Illusion - SCI Mystery 谜案集 Fanfiction

Prologue

The man got out of his flashy white sportscar and made his way towards the facility with a grim expression on his face. The normally handsome face was distorted into a scary expression that would make even devils cower in fear before him.

With long powerful strides he finally reached the entranced and showed the guard on duty his police-badge in an agressive movement that made the poor guy flinch in surprise. The guard just gave the man clothed fully in white a quick and nervous nod despite him neither looking nor talking to him - as if not even recognizing his existence.

Normally this kind of respectless behaviour would at least earn him a nasty look but nobody dared to even look into his eyes properly - scared to somehow offend the man in any way which could lead to a traumatizing experience. People who would dare to cross his path in his current mood either had a death-wish or were extraordinarily brave. Or extraordinarily stupid.

Initially the man would not behave like this. But since some time ago there was no reason for him to be genuinely happy or carefree anymore. And he didn't bother to try and act like he was.
Of course his change in behaviour didn't pass by unnoticed by the people around him but nobody could blame him and they also didn't really dare to talk to him about it.
Maybe with time, so they hoped, he would somehow be able to return to normal again. What a ridicolous thought. Why should he? They all should know better than that and they probably did but were just unwilling to accept it.

Having passed the guard he entered the building with strict security and walked the corrridors with absolute familiarity, as if it was his own home.
This kind of familiarity was achieved by the numerous visits he gave this building.
How he wished he wouldn't have to know it this well.

At last he reached a door. Just another door in this endless corridor. It looked just like the others. It didn't even have a number or something else on it - just a plain door like any other door. Well, if you ignore the strict security system it was equipped with.

He stood still for a moment and just blankly gazed at the door before finally putting his thumb on the fingerprint-scanner causing the door to open with a light noise.

There were two more guards in front of screens in the room but with a fierce look of the white-clothed man they hurriedly scurried out of the room.
After looking at the screens for a moment the man finally faced the center of the room. There were metal bars seperating him from another young man who could be said to be on par with his handsome looks. Some argued that he was even more handsome than the man in white.

The man behind the bars didn't even seem to have noticed the arrival of the other man, giving him time to observe him. He was wearing plain dark clothes - prison clothes. But even those plain clothes failed to conceal the extraordinary beauty of this man.
Somehow, he looked thinner than last time, he quietly wondered. His normally shiny yet-black hair was a little longer and had split ends as well, making it look dull. Did he get to eat properly? The man, who was completely oblivious to his observer, has always been bad at taking care of himself, especially now that he didn't have him at his side anymore to watch over him...

Finally his eyes stopped at the metallic collar around the man's neck. Upon seeing it, pain struck his heart like an electric current.
He remembered how he disagreed with him at that time when the man with black hair called it inhumane at their first visit together in this building. At that time they had both stood next to each other on his side of the bars. Now he finally understood what he meant.

As he couldn't bear to look at it anymore, he quietly approched the bars and opened the door of the cell, closing it behind him again after he entered.

"Zhan Yao..."