The staff member swallowed and read the next card. "Some netizens say that after Shen Jianing and Xie Linchuan got together, you deliberately married President Lu to compete with them and prove that you could marry someone richer and more powerful. How do you respond?"

This question was even more vicious than the last. The bullet comments surged immediately.

【Yes, this is what I always thought.】

【He married Lu Jingheng right after losing Xie Linchuan, right?】

【It looked like revenge marriage.】

【Honestly, marrying Lu Jingheng just to win is very Shen Qingyu.】

Lu Jingheng's face went completely cold. Even Shen Qingyu felt his pheromones pressing against the edge of their restraint — that cold cedar scent sharpening into something with edges. He turned his hand over and pressed Lu Jingheng's wrist.

Lu Jingheng did not look at the camera. He looked only at Shen Qingyu, his voice low. "Can I answer this?"

Shen Qingyu held his gaze for a long moment. This was not the same as the questions before — those had been his wounds to open on his own terms, and he had needed to be the one holding the knife. But this one touched something different. This one was about the two of them, about what had begun at the beach when the world had already finished writing his ending, and it felt right, somehow, to let Lu Jingheng speak it.

He smiled faintly. "Say it."

Lu Jingheng raised his eyes toward the camera. The entire livestream room seemed to still under that gaze — the weight of an SSS+ Enigma's full attention directed outward was not a comfortable thing to receive, even through a screen.

He did not raise his voice. He did not need to.

"Shen Qingyu did not marry me to compete with anyone." Every word was steady, clear, and cold. "I met him at the beach after he was injured. He asked me whether I wanted to marry him. I agreed."

【????????】

【He asked?】

【At the beach? After he was injured?】

【Wait, this sounds like a whole other story.】

"At that time," Lu Jingheng continued, "I did not know Xie Linchuan. I did not know Shen Jianing. I did not care about either of them." His expression did not change. "To me, Shen Qingyu was never someone abandoned by Xie Linchuan." A pause, brief and absolute. "He was Shen Qingyu."

The words were simple. Plain, even — the kind of sentence that in anyone else's mouth might have sounded insufficient. But in Lu Jingheng's voice, stripped of ornament and delivered with the same directness he used to close billion-yuan negotiations, they landed with the full weight of everything they contained.

Shen Qingyu's fingers tightened suddenly around his wrist. Lu Jingheng felt it, and his gaze softened for a fraction of a second before turning back to the camera.

"Also, regarding the claim that he married me for money." The livestream room went silent in anticipation. "Before marriage, the prenuptial agreement gave him the right to half of my personal assets in the event of divorce."

"Lu Jingheng." Shen Qingyu's voice carried a specific warning.

Lu Jingheng did not stop. "He refused."

The comments erupted.

【WHAT????】

【Half???】

【He refused????】

【Half of Lu Jingheng's assets????】

【I would have married him for money and taken the half, sorry.】

【Same. I am not noble.】

【So the money-loving rumour makes no sense?】

【He refused half of the empire's richest man's assets. What kind of money-loving person is this?】

Shen Qingyu's face had darkened. "President Lu," he said slowly, "did I allow you to disclose our prenuptial agreement?"

"You allowed me to answer."

"I allowed you to answer, not detonate a bomb."

"It is evidence."

"It is privacy."

"It is useful privacy."

Shen Qingyu: "…"

Xiao Heng looked up with his expression of careful assessment. "Father's statement has strong evidentiary value."

Xiao Nian nodded, even though he clearly did not understand what half of Lu Jingheng's assets actually meant. "Father is helping Dad," he concluded, satisfied.

【Useful privacy hahahahaha.】

【President Lu really has low EQ but high combat power.】

【He said: I will defend my wife with financial documents.】

【Shen Qingyu looks like he wants to bite him.】

【This is a family show!】

Shen Qingyu rubbed his brow. But the corners of his lips had loosened, and the halo shook again — this time more violently than before. The story it had protected for years relied on several fixed impressions working together: Shen Jianing was kind, Xie Linchuan was devoted, Shen Qingyu was jealous, Shen Qingyu was greedy, Shen Qingyu had married Lu Jingheng out of vanity. But now, in front of millions of viewers, Lu Jingheng had calmly removed one of those pillars. If Shen Qingyu had been greedy, why refuse half of his assets? If he had married only for competition, why had Lu Jingheng not even known who Xie Linchuan was? If he was unloved, why did Lu Jingheng remember every detail?

The old narrative had begun to tilt, and it could not right itself.

The staff member was sweating and no longer wanted to continue — but the screen flashed before anyone could redirect the segment. A trending alert appeared on the production monitor.

#ShenQingyuCaughtFianceAndBrother#

#LuJinghengPrenuptialAgreement#

#WhatDidShenQingyuDoWrong#

And then, pushed with unnatural speed from nowhere:

#ShenJianingPregnancyAffected#

The staff member's face changed. Shen Qingyu saw it. So did Lu Jingheng. The bullet comments had already noticed too.

【What is that trending topic?】

【Shen Jianing pregnancy affected? Who is pushing that?】

【So fast — Shen Qingyu only mentioned the past, and now people are saying he affected Shen Jianing's pregnancy?】

【This is too familiar. Every time Shen Qingyu says anything, Shen Jianing becomes the victim.】

【Wait… you're right. He didn't even insult Shen Jianing. He just stated what happened to him.】

【But now the topic is about Shen Jianing's pregnancy being affected?】

The halo froze. Shen Qingyu looked at the monitor, and then he laughed — not loudly, but clearly, and in a way that made the room feel different. He lifted his eyes toward the camera.

"See?"

No one knew quite who he was addressing. The viewers, perhaps. The programme team. Or the invisible architecture of a story that had been managing him for years. His smile was cold and beautiful, and completely unhurried.

"I only said what happened to me." A pause. "And somehow, he is hurt again."

The bullet comments stopped moving. In that stillness, something shifted in the collective understanding of everyone watching — not loudly, not with any single dramatic revelation, but with the quiet, nauseating clarity of a pattern recognised too late. Shen Qingyu had not needed to accuse Shen Jianing of anything. The pattern had exposed itself. Every time Shen Qingyu bled, someone else cried louder. Every time he spoke, someone else became fragile first. Every time he tried to stand in the light, the story pushed him back into the shadows with the same gentle, unanswerable logic:

Look. You hurt him again.

But this time the cameras were on. This time people were watching from the beginning. This time Shen Qingyu was not sixteen, and when the story tried to turn the page, his hand was already on the knife.

Lu Jingheng looked at him. Shen Qingyu did not look away from the camera. His voice was calm.

"Since everyone is so concerned about the past, then ask clearly." He smiled faintly. "Don't ask whether I bullied Shen Jianing. Ask why, after my fiancé and my brother betrayed me, the whole world needed me to apologise for being angry."

The livestream room went utterly silent.

Then the bullet comments exploded.

【I'm awake.】

【I feel like I just woke up.】

【What the hell did we believe all these years?】

【He was the one betrayed. Why did he become the villain?】

【Because the story needed him to be.】

【That sentence gave me chills.】

【Shen Qingyu, say more.】

In the monitor room, Director Zhou slowly exhaled. His assistant whispered a question about whether to cut the feed. Zhou Wensheng looked at Shen Qingyu on the screen — still sitting calmly, still beautiful, still in possession of himself in a way that had taken a very long time and a very great deal of quiet suffering to achieve — and said, "No. Keep filming."

At the same time, in the Shen family's old residence, the atmosphere had gone completely still. The elderly housekeeper stood by the door, not daring to breathe. Old Master Shen had not spoken. Shen Qingyu's mother sat on the sofa with a pale face. The eldest brother stood by the window with one hand pressed against his phone. The second brother stared at the livestream screen, his brows tight. The third brother's expression was ugly. The fourth brother whispered, almost to himself, "He was sixteen."

No one answered — because they all remembered. They remembered the door. They remembered Shen Jianing crying. They remembered Xie Linchuan standing protectively in front of him. They remembered Shen Qingyu's face: pale, furious, humiliated, disbelieving. They remembered saying, in different words and at different moments, the same essential thing.

You never liked Xie Linchuan anyway. Don't make this uglier. Jianing is already scared. You're stronger than him.

At the time they had thought Shen Qingyu's anger was too sharp, too aggressive, too unforgiving. He had been difficult to reach even before that day, and after it he had become unreachable entirely, and they had told themselves it was his choice, his pride, his excessive temper driving him away. Now, through a screen, they watched Xiao Nian press his face against Shen Qingyu's arm and Xiao Heng tell him in a perfectly serious voice that he was not wrong — the words they should have said, delivered by children who had not even been alive when it happened.

Shen Qingyu's mother covered her mouth. Her eyes reddened. But no one in the room moved to comfort her, because the grief in the room was not hers alone and they all knew it.

On the livestream, Shen Qingyu was still sitting calmly, still beautiful, still distant, still unreachable in that particular way that had nothing to do with coldness and everything to do with having learned, very young, that the people who were supposed to reach for you sometimes simply did not.

The eldest brother lowered his eyes. For the first time in four years, he understood that Shen Qingyu had not become unreachable after marrying Lu Jingheng.

He had been pushed away long before that by them.