Chapter 22: Tides of Truth

I woke disoriented. My own bed, my own apartment—yet somehow I was back *here*, in Zhì's penthouse. Voices murmured beyond the bedroom door. When I cracked it open, Zhì and Akira's argument spilled through like acid rain. 

"This was your idea," Zhì hissed. 

"Exposure therapy works faster than coddling," Akira countered. 

"I never wanted to hurt her." 

"Father's warning wasn't about her. Those men were disposable. You know what he truly wants." 

The word *Father* landed like a curse. 

At the courthouse, my assailant's hollow-eyed apology meant nothing. Eleven months' suspended sentence. A ¥5 million check for "emotional damages." I stared at the numbers—the price of a woman's dignity in yen. 

Akira drove me to Shōnan Beach afterward. Salt wind whipped through his confession about Zhì's mother—a mistress imprisoned, a child stolen, a suicide dressed as accident. The rubber duck in Zhì's bathroom took on grim significance: his only connection to the woman erased from existence. 

"He thinks keeping it near water lets her spirit visit," Akira said, crushing his cigarette against the seawall. "Pathetic, isn't it? The great Shangguan heir, clinging to bath toys." 

I vomited over the railing. 

That night, Zhì found me reorganizing his spice drawer with manic precision. His fingers grazed my wrist—still salt-crusted from Shōnan. "You know now." 

The confession unfolded in shattered pieces: his childhood under Father's surveillance, half-brother's murder attempts, the way he'd learned to dissociate during "disciplinary sessions." 

"The duck…" I choked out. 

"Mother bought it the week before they took me." His laugh tasted bitter. "Father's housekeeper smuggled it out—his one act of mercy." 

I pressed my forehead to his collarbone, feeling the scar beneath his shirt—a childhood "lesson" from Qingyan. His heartbeat mapped the truth Akira omitted: this man didn't know how to want without destruction. 

Over congee the next morning, Zhì ate like a feral thing—all snapping teeth and guarded glances. When I nudged extra ginger into his bowl, he froze mid-bite. 

"No one's ever…" The sentence died as Qingyan's name flashed on his phone. 

I speared a pickled radish. "We'll add 'teaching table manners' to my job description." 

His snort of laughter startled us both. Outside, Tokyo's skyline glittered—a gilded cage with its door ajar. Somewhere beyond it, Father's shadow loomed. But here, now, the monster's son learned to chew slowly, savoring warmth that couldn't be quantified in yen.