It wasn’t that Xiaokai was in love with him. He was incapable of such an emotion—it had been pried out of him when he was a child, just as Sun Yue’s mother had done the same to her. There was absolutely no need for it when they had a job like theirs. Whoever had feelings first lost the advantage, and Liu Xiaokai must always have the advantage.

It was just that…time with Bai Xue tasted sweeter than time without him, and it made sleep easier even without the pills.

He wasn’t good at remembering his dreams. Not that he usually wanted to anyway—he had the suspicion that most of them were just about his childhood, anyway. The early meetings. The long nights with Sun Yue. He always woke up in a sweat, his heart pounding, his hair stuck to his forehead. Every time, he was grateful for the fact that he didn’t have to leave his bedroom to use the bathroom, wash all the evidence of his dream into the drain. But after appointments with Bai Xue, the dreams didn’t seem as bad. Manageable, even. He didn’t feel like he had to run into the shower when he woke up. He could even stand to lay in the bed for a few minutes, letting himself just sink into the mattress, before he made himself get up and get ready.

This time, though, he woke up in the middle of the night. He was covered in sweat.

He lurched out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom, not bothering to rake his hair out of his face. Instead he went to the toilet, vomited up the contents of his stomach, and then went to the sink, turning it on and plunging his face into the water, letting the cold shock him awake.

Damn. He really did usually sleep better after appointments with Bai Xue—for several days usually, sometimes even as long as a week, while the effects of the appointment lingered. So why wasn’t it working this time?

The pills.

He wasn’t taking his pills.

He flicked water out of his eyes and pulled open the medicine cabinet. The pill bottle rattled in his hands. He opened it, poured a week’s worth into his hands, considered it for a long minute while water dripped from his hair.

He dropped them all into the toilet and flushed them down with the vomit.

Sun Yue checked sometimes whether he was taking his pills. She hadn’t done it in a while, but Xiaokai was taking too much of a risk by not getting rid of the evidence.

Have you been taking your medicine?

When the medicine was properly swirled down the drain, Xiaokai bent and vomited again into the toilet bowl.

Have you been taking your medicine?

“Of course,” Xiaokai whispered, and the words scraped raw grooves into his throat. “Of course.”