Chapter 43: Setting Forty-Three

Setting Forty-Three: Fairy Tale (Part 11)

In movies and TV shows, there’s often a scene where the protagonist, facing an invisible enemy, grabs something like flour or paint and flings it around—the splattered substance acts like a revealing mirror, “printing” out the invisible foe. After all, they’re only invisible, not gone. As a bystander, Shan Ziwei would have applauded the protagonist’s cleverness. But as the villain on the receiving end…

This! Is! Not! Science!

That was his only thought as Snow White pinned him down inside the crystal coffin.

His head hit the bottom of the coffin with a dull thump. The impact left his ears ringing and stars bursting before his eyes. Invisibility was now meaningless. He opened his eyes wide; the sparks and stars gradually faded, leaving only black, white, and red.

Black for her hair, white for her skin, red for her blood. The crystal walls reflected his incredulous expression. He turned his head stiffly to look at her hand on his shoulder—bright red blood welled from her pale wrist, soaking his clothes, warming his neck.

Using flour or paint to break invisibility made scientific sense. What didn’t make sense was how she’d found him in the first place. How could there be flour or paint in a sealed storage room? So the beautiful princess had simply cut her wrist and painted the floor with blood.

Would a normal person go that far? He stared at the blood, dumbfounded. More importantly, how did Snow White know he was invisible? Normally, if you couldn’t see someone, your first thought would be that they’d run off!

“Are you that concerned about my blood?” Snow White’s voice came from above, noticing his fixed stare.

At her words, his attention sharpened on her flowing blood. The warm crimson fluid had already soaked through his clothes and was trickling toward the center of his chest along his collarbone, like a snake slithering and licking its way down to coil in the hollow of his collarbone. He couldn’t help shrinking back—the coffin was clearly single-person sized; the cramped space pressed them together. That involuntary movement made the princess astride him even more noticeable, and though it was wildly inappropriate, he unwillingly felt the stirrings of arousal.

“Y-your blood…”

He was at a loss for words. Faced with such an insane turn of events, he couldn’t form a coherent question—whether to ask how she knew about his invisibility or to confront her mindset of using her own blood to find him. Either way, he had a feeling the answer wouldn’t be one he wanted to hear.

“Hm?” She responded. Perhaps from blood loss, her already pale face became even more translucent. But she didn’t seem to notice, and when he couldn’t find his voice, she took the lead, matter-of-factly discussing the red fluid that was draining her life away.

“You know? My name comes from my birth mother’s blood falling on snow and an ebony window frame.” She leaned closer, her long black hair slipping from her shoulders like a curtain of secrets, enclosing their faces. Her voice grew softer, a conspiratorial whisper against his ear: “Maybe that’s why I’m sensitive to each person’s blood. I remember people by the scent of their blood—you before me, the old woman who sold me the apple, the queen who scorned me, and the ghost who kissed me.”

Each name was a thunderclap in his ears, nearly shattering his soul. All his questions were answered in that moment—but his addled mind refused to process what it meant. His instincts screamed for him to bolt, but she was ready, her hand clamping down on his throat, pinning him back to the coffin floor. He tried to pry her off—only to feel that unnaturally strong grip again.

“Don’t rush,” she whispered gently. “Our ceremony isn’t over yet.”

She pulled back slightly, forcing his ringed hand down beside him, their fingers interlacing. The two rings gleamed in unison, their pure light reflected in her bottomless eyes—like dying embers reignited.

“Now, the groom may kiss the bride.”

The beautiful bride in her veil declared, then bent down and kissed him—his lips too shocked to close.

Never in his life as someone with his condition had he imagined he’d be forced into a kiss. Not an accidental brush, not a graze of lips—but a real, full kiss. Her tongue slipped past his parted lips. In stark contrast to her earlier aggression, her intrusion was almost timid, like a newborn exploring a new world—first pausing in wonder, then carefully venturing forward.

But the exploration barely began before it ended. Her eyes widened, dark pupils rippling like ink disturbed by a stone. Beneath her, Shan Ziwei’s eyes had drifted half-shut, his expression relaxed—and his hand had clamped onto the back of her head with unprecedented roughness, pulling them closer together. The passive had become the aggressor. He coiled his tongue around hers, twisting and tightening. Desire spilled from his half-lidded eyes, spreading across his face, surging through his body.

Drop a spark into a barrel of gasoline, and even the thickest steel will explode in an instant, shattered beyond recognition. He’d always known his condition was a potent, ever-present drug—so he’d restrained himself with morality and shame, refusing to think, to touch. But the yearning etched into his genes couldn’t be stopped. Humans are social creatures; touch and kissing are essential emotional acts. No matter how disciplined he was, the primal urge accumulated, until a single spark could blow his carefully built walls to pieces.

Their tongues melted together, the slick membranes grinding without gap, producing ever sweeter pleasure. He didn’t even think of resisting—he sank into the kiss, utterly comfortable. Desire now ruled him; he stopped thinking entirely, driven by instinct. He pulled Snow White closer, like a starving beast, craving more contact to fuel his pleasure.

It felt so good… so incredibly good…

He sucked and kissed her lips and tongue like he was devouring her, clinging greedily to every moment of this exquisite entanglement. Sweet pleasure flooded his body, so full it made him want to cry. His desperation made him unwilling to let go of even a second, a heartbeat—until the need for air made his pleasure-drenched body belatedly realize he’d stopped breathing.

He loosened his lips to gasp for air—but before his tongue could retreat, she caught it. Snow White, who’d let him take the lead until now, finally responded—as if she saw his retreat as escape, she tightened her hold on his neck and kissed him without letting go. Unlike his inexperienced, instinct-driven fumbling, her kiss was precise, almost textbook in its thoroughness. Her tongue swept across every sensitive spot, like a tyrannical king measuring his domain inch by inch, sparing no corner.

The intensity only worsened his suffocation. Survival instinct overrode bodily craving—even drowning in desire, he began to struggle. That, of course, made him seem more like he was trying to escape, only making her grip harder.

“Mmph…!”

He felt like he was dying. The harder he struggled, the tighter her hand closed around his neck; the more she seemed to steal his remaining breath, grinding her lips against his. His eyes went wide and hazy—oxygen deprivation and extreme pleasure combined to form blotches of darkness in his vision. Her face blurred beyond those shadows—except for her eyes, impossibly bright, as if all the light in the room had concentrated in her pupils, leaving the surrounding whites as dark as ink. Those reversed eyes were like… like…

The name on the tip of his tongue dissipated before he could form it. As he lost consciousness, she finally released him. He collapsed at the bottom of the coffin, gasping—breathing through mouth and nose, desperate for the precious oxygen. The aftermath of the frenzy lingered; his consciousness floated in a void, not yet returned to his body. He watched her red lips moving, but it wasn’t until she’d finished speaking and he’d been blank for a while that he pieced together her words through memory.

—Ghost, this is what you owe me.

She was clearly referring to his initial deception, but something in her tone carried a deeper meaning. His reason slowly returned. Though his body still tingled with post-climactic numbness and languor, sheer terror and unease tore his awareness away from his senses—just now, he’d been a beast in heat, mindlessly demanding pleasure. That loss of control was terrifying—not just because his reason had shattered, but because he knew, whether he admitted it or not, that he’d enjoyed it. In fact, no one could resist the dopamine rush—but repeated indulgence was as addictive as opium.

The only silver lining: his Heart SP (Joy) had stubbornly clung to 3%, keeping him from dying from a kiss.

“Heh…”

As if reading his post-near-death thoughts, Snow White let out a soft laugh. He couldn’t bear to look at the princess above him—her red lips were slightly swollen, glistening with a moist sheen, curved as if inviting further indulgence.

“Your blood is flowing faster… that’s good.”

A tiny sting at his wrist—something cool flowed in. Startled, he looked down to see a strange needle embedded in his pulse point. The needle was hollow and transparent; he could clearly see drops of silvery liquid forming at the open end and flowing through the tube into his body.

“What is this—”

“This is holy element.” Snow White answered gently. “Once it’s inside you, you won’t decay. You’ll lie here, eternal and unchanging.”

What required “decay”? What lay in a coffin?

The answer could only be a corpse.

His mind reeled: holy element, my ass! That’s mercury! The princess was planning to preserve him like a specimen!

In reality, he’d have been dead the moment the mercury entered him. But this was a game—damage was measured in numbers. He watched his Club SP and Diamond SP blacken at an alarming rate—but his life was still intact, giving him room to fight back.

“You want to kill me…” He kept talking, while secretly reaching into his pocket. He really didn’t want to use a Joker unless it was the last resort—but now there was no other option.

“You wanted to kill me.” The smile vanished from Snow White’s face—expressionless, she looked like a lost child separated from her parents. “But I couldn’t bear to let you go, so I have to preserve you—to watch you day and night.”

For a moment, her voice made him feel as if she were crying. He was the one about to be killed, yet somehow it felt like he was the one who had pushed her to this point, making him the greater sinner.

“Do you hate me, Mother?”

“Do you love me, Ghost?”

The two different names struck his heart like a vise. His fingers had touched the hard edge of the Joker—but inexplicably, he stopped, listening to her abyssal whisper like a fool.

“Wherever you are is my home.”