had been missing without him understanding why.

And when Runze says his name again—

"Bael?"

—Bael finally understands why.

Bael is in love with this person.

The thought arrives not as a realization this time but as a fact. Simple, complete, requiring nothing from him except acknowledgment.

He is in love with Runze.