Xiao Fengchen tied frozen, his breath trapped in his throat as the scene before him burned itself into his mind.
He wished with every fiber of his being that he could switch places with Ross just for one moment, one impossible second.
"That should have been me!"
The thought slammed through him like a physical blow.
His hands clenched into fists at his sides, nails biting into his palms hard enough to draw blood, yet he barely felt the pain.
All he could feel was the raw, twisting agony of watching another man claim what he had always believed was meant for him alone.
"I should have been the one who took Su Hanying's purity!"
His mind screamed the words over and over, a frantic, broken loop.
He had imagined this moment countless times in the quiet of night and how he would be the first, the only one.
How her soft gasps and trembling body would belong to him.
How he would be the one to cross that final, irreversible line with her.
