Sha Qing

Chapter 97: A Painting Within A Painting (2)

The green-eyed agent gripped his hands tightly, trying desperately to transfer the heat of his palms to the person opposite him, "I know you love Li Biqing, and until now, you still refuse to think of him and Sha Qing as the same person. You even think that it was Sha Qing's appearance that caused Li Biqing's demise- that Sha Qing murdered him."

Leo's complexion turned ashen.

After quite a while, he finally said in an extremely tired voice, "Yes, it was a murder without a body, no evidence, no trace, and the only one who knows what kind of man he had completely erased from my life is me... I hate him, Rob. I have never hated anyone so purely out of personal emotion. Even the most vicious criminals only get the righteous anger of agent Leo. And if he wanted to use hate to make me remember him for the rest of my life, then he already got his wish!"

Rob became silent, and suddenly remembered the look in Leo's eyes whenever the latter looks at Sha Qing's mock portraits that were pasted back at their office's wall. A subtle fire would always seem to leap out of his partner's gaze while in the depths of contemplation-whether this flame came from a different standpoint of admiration, appreciation, or sympathy, in the end, it was still a bright a warm light that lasted for a whole year.

"...Is there only hate?" Rob asked in an enigmatic manner.

These words were like a key that opened Leo's memory lockbox. The countless fragments that swarmed out, acting as like they couldn't wait to escape, made his head throb in pain. He pressed his temples with his fingers trying to lock them back in, but he was still a step too late, and some fragments that were too deep and strong had already slipped out--

A hand reaching down from the ventilation duct during that desperate situation...

Bloody lips biting a bullet...

A bloody kiss in front of a wall full of bullet marks...

Two people inhaling each other's breaths inside the dark cave...

""

The pain they both felt after that evenly matched fight...

That man saying he has secretly liked him for a relatively long period of time in a serious, bold, and straightforward manner...

That man in a half-kneeling stance, like he was submitting himself to him, when he gave him fellatio without hesitation...

That man's body trembling uncontrollably upon being entered, signifying his lack of a sense of security and great effort of suppressing his instinct to attack,

Those shivers, that expressed his body's strong contradiction of wanting to resist the invasion of another man and forcing himself to open his body and accept...

--Even if all of his other displays of tenderness were for the sake of his disguise, the tremors of his body at that time revealed his sincerity.

As if trying to crush those images, Leo clutched his head with both hands, groaning as he uttered, "Yes ...... only hate."

Rob got up abruptly and walked to the dining room. He casually pulled a random bottle of whiskey from the glass cabinet, unscrewed the cap, and stuffed it into his colleague's hand, "In that case, you can drink more then. Maybe you'll be able to get a good night's sleep. If you don't want to see him again, leave all the follow-up work to me. Tomorrow, the prosecutor will have a pre-trial plea bargain with the public attorney and the client, and try to get him to plead guilty directly in court."

"He won't admit his guilt." Leo said as he stared blankly at the bottle in his hand, "He thinks that all the things he did are something that should be done, so he wouldn't bow to any pressure from other people."