It had been two weeks since Bai Ju woke up in Mo Fei's body.
Two weeks of confusion, pain, and quietly learning how to exist inside a life that did not belong to him.
His injuries had improved enough that he could move around now, though not without discomfort. His ribs still ached when he shifted too quickly, and his body tired more easily than he liked, but at least he was no longer trapped helplessly in that hospital bed.
In those two weeks, Aria had come almost every day.
Sometimes she brought food he was barely allowed to eat. Sometimes she brought gossip from the outside world. Sometimes she just sat there with him, talking like he was still Mo Fei and refusing to let the room drown in silence.
She was, Bai Ju had come to realize, the only real friend Mo Fei seemed to have.
And strangely, that comforted him.
In the middle of all this madness, at least there was one person beside him.
Today was the day he was being discharged.
Aria had arrived early to pick him up, dressed in oversized sunglasses and a coat that probably cost more than Bai Ju had made in six months before dying or almost dying. She had insisted on a wheelchair. Bai Ju had refused. He could walk. Barely, perhaps, but he could.
So in the end, she settled for holding his hand as she guided him toward the exit like he was one wrong step away from collapsing.
The hospital doors slid open and Instantly, the noise outside crashed over them.
Camera shutters erupted the moment his face appeared. A line of reporters waiting near the barricade surged forward at once, microphones stretching through the air like weapons hunting blood. Aria's bodyguards moved quickly, stepping ahead and to the sides to form a wall around them.
"Back up!"
"Give him space!"
It made little difference the second the crowd realized Mo Fei was walking out.
Some fans screamed his name.
Others were not fans at all.
"LOOK AT HIM!"
"THE WITCH IS STILL ALIVE!"
"GO BACK INSIDE!"
Something plastic hit the ground near the barricade and bounced across the pavement with a hollow clatter. Aria's fingers tightened around Bai Ju's hand as more camera flashes Relentlessly
"MO FEI!"
"MO FEI!"
"OVER HERE!"
Microphones pushed forward, desperate and ugly.
"Did you knowingly date an engaged woman?!"
"Do you regret destroying a family?!"
"Are you apologizing to the fiancée?!"
Then a woman's voice cut cleanly through the noise, sharp as broken glass.
"You should be ashamed!"
Aria's jaw tightened.
"Keep walking," she said under her breath.
Her bodyguards shoved back the crowd as best they could, clearing a path toward the waiting car. Bai Ju kept moving, his heartbeat pounding harder with every step. They were close,just a few more strides and then it happened.
A reporter lunged past the barricade.
His hand shot out and grabbed Bai Ju's wrist.
The sudden force yanked him backward hard enough to throw off his balance. Pain flared hot through his healing body.
"HEY!" one of the bodyguards barked.
But the reporter had already shoved his microphone forward, eyes glittering with the kind of excitement only scavengers seemed capable of.
Camera flashes exploded around them.
Then, loud enough for every microphone and camera to catch it, he asked, "Mo Fei!"
His voice dripped with fake curiosity and real cruelty. "How does it feel to be the disgraced witch of the industry?"
For one sharp second, the crowd quieted, Microphones hovered inches from his face.
Bai Ju stared at the man gripping him.
He wasn't Mo Fei.
He wasn't the one who had dated some trash fiancé. He wasn't the one who had cried and broken beneath weeks of online abuse. But now he was inside Mo Fei's body, wearing Mo Fei's face, standing in the wreckage of Mo Fei's life.
And he would be damned if he let these idiots tear into him like he was prey.
His eyes turned cold, With one sharp motion, he yanked his hand free.
Then he looked directly at the reporter and said, clear and cutting
"Screw you."
He turned immediately, got into the car, and pulled the door shut behind him.
For half a second after the words left his mouth, there was silence, Pure stunned silence.
Even the reporters looked frozen.
Because Mo Fei,the man they had hounded for weeks, the man who had barely defended himself, the man they thought was too broken to fight back, had just looked one of them in the eye and told him exactly where to go.
Then the world exploded.
"Did he just say that?!"
"Did Mo Fei just curse at the press?!"
Cameras flashed wildly again, brighter and faster than before. Microphones knocked against the car windows as reporters crowded closer, shouting over each other in a frenzy.
"MO FEI!"
"ARE YOU DENYING THE ALLEGATIONS?!"
"ARE YOU SAYING THE FIANCÉE LIED?!"
"ARE YOU NOT SORRY?!"
One furious voice screamed, "HOMEWRECKER!"
But by then the driver had already started the engine. Aria's bodyguards pushed the crowd back just enough for the vehicle to pull away from the hospital entrance.
Inside the car, silence rushed in, The chaos outside dulled quickly as the car merged onto the street and the hospital disappeared behind them.
Aria was staring at him.Her expression sat somewhere between disbelief and fascination, as though she had just watched a rabbit punch a wolf in the mouth.
Then she leaned back in her seat slowly.
"...Holy shit."
She ran a hand through her hair and laughed. "You just told the press to screw themselves."
She shook her head, still stunned.
"The internet is going to explode in about ten minutes."
She pulled out her phone. It was already vibrating nonstop with notifications.
Outside the window, the city moved as if nothing had happened. Cars passed. Pedestrians crossed. Shops opened and closed. The world kept going. But online the entertainment industry had just felt the first tremor of something new.
Across the city, inside a quiet luxury studio, a tall, handsome man stood beneath bright lighting while stylists adjusted the set around him.
The director clapped his hands. "Alright, reset! We'll run the next shot in a minute."
But the man wasn't paying attention to the camera. He was looking at his phone.
On the screen, a video was already spreading like wildfire across the internet.
The hospital entrance.
The crowd.
The shouting.
Then Mo Fei pulling his hand from a reporter's grip, lifting that cold gaze, and saying two words that had instantly set the internet on fire.
Screw you.
A stylist nearby noticed his attention had drifted.
"...Yichen?"
There was no response. Zhang Yichen replayed the clip once. His expression barely changed,And then, slowly, the faintest smile touched his lips.
"Interesting."
Across from him, Nil, his manager, was balancing two phones and a tablet like a man born to suffer in designer shoes, he groaned under his breath.
"Oh, great."
He knew that tone.
Whenever Zhang Yichen smiled, someone in the industry was about to have a very complicated week.