Winter Wind (YiZhan)

15. Haunt

The next day, the world finds out.

There is a hickey on the side of his neck, the size of a chrysanthemum, and he tries his best to cover it. However, his stay at the hotel somehow got leaked and so his departure for the airport became an event.

"Keep your hood up and your head down," someone says by his side and he thinks it's Nini. However he doesn't turn to check. He is too nervous because currently, his world is existing on stilts, ready to fall over at any second.

What he fears the most is the second wave.

Of attention... of harassment... of derision.

So he walks as briskly as he can, past the waiting horde of fans and antis- one group screaming in excitement and the other yelling out their hatred.

Xiao Zhan wants all of this to stop.

He wants to disappear.

He just craves peace.

So he hurries along, his bodyguard before him and soon he is almost at the door of his van.

But then suddenly someone taps him. The hand is heavy, and the moment it lands on his shoulder, Xiao Zhan is struck with fear. He spins around, ready to push the person away even if it results in a fight, however he freezes.

A pair of dark brown eyes are staring back at him...  soft and entrancing.

And as a result, the noise stops.

Or more like, it cuts off.

It is as though he has previously been on a noisy street, but now he has entered a vehicle and slammed the door shut behind him.

"Yibo?" he calls, and the person smirks.

However that smile is malicious. It breeds even more fear in him but just before he can move away, the person's hands clamp around the edge of his hood and jerks the fabric off his head.

His face is exposed, as well as the purplish red bruise on his neck. He gasps in horror, but it is too late.

The flashes go off all around him, and the roars and screams all come back. This time around however, it has escalated into complete mayhem.

"We caught them!"

"Unbelievable!"

"They're finished"

The exclamations rise up in the air, and at this, Yibo smirks again.

"You're finished!" he says, and Xiao Zhan feels his eyes sting with tears.

Then he pushes Yibo... with every ounce of strength that he has left.

"Get away from me!" he cries.

And this is how he wakes up!

With a scream stuck in his throat, and his heart trying to pummel its way out of his chest.

He shoots up, nearly jumping out of his skin as he tries to escape, but from what he isn't sure.

It takes a few moments more for his mind and eyes to clear, and for him to realize that he is still seated on the floor of his hotel room. A blanket is tangled around his lower body, and the bright morning sun, shining through the room's massive windows. He looks around, disoriented, and his mind slowly fills with the bits and pieces that he can recall from the dream or nightmare.

He regains a small control of himself, and pretty soon he achieves clarity. Of his fight the previous night with Yibo, and of what Yibo ... had done to him in the end. His eyes are agape as he wonders if he has dreamed it all, but then he is indeed in the hotel room and on the floor, just where Yibo had left him.