Chapter 54

Ding-dong—

“Star Island Station. Doors open on the right. Mind the gap between the train and the platform.”

The Subway doors slid open and the crowd poured out, most of them young, energetic faces — Star Island District was packed with bars and clubs of every size, always the top choice for S City's young people looking for nightlife.

Sorry! Excuse me, thanks!

The omega shouldered his Backpack through the crush of bodies. Barely out of the station, he checked his Mobile Phone and immediately broke into a run, charging into the night.

Past a few bars, into a Little Alley. He ran, gasping, all the way to the end, stepped through the back door, and before he could catch his breath, a high-pitched shriek pierced his head from one ear to the other.

Li Shu—!

Ding Mengge came at him in heels, grabbed his collar, and pulled him down to close the height gap. “Didn't I tell you I had a date tonight and you needed to be here on time to take over?”

“Yeah, yeah…” Li Shu ducked his head, his pretty eyes widening with nerves. “My group was slammed today. Got held up a bit. Sorry.”

“…Fine.” Ding Mengge looked at him for a few seconds, let go, and smoothed out the wrinkles in his collar. “My sweet baby. Who could stay mad at that face? Ugh— can you please throw out this shirt? It's been washed to death. Go buy yourself something new.”

“It's fine, I can still wear it. New clothes can wait till New Year.”

“Are you a kid? You wait till New Year to buy new clothes?” Her Mobile Phone rang. Ding Mengge shrieked. “Gotta go, bye!”

He watched her trip on the threshold and stumble out, then turned toward the changing room, peeled off his jacket and shirt, pulled on his uniform, and clipped on his Neck Ring.

Through the winding, dim, narrow corridor — where every few steps someone was either getting handsy in a corner or hunting for the bathroom — Li Shu made it to the bar. Tonight's ticket stack was so tall the bartenders didn't have time for showmanship. They'd have stirred twice and shoved the drink at the customer if they could.

“Lucien, how long on the Deep Water Bomb for table D9?” The bartender's voice crackled from the intercom behind the bar.

“Bombs away, bombs away.” Lucien wiped sweat off his temple with his shoulder, muddler clacking away. “I hate Fridays. I hate weekends.”

Li Shu set a Dry Martini on a tray, lifted it, and lied through his teeth with a nod. “I love it.”

“Empathyless college kid. Get lost!”

Li Shu slipped away, delivered the drink to the booth. The customer glanced at his face through the trippy lighting, and the fingers resting on the leather wallet slid forward, peeling off an extra stack of bills onto the tray.

“Thank you, enjoy your evening.” No excitement at the big tip — Li Shu just gave a polite nod. “Press the bell if you need anything.”

He straightened up, folded the bills twice with one hand and tucked them into his shirt pocket. Then an arm slid around his shoulder from behind.

Shi'er Point Bar had its flaws — tucked away, tiny, stingy owner — but it had killed the drink commission system. Servers didn't have to compete for sales or play nice with customers. And the line “Harassing bar staff or omega customers gets you killed” was one of the warnings taped to the front door. If anyone tried it, the two-meter-tall bouncer usually showed up within five seconds.

So the hand on his shoulder could only belong to the boss.

“Little Li Shifu, here early tonight, huh.” Kiss marks all over his cheeks and neck, drenched in a dozen different omega Pheromones, Zhou Zhuo asked, drunk. “How much in tips? Split some with me. Ease the pain of getting groped.”

The second warning on the door: “But the boss is fair game.”

Li Shu flashed that polite smile again. “That's my private property. Hands off.”

“Coveting? This is payback!” Zhou Zhuo butted his forehead against the right side of Li Shu's head. “You already forgot the whole sob story of me jumping through hoops to get you registered? The way you kept touching your new ID like you were about to cry — that was all an act, right? Ungrateful little—”

“I'll work harder to repay you,” Li Shu said. “But you can't have designs on my assets.”

“You've got less than five thousand yuan to your whole name and you're calling it assets? Give me a break.”

Li Shu pressed his lips together, embarrassed. After a long pause: “Still a lot of money.”

Compared to before, five thousand was a fortune. And he'd earned every cent himself. There'd be more, too.

“We're already slammed and you're out here chatting up the staff.” Lucien was shaking a drink like his life depended on it, yelling over the music. “Boss, if you can't do the job, quit!”

“Talking back to the boss — another reason to dock your pay this month.” Zhou Zhuo let go, patted Li Shu's back. “Get to work. I'll find you when it's done.”

Just past two a.m., the customers were gone and most of the staff had clocked out. Li Shu changed, leaned back against the locker, and crouched on the floor, carefully counting tonight's tips. Three times. Then he rolled them up and put them in his Backpack, pulled out his beat-up Mobile Phone, and started checking messages.

“How can anyone be as broke and money-obsessed as you.” Zhou Zhuo bit down on a cigarette, leaning against the doorframe. “Just focus on school. Stop chasing cash. It's not like we can't cover you.”

He let out a long sigh. “I'm barely out of my twenties and I'm already playing dad.”

“School's fine, you know that. I've won a few awards already.” Li Shu looked up. “I just don't want to keep leaning on you guys forever. I need to earn my own money. And I only come in when I've got the time.”

“Fine, do what you want.” A pause. Then Zhou Zhuo asked, “That thing you mentioned last time — you're sure you want to sign up? It's a Military Headquarters project. You guys are just there to observe and learn, but there's still a chance they'll do a background check. I can't promise your identity won't come up with something off.”

“I'm still asking around. I don't know how deep the vetting goes. But if I can, I want to try. My teacher's been recommending me too. Our Preparatory School isn't a military academy — opportunities like this only come once or twice a year. They're rare.” Just talking about it, Li Shu's eyes lit up. “I've never even touched military hardware. If I could see it in person, I'd learn so much.”

“How can you be this obsessed with this stuff.” Zhou Zhuo shook his head, half rueful. “If it weren't for your identity issues, you could've tried for a military academy. Sleeping on a fighter jet every night — you'd have died happy.”

Li Shu just smiled. “This is already plenty good. I've been lucky enough.”

“For you, yeah — being alive counts as lucky.” Zhou Zhuo stubbed out his cigarette. “Stop dawdling. Get home. I'll drive you.”

“Reporting you for drunk driving.” Li Shu stood, slung his Backpack on. “I'm biking. Call a designated driver.”

Before Zhou Zhuo could say anything, Li Shu was already out the back door, then out of the alley, scanning a shared bike at the curb and hopping on.

Li Shu loved biking at night. The roads were empty and quiet — just wind and his own breathing. Want to get home fast? Pedal hard. Want to take in the view? Slow down. All up to him. No limits.

Thirty-five minutes later, he locked up at the parking spot closest to home and walked on, rounding the corner into the alley. Only two lamps lit it, dim and weak. Li Shu's footsteps had that practiced calm of someone who'd walked this route a thousand times.

Past the alley sat an Old Residential Area — gray, hunched at the edge of the bright commercial district, like time had forgotten it. When the agent first brought Li Shu to see the place, he'd bragged about the security setup. Li Shu showed up and found out the “security setup” was a busted guard booth. He peeked inside: the guard, white-haired, reading glasses perched on his nose, looked like he already had great-grandkids, half-deaf, listening to opera on a radio cranked loud enough for the whole of S City to enjoy.

But he rented it anyway. Cheapest. Most forgettable. Best fit for him.

Deep into the night, the stalls along the little street had long packed up. The trash bins gave off a mix of food and fruit smells. Li Shu stepped over fruit peels stuck to the ground like chewed gum and walked into the pitch-black stairwell, flipping on his phone light again.

Up four flights, two turns of the key, the wooden door groaned open, light flicked on. After a long day, he was finally back in this dim little hole — under twenty square meters, Zhou Zhuo called it a mouse hole. Li Shu dropped his keys in the little basket by the door and let out a long breath.

A bare-bones studio — bedroom, living room, and kitchen all in one. Li Shu had used an old cabinet as a makeshift divider, barely carving out a sleeping nook. Made it feel a little safer at night.

Shower first, no matter what. He grabbed his pajamas and squeezed into the tiny bathroom. The ancient water heater spat out lukewarm water at best. He shivered through it and cut the shower short.

As he dried off, the thin fog on the mirror over the sink cleared. Li Shu glanced at it, then turned to face it square, his gaze drifting slowly downward. Water on the floor slid into the drain, making a hollow gurgling sound in the silence. Li Shu stared at his lower belly for several seconds, then set the towel down and pulled on his pajamas.

He cooked a bowl of noodles, set it on a chair at the foot of the bed, and crouched down with his back against the bed frame. Just oil, salt, and a splash of soy sauce in the noodles — plain, but Li Shu ate it like it was the best thing ever, eyes on the old TV with its busted display. Only a few channels came in. Right now it was stuck on the military one.

“Recently, White Lion 7th Squad has successfully withdrawn from the desert, completing a hostage rescue operation at a lab, and eliminated a large number of Military Base militants. No casualties among hostages or squad members.”

White Lion — an elite special forces unit handpicked from the top cadets of every military academy in the League, put through brutal screening and training. They ran all kinds of special ops, famous in military circles for the danger and the sheer combat power. The 7th Squad focused on land operations. One of its members held the 4,130-meter sniper record from two years back — still unbroken.

Li Shu had heard classmates say that top sniper was actually the commander of White Lion 7th Squad, but who knew if that was true. Most of his military intel came from the news and hearsay — the former brief and carefully worded, the latter unverifiable.

Li Shu watched the TV, a strand of noodles hanging off his chopsticks going cold by his mouth, but the news didn't cough up a single photo or footage of White Lion 7th Squad. How many members, their names, ages, schools — Military Headquarters kept it all locked down. To the public, “White Lion” was so mysterious and so powerful it felt like they existed on a different plane entirely.

The news ended. Li Shu looked down, finished the last of his noodles, drank the broth clean, then grabbed his phone from the bed, opened a chat, and transferred two thousand to the other person.

A dozen seconds later, the phone rang. The screen read “Fang Yisen”.

“You back from your business trip? Why aren't you asleep yet?”

“Still abroad. It's only eleven here.” Fang Yisen said, “Why are you transferring me money again? You still have living expenses?”

“Yeah. Earn a little more, send a little more. That's how paying off debt works, right?” Li Shu was smiling, debt and all. “I won't starve myself.”

“Are you working at that bar every single day?”

“No. Friday and Saturday nights, that's it. I've got school the rest of the time. Why do you and Zhou Zhuo both keep acting like I'm not studying?”

“I don't think that. I'm just worried your body can't take it. Don't rack up new medical bills trying to pay off the old ones — not worth it.” Fang Yisen reminded him. “It's late there. Get some sleep.”

“Okay. Going to sleep right now.”

He hung up, washed his bowl and brushed his teeth, stood for a bit to let his food settle, then crawled into bed.

Sleep wouldn't come right away. Li Shu opened a bookmarked site in his phone browser and studied the upcoming presale models, word by word, picture by picture.

He liked every single one. Wanted them all. But every price made his heart stop.

“It's fine. Just models.” Li Shu told himself. Maybe soon he'd get to see and touch a real fighter jet.

He turned off his phone, set it on the pillow, pulled the blanket up to his chin, closed his eyes, and — like so many nights before — fell asleep alone in this little room that no longer smelled of any Pheromone.