Shen Yi did not deny it. The matter with Bai Que would eventually reach her family’s ears. “Mm.”
Hearing her admission with his own ears, Shen Wenta forced the faint stir of unease down.
After a moment, he tugged at the corner of his mouth, a bitter smirk surfacing. “Unbelievable. Back when you were little, you were the one who needed protection.”
He remembered her as a child, always hiding behind Shen Xun.
“I’ve always felt,” Shen Wenta continued, “that you and Big Brother had this strange familiarity, like you’d known each other for ages.”
“The other two are the same. You’ve always been closer with them.”
“You’ve always been easy to read,” he said, his face pale, the words spilling out once they started. “Every shift in your personality has been obvious.”
“The first change came because of Shen Ruxu. The way you mustered the courage to kill—in Shen Ruxu’s eyes, you must have seemed both formidable and pitiable.”
“The second was Shen Xun. What did you learn from that?”
“Was it a disregard for life? Even as an assassin, you used to spare the insignificant ones. But during the operations to wipe out He Guang, Uncle said you showed no mercy. Not once.”
Shen Yi thought he was truly clever.
He could see every transformation in her so clearly.
She had indeed learned that from Bai Que.
And with it, she had lost her initial reverence for life.
After dying so many times, Shen Yi had even begun to grow indifferent to her own existence.
Shen Wenta paused, something lodged in his throat. He swallowed before pressing on.
“You always grow, in ways I don’t know about, because of them.”
He bit his lip, his expression unreadable, wanting to ask her recklessly: If I died tonight, would you pity me too?
The words hovered at his lips, then he forced them back down.
He didn’t have the confidence.
Shen Wenta had always questioned everything he received since childhood.
All his sense of superiority came from his family, his status. But strip that away, and he felt he had nothing.
His temperament was always aggressive; he hated her kindness to others, even if it was just giving away a single flower.
Moonlight cast the small distance between them into sharp relief.
Shen Yi was lost in thought.
She noticed the rose in his pocket swaying with the sea breeze.
“So, Shen Wenta, what exactly are you trying to say?”
She thought he was acting strange tonight, and she tried to get him to explain himself.
Yet she found him instinctively avoiding her gaze.
Shen Yi frowned.
It suddenly struck her: Shen Wenta had always been afraid of her dredging up the past.
She rarely dwelled on old grudges, but he was inexplicably worried about it.
Because he had treated her terribly once.
He used to cause her trouble, nitpick her every request, look her up and down with that scrutinizing, judgmental gaze.
Maybe it was the years of conflict and an unhappy childhood.
It had left him insecure to this day.
What he feared most was being abandoned, or not being chosen.
That conviction had been ingrained in him since childhood: not being chosen meant being discarded.
In a great family, winners took all, and losers ended with nothing.
His upbringing had forged his current obsession.
Shen Wenta had encountered many people.
Business partners, rivals, all sorts of people with hidden agendas—everyone who approached him sought something.
Power, money, connections, resources.
This habit had trained him to instinctively question any affection that came without exchange.
Everything could be used for trade.
That was his unshakable creed.
So whenever she was good to him, he always felt the need to give something back.
That way, emotionally speaking, Shen Wenta could convince himself they were on equal footing.
But was that really true?
Shen Wenta looked down at his hands. Shallow marks from his grip lingered on the railing.
He thought: Lies.
In front of her, he always crumbled easily.
No matter how much he prepared, the moment she stood before him and casually spoke a kind word for someone else, all his defenses collapsed.
He could never quantify his feelings for her as a transaction.
Their emotions were always lopsided.
That terrified him, because it meant he held no bargaining chips. It meant he could be discarded in her eyes.
Shen Wenta clutched the rose in his pocket, crushing the petals until the juice seeped out. “Shen Yi… I don’t really know you at all. You never listen to me. You know how dangerous Bai Que is—what can I even do with you?”
“What have you been doing behind my back?”
“What are you all hiding from me?”
“Sorry,” Shen Yi said, suddenly feeling like the protagonist in some melodrama under his sudden interrogation.
She hesitated for a moment. “There are some things I can’t tell you right now.”
She could also feel how out of sorts he was tonight.
Maybe it was because of all the secrets he’d been kept from.
Or maybe it was because she was always busy with others, shutting him out entirely.
Even if others had been excluded, they wouldn’t have reacted this strongly.
But Shen Wenta was extreme when it came to emotions.
He wanted to hold on until the very end.
Hearing her perfunctory apology, Shen Wenta instinctively wanted to sneer.
But the sneer barely touched his lips before it crumbled into an expression of raw, disheveled vulnerability.
“I hate that you’re biased. It makes me really sad.”
When those words left his mouth, he might not have even realized how soft they sounded.
Especially the last part—it felt like resentment that had been compressed and warped from being buried too long.
Shen Yi was stunned.
It was the first time she’d heard him speak so plainly about his own feelings.
How could the word “bias” even apply to her?
Shen Yi tried to think of him as a neglected cat.
As a dutiful pet owner, she believed she loved every cat equally.
But clearly, this cat had no sense of security.
A wave of guilt washed over Shen Yi. “I’m sorry. I really don’t play favorites. You probably won’t believe me—you’ve always been paranoid and suspicious, like some kind of madman—but this time, I truly came on board because of you.”
“I don’t like getting on boats. I don’t like banquets.”
“This place is awful, but you’re here, so I came.”
“The flower I gave Sui Ning earlier was just grabbed randomly. This one I picked out with care, the prettiest one,” Shen Yi said, pulling out a bloom and handing it to him.
“The lily you like. For you.”
Shen Wenta looked down at the flower. Its white petals glowed soft under the moonlight, their edges curling slightly, like tiny, cautious tentacles reaching out.
“It’s not a lily,” Shen Wenta said, taking it with trembling fingertips.
“It’s you.”
He didn’t like lilies.
He liked her most of all.
