Chapter Text
Wei Ying had never planned on working at Lan Enterprises. In fact, he hadn't planned on working for big corporations at all—too many rules, too many people in suits, too many fake smiles during meetings. But in today's world, a marketing degree wasn't a ticket to freedom; it was a pass to an open-plan office with air conditioning and a coffee point on every floor. Five months of sending out resumes, three rejections, two interviews where he was looked at like a blank space, and finally—a call from the HR department of Lan Enterprises. Senior Marketing Communications Specialist. Three months of probation. A salary that meant he could finally stop eating instant noodles on weekends.
The office was located in the business district, in a building made of glass and concrete that reflected the sky so clearly that birds sometimes crashed into it at full flight. On his first day, Wei Ying was ten minutes late because he couldn't find the street entrance—all the doors looked identical, leading into lobbies where security guards in earpieces followed him with silent stares. At the reception, he was handed a plastic ID badge with a photo where he looked goofy, sports a silly smile and overgrown bangs, and was told how to get to the marketing wing. Seventh floor. Office 7-12. The head of the department was a woman named Xue, young and strict, who took one judgmental look at his favorite sweater and said, "Tomorrow, we’re sorting out your wardrobe."
The first three days passed without incident. Wei Ying signed paperwork, met his colleagues, and learned to navigate the internal system, where every single document required seven levels of approval. He managed to make friends with a girl from a neighboring department named Luo Qingyang, who treated him to cookies and shared some gossip: the Head of Security was a mysterious, reclusive type whom everyone feared and no one ever saw. "They say he’s from the family that founded the company," Luo Qingyang whispered, looking around. "Hardly anyone has ever spoken to him. He only interacts with his brother." Wei Ying just shrugged back then—large corporations were always full of strange people.
On the fourth day, he got lost.
It happened after lunch when he left Office 7-12 in search of a water cooler. The one in their office was at the end of the hallway, but it had run dry, and the secretary mentioned there was another one in the west wing, two floors up. Wei Ying didn't like asking for help, so he decided to find it himself. He walked through glass doors, rode the escalator, turned left, then right, then left again, and at some point, realized it had grown quiet. Too quiet for a busy Friday in a massive building.
The hallways here were narrower, the lighting dimmed. There were no nameplates or department signs on the doors—only cold numbers stamped into metal. The floor beneath his feet changed from carpet to dark stone that felt cold even through the soles of his sneakers. Wei Ying was just about to turn back when he noticed one of the doors at the end of the corridor was slightly ajar. A faint light spilled out, and Wei Ying—out of pure curiosity bordering on stupidity—headed toward it.
He peeked through the crack.
The room had no windows. The walls were grey concrete, completely bare. In the center of the floor lay a man. A man in a business suit was face down, and the blood beneath him had pooled into a dark puddle that gleamed under the light of a single bulb hanging from the ceiling. Standing over the body was another man—tall, remarkably tall, wearing a black shirt with sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His back was to the door, and Wei Ying could see the play of muscles beneath the fabric—broad shoulders, a narrow waist, a physique that clearly didn't fit standard office chair dimensions.
Then, the man turned around.
Wei Ying didn't even have time to flinch. He stared, unable to look away—because on the stranger's face, across his cheekbones and forearms, a faint blue shimmer of scales glistened. Not a tattoo, not makeup. Living, iridescent scales growing right out of his pale skin. And his eyes—vertical slits, yellow like molten metal, without a single hint of a human pupil.
"You shouldn't be here," the man said. His voice was low, almost entirely devoid of inflection, as if a block of ice had somehow learned to speak.
Wei Ying couldn't answer. He couldn't even swallow.
The man took a step toward him. Just one step, but the hallway suddenly felt suffocatingly tight—this man filled the entire space, his shoulders nearly brushing the doorframes, his shadow swallowing Wei Ying whole. Up close, the scales were even more terrifying—small, dense, they grew along his cheekbones and crept down his neck, disappearing beneath the collar of his shirt.
"What is your name," the man demanded. Not a question, but a command.
"Wei Wuxian," he breathed out, because in moments like this, even the most skilled liar couldn't forge a lie.
The man stared at him for a few seconds. In complete silence. Wei Ying's heart dropped. He braced himself for the scales to flare brighter, or for claws to grow, or for this someone—this non-human—to just reach out and snap his neck.
But instead, the scales began to fade. Slowly, almost reluctantly, the blue plates vanished into the skin, retracting inward. The serpentine eyes blinked—and turned into ordinary, brown, human eyes. Standing before Wei Ying was simply a very tall, very large, very handsome man with a stern face and long black hair tied into a low ponytail. If not for the corpse three meters behind him, Wei Ying might have thought he imagined the whole thing.
"You work in marketing," the man said. A statement, not a question. "I saw your photo on the new hire list. Wei Wuxian. Twenty-two years old. Graduated university this spring."
"You... you investigated me?" Wei Ying's voice cracked into a squeak at the end.
"I investigate everyone who crosses the threshold of this company," the man replied calmly. "You saw nothing. Forget it. Go back to the marketing department. If you tell anyone about what happened here, I will know."
Wei Ying nodded, though he barely felt his head move. He turned and walked away. His back burned with the sensation of being watched. His shoes skidded on the stone floor, and at one point, he nearly tripped because his legs refused to cooperate. He didn't look back. Only when the glass doors closed behind him and the familiar office hum returned—chatter, clacking keyboards, the rumbling of the coffee machine—did he realize he was breathing. Deeply, rapidly, like a fish out of water.
He made it to the restroom on the seventh floor, locked himself in a cubicle, sat down on the toilet lid, and stayed there for half an hour, staring blankly at a single point on the tiled wall.
Wei Ying didn't remember the rest of the workday. He filled out spreadsheets, replied to emails, and smiled at his colleagues—all on autopilot, like a clockwork doll. Luo Qingyang asked if something was wrong, to which he replied that he just hadn't slept well. He didn't remember taking the subway, getting into the train car, or stepping off at his station. The only thing stuck in his memory was the sound of his own breathing, echoing too loudly in the silence of the empty train station.
---
At home, he locked the door with every bolt—the first, the second, the chain. He pressed his back against the cold surface and slowly slid down until he was sitting on the hallway floor. He didn't take off his sneakers. Nor his jacket. He didn't turn on the lights—the streetlamp outside cut through the windows, painting the floor with orange stripes.
The panic didn't hit him immediately. At first, there was only emptiness in his head—white noise, like a TV failing to catch a channel. But then, the emptiness filled up.
*That was not a human. You saw it with your own eyes. Scales. Snake eyes. A corpse three meters away from you. The blood was glistening. You couldn't have made this up.*
*He said he investigated you. He knew your name, your age, your university. Knew you were a new employee. He is the Head of Security. He can do anything. He can find out where you live.*
*The way he looked at you. Not like you were a witness. It was something else.*
Wei Ying clutched his hair and pulled, hoping the physical pain would distract him from his thoughts. It didn't.
He stood up. His legs were shaking, but he forced himself to walk into the room, toward the closet. He pulled out an old backpack—the very one he had traveled to the city with when applying for college. He began tossing things inside: jeans, t-shirts, a charger, his passport, all his cash—twenty thousand yuan that had been tucked away in a book on the shelf.
Only when the backpack was full did he freeze.
Where to?
He unlocked his phone. With trembling fingers, he typed "buses to other cities" into the search bar, then immediately closed it as bright ticket advertisements flashed before his eyes. He could leave. He could board a bus or a train right now, get to another city, rent a room or a hostel bed.
And then what?
Wei Ying lowered his phone.
He didn't have the money to rent an apartment in a new city. For the first couple of weeks—maybe, but he would have to look for a job immediately, and new employers only wanted to hire people with local registration or at least temporary residency. Temporary residency cost money. Money he didn't have. He would burn through his remaining savings in two weeks at a hostel, and then end up on the street in an unfamiliar city, without friends, without connections, without anything.
*Here, I have a job. I have colleagues. There’s Luo Qingyang, who treats me to cookies. I have a room that I rent for three thousand yuan, and a neighbor downstairs who yells at his grandson in the evenings. It’s not a perfect life, but it’s my life.*
*If I leave, I lose everything. And him... what will he do if I vanish? Back in that room, he didn't kill me. He could have. But he didn't. Why?*
Wei Ying sat on the edge of the bed, clutching the half-empty backpack. A decision formed in his mind—not the best, not a brave one, but the only one he had the strength for.
Tomorrow, he wouldn't go to work.
Not permanently. Just for a while. A three-month probation period. He could just ghost them, miss a couple of days, take a breather. His body couldn't handle the stress—that’s what he would say if HR called. A medical note? They’d ask for one, sure, but he could say he didn't have the strength to even go to the clinic. Employers hated employees like that, but he had only worked there for four days anyway. They would fire him. That would be even better. He wouldn't have to return to that building, wouldn't have to see that man, wouldn't have to pretend he had forgotten the windowless room and the corpse on the concrete floor.
He would live off his remaining savings for a bit, and then see. Worst case scenario—he’d return to his mother in Jiangnan, but he didn't want to think about that right now, because returning defeated felt worse than being afraid.
Wei Ying lay down in his clothes, without undressing, and stared at the ceiling. The backpack remained standing by the bed, gaping open and ready for flight.
---
The next morning, the alarm rang at eight. Wei Ying hit dismiss and turned onto his other side.
The phone rang at ten. An unknown number. Wei Ying declined the call.
At eleven, a text arrived: "Wei Ying, this is Xue Ling. You didn't show up for work. Call me back."
He didn't call back.
At twelve, another one: "Please call us today. We are worried."
He tossed the phone onto the pillow and went into the kitchen to brew some tea, which went cold almost instantly because he forgot to drink it.
At one in the afternoon, a third message arrived. From a different number.
"Wei Ying. You are not answering calls from the HR department. This violates clause 7.3 of your employment contract. We expect you tomorrow at 9:00 AM for an explanatory review. If possible, state the reason for your absence."
Wei Ying read it and set the phone aside. He felt a pang of something like guilt—poor Xue Ling, it wasn't her fault her company hired monsters. But the guilt passed quickly, replaced by a dull irritation that was actually just fear disguised as anger.
Just don't reply. Ignore it. If they assume he went missing—so be it. He hadn't done anything valuable for them in those four days anyway.
---
On the second day, the calls multiplied. HR called four times. Xue Ling twice, Luo Qingyang four times. "Wei Ying, where did you disappear to? They told us you're sick, but I can bring you medicine, I live nearby." He didn't reply. The guilt returned, sharper this time, because Luo Qingyang was the first colleague to be kind to him, and he didn't want to drag her into this.
At three in the afternoon, an email arrived from the corporate network. Not from HR, not from Xue Ling.
From **Lan Wangji**.
Subject: "Reporting for Work."
The text of the email was brief—a single sentence, lacking any punctuation.
"Wei Ying you must be at your workstation tomorrow at nine in the morning"
No "hello," no "please," no threats. But Wei Ying read that simple sentence five times in a row, and each time, his stomach turned to ice. He remembered that voice. Low, freezing, devoid of inflection. *“You saw nothing. Forget it.” “I will know.”*
The email had been sent at 2:58 PM. Two minutes later, at 3:00 PM, a second one arrived.
"Your ID badge will be deactivated in exactly 24 hours if you do not appear in the office."
Wei Ying slammed his laptop shut. His hands were shaking, and he couldn't control it—his wrists, his fingers, even the tips of his elbows trembled as he leaned them against the table.
He thought about leaving anyway. Right now. Grab the backpack, head to the station, and catch the first bus out in any direction. But then he remembered he only had sixteen thousand left—he had already spent four thousand over the last two days on food and mindless purchases at the nearest store, wandering between the aisles just trying to calm down.
You couldn't rent an apartment with that kind of money. Not even a room. Not even a bed in a hostel for a month.
He could leave. But he couldn't afford to stay wherever he ended up.
Wei Ying clenched his fingers into fists, trying to stop the shaking. Fragments of thoughts raced through his mind: *probation, employment contract, violation, termination with cause, a black mark on his resume, no other employer will take him, no one needs a degree without experience, why can’t he just disappear, why won’t this man just leave him alone.*
The answer to the last question was the most terrifying, because Wei Ying didn't know it.
---
He barely slept that night. He lay with his eyes open, watching the yellow glow of the streetlamps dance on the ceiling, weighing his options. Showing up to work meant seeing that man again. Not showing up meant badge deactivation, termination, and then a search for a new job, which he feared almost as much as Lan Wangji. At some point, closer to dawn, he found a bizarre compromise in his head—a decision that felt like cowardice but seemed like the only viable option.
He would go to work tomorrow. Because he didn't have the money to run away. Because he wasn't ready to return to his mother empty-handed. Because, maybe, he had dreamed it all—maybe he had a fever and hallucinations, and tomorrow he would wake up, and there was no copper blue scale, no yellow snake eyes, no corpse on the concrete floor.
But that was a lie he told himself just so he could fall asleep.
---
In the morning, when the alarm rang for the seventh time, Wei Ying got up. He shaved. He picked the sharpest shirt he owned—light grey, not too wrinkled. He arrived at work fifteen minutes early, something that had never happened in his entire life.
The ID badge scanned successfully. The turnstile gate swung open. Wei Ying exhaled.
He rode up to the seventh floor, walked into Office 7-12, and sat at his desk. Xue Ling caught his eye briefly but said nothing—she only frowned. Twenty minutes later, Luo Qingyang brought him tea in a plastic cup and silently set it on his desk. Wei Ying muttered a "thank you" and buried his face in his monitor.
He worked at half-strength—opening documents, closing them, staring at figures he didn't comprehend. His gaze kept drifting toward the office door—not the main entrance, but the one deeper inside that led to the stairs in the west wing. He was terrified that Lan Wangji would step through it. But the door remained closed.
The day dragged on like chewed bubblegum with nothing to wash it down. Wei Ying drank his tea, which had gone cold and bitter. He replied to emails—briefly, anonymously, like a robot. At lunch, he chewed on a sandwich he bought from a vending machine, barely tasting it.
No one came for him. No one summoned him. Not a single message from Lan Wangji.
By the end of the day, Wei Ying had almost convinced himself that the danger had passed. That Lan Wangji was just intimidating him to ensure his silence. That the scales had been a trick of the light—fatigue, stress, an overactive imagination. That there had been no corpse in that windowless room—just a training mannequin or a prank, a drill to test the security team’s readiness.
He had almost believed it.
When he closed his laptop at 5:55 PM and stood up to head home—to the subway, to his place, to the tiny apartment with the orange lines from the streetlamps—someone called out to him.
Luo Qingyang.
"Wei Ying, someone's waiting for you downstairs."
He turned around. She was looking at him with a strange expression—not curiosity, not fear, but rather confusion.
"Who?"
"The Head of Security. He told me to tell you to come down to the underground parking garage." Luo Qingyang shrugged. "I didn't know you two were acquainted."
Wei Ying froze. His throat went completely dry.
"Thanks," he forced out, walking out of the office, feeling Luo Qingyang’s gaze lingering on his back.
He didn't go to the parking garage, of course. He headed straight for the main exit. He passed the turnstiles, pushed open the door, stepped out onto the street—and saw a black car parked right by the entrance, even though parking there was strictly forbidden. Through the tinted glass of the rear seat, he could make out only a silhouette—broad shoulders, a high collar, long hair.
The car door opened on its own. Or perhaps someone opened it from the within.
Wei Ying stood on the sidewalk, clutching the strap of his backpack, staring into the dark interior of the vehicle. It was pitch black inside, but he knew—he was being expected.
If he got in, he could no longer pretend everything was fine. If he didn't—his badge would be deactivated, he would lose his job tomorrow, he would have no money, and he would end up on the streets of this city, where the only person who had taken an interest in him was a creature with blue scales and serpent eyes.
He got in.
The door shut behind him with a quiet click. The cabin smelled of sandalwood and cold—the kind of cold found deep in caves where the sun never shines.
Lan Wangji sat across from him—there was no driver, and they were left alone in the silence of the underground space, which now felt louder than any scream. He wore a dark blue suit jacket and a white shirt, no tie. His hair was perfectly neat, the scales were gone, his eyes were human, brown. But Wei Ying knew it was a mask. The finest mask he had ever seen.
"You failed to report to work for two days," Lan Wangji said. No greeting, no preamble.
"I was sick," Wei Ying replied. His voice sounded raspy, and he hated himself for it.
"You were not sick."
It wasn't a question. Lan Wangji stared at him intently—calmly, without a hint of aggression, but the gaze made Wei Ying want to curl into a ball and disappear.
Wei Ying remained silent.
"Your ID badge will remain active until midnight," Lan Wangji continued. "Tomorrow at nine in the morning, you will report to work. And you will never miss another day without prior notice."
"And if I don't?"
The question slipped out on its own—defiant, almost provocative. Wei Ying instantly regretted it, but it was too late to back down now.
Lan Wangji’s expression didn't change. For a moment, a heavy, thick silence hung in the cabin, like wet concrete. And then he answered, so quietly that Wei Ying had to lean forward to catch the words.
"Then I will come collect you myself."
Wei Ying swallowed hard. He knew these weren't empty words. This man—this creature—wasn't bluffing. Types like him didn't bluff at all. They either spoke the truth or remained silent.
"Fine," Wei Ying said with effort. "I’ll be there."
Lan Wangji nodded once, as if he expected no other answer.
"The driver will take you home."
"No need, I’ll take the subway."
"The driver will take you home," Lan Wangji repeated. A note of steel entered his voice—subtle, barely perceptible, but undeniably there.
Wei Ying didn't argue.
The car moved forward. Lan Wangji stepped out of the vehicle and walked around the corner of the building—Wei Ying caught a glimpse in the side mirror of the man watching him leave. Tall, posture straight, hands resting at his sides. Solitary. And though Wei Ying should have felt nothing but terror, for some reason, in that exact second, he thought: *Who on earth is he anyway? And why won't he just let me go?*
The driver remained silent the entire trip. Wei Ying stared out the window at the evening city, at the shop displays, at the people rushing home, thinking about how his new life was just beginning. And that he had absolutely no idea which path it would take.