Have I woken up in the middle of the sun?
Ah Si was sweating uncomfortably as he stirred slowly back into awareness, his throat as parched and arid as the Sahara Desert. He felt like he had swallowed a mouthful of rough sand; both his eyes and his throat were raw as he rubbed his brittle tongue along dry teeth, desperately seeking moisture. Uurgh. Every last part of him ached; Daoming Si could swear he had aged one thousand years overnight, a modern day Dorian Gray. He certainly felt as fragile as a cobweb as he stretched out his clenching limbs with a grimace. Even the shells of his ears were throbbing.
The Doaming heir groaned pitifully as his stomach roiled violently in protest; he felt like he had ingested a writhing snake, his organs shrivelled and painfully useless in his abdomen. Exactly how much had he drank last night and how had he even gotten home? His head was swimming haphazardly as he swallowed futilely yet again, wallowing in his admittedly self inflicted wretchedness. He may as well have just slept in the driveway as he was sure it wouldn't make an ounce of difference; it felt like he was lying on a slab of rock instead of his down filled, king size mattress anyway. Damn thing wasn't worth even one of the won he had shelled out for it! It was wreaking havoc on his poor back, which already took a daily beating in a country designed for midgets!
The word midget brought with it an unavoidable avalanche of Dong Shancai; Ah Si gasped silently as her tiny face, framed by rain and glowing palely in the diffuse light of a street lamp, flickered in his minds eye, taunting the fringes of his memory. Usually, her lovely face welcoming him into the land of wakefulness was the best part of his day, so why did he suddenly feel like someone had injected hydrochloric acid into his veins? A murky, muddy image unfolded clumsily as his brain pulsed painfully against his skull; rain, Shancai, the bitter kiss of a whisky bottle.... the unsettled heir felt unusually off kilter somehow. He couldn't put his finger on it, but he knew there was something important he was forgetting. It took the disorientated male a second to recall why both his temples and his heart were throbbing uncontrollably against his will. The pain and torment of the previous day had been lost admist the agony of his hangover, but as his brain began to function once more, it slammed into him heavily anew, leaving him dazed and breathless.
Shancai. French Guy. Photograph. Hotel room. Red paint. Crippling heartbreak. Tear filled doe eyes that tore his self esteem and his lonely heart to ribbons...
A befuddled Ah Si dragged a ragged breath through clenched teeth as images flickered through his ailing brain in rapid succession, a horror movie he didn't much care to revisit. A nightmare made tangible, a very real danger he was hard pressed to flee from - time after time, it had been proved that it was impossible to run from desire. It was the most horrifying feeling he had ever experienced, the inability to control his own heart; he had been trying to outrun his own emotions for twenty two years with varying degrees of success. Unfortunately, there was no escaping the hole that Shancai and her thoughtlessness had punched straight through his chest.
It was all coming back to him now, a searing, all consuming flood that threatened to pull him back to drown in the icy depths of despair. He, the star studded, budding entrepreneur and crown prince of Mingde, had been hoodwinked by those he had trusted most, he had been played for a fool by everyone he knew! Deceit was everywhere and all around, and he really should have known better. His heart had grown soft and he had only himself to blame. He had been raised to resist trickery of this very sort; how could he have been so dimwitted and short sighted?
Daoming Si was supposed to be the Big Bad Wolf who all cowered before, he was supposed to be infallible and omniscient. Yet, he couldn't help but to feel like a fraud; he had well and truly had the wool pulled over his eyes. All it had taken was a feisty attitude and a pretty face and he had fallen, hook, line and sinker to her ploy. It pained him that he still loved her just as ardently as before. He truly wanted to detest her with every fibre of his being, but he simply didn't have the mental capacity to achieve such a feat. The youngest Daoming was helplessly caught in Shancai's gravitational pull and there was no power on earth that could rescue him.
