QT: Don't fall in love with the Male Lead

Xi Zirui can feel dread build in the pit of his stomach like a meal gone sour.

How is he going to get himself out of this?

Ni Ni chimes. "Host should go along with CEO's whims and find a way to escape once his guard is lowered."

Great idea! Too bad Su Xueyi seems to be getting more and more deranged in each word.

Obsessive stalker in the first one.

Tyrannical control freak in the second.

And now... a masochist in the sheets and a sadist in the streets?

"Host can still make jokes, that's a good sign," Ni Ni says, hopeful.

Xi Zirui badly wants to tell her to go fuck herself out loud. She's proven even more useless than usual in this world, and he still doesn't have an explanation for Su Xueyi's erratic behaviour compared to what she told him to expect.

He chances a sideways glance at Su Xueyi from the corner of his eyes, but all he sees is his vicious grip on the steering wheel and the manic smirk twisting his handsome features. His dimples are like twin knife wounds carved with cirurgical precision into his cheeks.

Su Xueyi catches him looking. "Are you scared, baby?"

Xi Zirui is, but he isn't going to give him that satisfaction. He narrows his eyes. "Of a loser like you? Never."

A chime. "Uhm, CEO's favor up by +3 points, now at 70 points. Congratulations?" She doesn't sound very sure of herself, and for once Xi Zirui doesn't blame her.

"I love it when you're a nasty little bitch," Su Xueyi says, laughing. "It reminds me of when we were younger."

Xi Zirui resents being compared to this world's original in any way and his lips remain sealed in sullen silence.

Su Xueyi darts another look at him. "It reminds of something else, but you're not going to believe it."

"I already don't believe a lot of what's happening right now," he says with a dismissive shrug. "So you might as well try me."

"It reminds me of when we were both young Gods and you would call me names and run away from me even when your parents told you to play nice."

Xi Zirui very slowly turns his face towards Su Xueyi, his eyes wide with incredulity. "What?"

Su Xueyi guffaws, making an ugly guttural sound. "I knew you wouldn't believe me, but I've been having these dreams about you since before we met."

Xi Zirui grips the sides of his seat, what is he supposed to say to all this?

He's screaming for Ni Ni inside his mind but she has gone completely quiet.

"In these dreams I was a God, a King, an Emperor...you name it, and at every turn, there was you," his eyes shift to Xi Zirui, "just always outside of my grasp, running towards something else, someone else, ready to bring everything I had worked for crashing down like a house of cards."

His expression grows mean. "A single one of your smiles can topple a city, a second could topple an Empire. Isn't that how it goes?"

Xi Zirui doesn't have anything to say, but Su Xueyi isn't done yet:

"Maybe you should stop smiling." The words stretch his lips into a cruel sneer.

"Do you see me smiling now?" Xi Zirui growls, fed up with this pointless conversation and Su Xueyi's cryptic words.

"Oh, but I haven't given you a reason to stop." The car picks up yet more speed. "Not yet."

---

For a moment, Xi Zirui thought they were going to crash into oncoming traffic before they arrived wherever Su Xueyi intended to take them, but eventually he gets off the highway, and into a narrow countryside road.

It takes them a few more minutes to reach a glass monstrosity built at the highest point of a rice field terrace, surrounded by lush mountainside greenery on all sides, and dotted with the occasional traditional wooden house in the far distance.

Of course the charm of the picturesque view is ruined by Su Xueyi's modernist house, which must have cost a fortune in bribes to the local environment preservation committee. 

"All you rich people have appalling taste," Xi Zirui says, as Su Xueyi parks the car under the house's second level, which resembles a glass shipping container mounted sideways on top of of another shipping container, this time made of raw concrete.

The feng shui of this place alone is throwing his meridians out of wack.

Su Xueyi opens Xi Zirui's door and pulls him out of the car with a vicious grip on his shoulder. "You talk as if you weren't also rich," he says. 

Xi Zirui throws him a derisive sneer as Su Xueyi continues to jostle him along towards the house's glass doors. "It's your money."

"You used to make a big deal about it being our money not long ago," he says, keying in a combination that unlocks the door. Xi Zirui can only catch the first string of numbers 4-5; the other two are hidden under the blur of Su Xueyi's suit sleeve.

He's pulled along into the house, tastefully decorated in hideous geometric furniture in neutral tones that manages to evoke the feeling of an overpriced psychiatrist's office. Exactly what Xi Zirui expected, and ironic, considering Su Xueyi's fraying mental state.

Also unsurprising is the fact that Su Xueyi drags him to an armchair in the living room and ties his feet to its legs with zip ties, and his arms to the padded armrests. 

But the zipties prove that he has been planning this for some time, possibly even before Xi Zirui arrived in this word.

He also arranges the armchair in such a way that Xi Zirui will be the first thing anyone coming in through the front door will see.

That little detail raises Xi Zirui's hackles more than anything Su Xueyi has done until now.

There's more to this little powerplay than meets the eye.

Su Xueyi kneels down in front of him and tests the strength of the bindings. "Comfortable?"

"Get fucked," Xi Zirui hisses, and spits in his face.

He gets unceremoniously backhanded across the cheek.

"Sorry baby, but I don't want you to have the wrong idea about this situation," he says, patting Xi Zirui's other cheek.

He steps away from him and rummages in his pocket until he finds a half crushed pack of cigarettes. He pulls one out and lights it, kneeling down in front of Xi Zirui again.

"I love it when you're mean, but I can't stand it when you're disrespectful," he says, blowing the smoke into Xi Zirui's face.

A strangled laugh makes its way past Xi Zirui's pursed lips."You're crazy, like, actually crazy."

"Would a crazy person build all this?" Xi Zirui says, spreading his arms to encompass the glass house. "Would someone crazy build an empire in the span of years?"

"You're working for the mob, I think you're giving yourself too much credit," Xi Zirui says with a snort.

"Did you think I didn't have to work hard to get to where I am? Do you think it's easy to convince the clans that my shipping routes are safe to use, that my product is trustworthy? I've had to make a name for myself just as surely as if I'd been establishing myself as a legitimate businessman," he pulls hard on the butt of of cigarette, "something I also did, by the way. Greydot has a spotless record, as far as anyone can tell."

"I guess all that is going up in flames now," Xi Zirui says shrugging. "Shen Yun is dead and his family will want revenge, and it's your WeChat contact inviting him over to the last place he was seen alive."

Su Xueyi taps the ash off his cigarette between Xi Zirui's spread thighs, staining the armchair's grey upholstery. "The funny thing is that everything is very easily pointing towards me, isn't it?"

Xi Zirui curses under his breath, this motherfucker is about to regale him with an evil monologue.

"You're the one who has dreams where he's a god, I'm sure you think everyone is beneath you, and that you'll come out of this unscathed."

"Both of us, baby, we were both gods," the smirks around his cigarette, "that's the thing about me that you've never appreciated; all of my accomplishments, I've served them all up to you on a silver platter."

"Maybe I don't want them."

Su Xueyi's eyes narrow and he puts out his cigarette on the chair between Xi Zirui's legs.  Xi Zirui doesn't flinch, but it's a close thing. 

"Now you don't, but you did in the beginning. That's the thing I can't understand about you." He shakes his head. "These dreams, or memories, whatever you want to call them...don't really show me things in chronological order, but I've noticed the pattern of you starting to act like the sight of me offends you, the moment he shows up."

Xi Zirui grows very still. "Who?" he asks, but he already knows the answer.

"Don't play innocent, there's only Han Yu for you," he says, and savors the way his words make panic rise in Xi Zirui's eyes.

"How would you even-"

Su Xueyi cuts him off. "I had to know if my dreams were real, if I really could become all I was destined to. There was no easier way to prove it than to see if you would also play your part."

"You should appreciate the effort I went through to give you Han Yu," he says suddenly, getting up to his feet with a groan. "I tired to hire him to do all sorts of things, from driver, to gardener, cook...but he never noticed the job offers, much less responded to them. So, I had to get creative."

Xi Zirui closes his eyes and swallows dryly around nothing. "Li Siqi, you knew who she was, you made sure she would see the guns."

Su Xueyi ruffles Xi Zirui's hair. "Baby, you're so smart. Yet something else that has mysteriously changed about you, but I was getting bored with the mindless wallflower version of you. I like this nasty version much better, and not just because you confirm that I'm meant for greatness." 

"I thought that if he had his sister's hospital bills to worry about, he would finally take one of the job offers," he chuckles darkly, "he did one better and kidnapped you."

Xi Zirui's eyes widen minutely, and Su Xueyi catches his surprise.

"Oh, he didn't tell you? That he kidnapped you so that I'd have a reason to hire a bodyguard? That his sister-in-law threatened my previous driver until he quit so that she could have his job?" Su Xueyi is having so much fun, it fills Xi Zirui with violent impulses. 

The moment he's out of this armchair he's going to make him regret every single one of those words of gloating.

Su Xueyi pats the cheek he smacked earlier, still smarting from the impact of his knuckles. "Don't look like that, baby. Han Yu brought this on himself, and his sister, it would all be so much easier if he'd just taken the job as a gardener or something, but he didn't want to work for a 'rich bastard', and look where that got him."

He touches Xi Zirui's jaw almost tenderly, his dimples denting his cheeks sweetly. "He didn't have any issues about fucking one, though, did he?"

"What the fuck do you want?" Xi Zirui shouts, the muscles in his jaw pulling taut with rage.

A chime sounds. "I'm sorry about the timing Host, but uhm, CEO's favor has gone up by +5, now at 75 of a possible 100 points. Ni Ni is going now."

"You're really worried about him, aren't you?" Su Xueyi's smile widens. "It took such a long time for you to warm up to him, but I knew it was finally working when you started treating me like shit." He grips Xi Zirui's face between his fingers. "You've always looked the most beautiful when saying the vilest things."

He leans down until his lips are almost brushing Xi Zirui's. "Now you're going to have a taste of your own poison. When your lover comes rushing in to save you like the big damn hero he thinks he is, and falls straight into the trap I've set for him."