Falling for You in 48 Hours（2）
696 Words
[System Emergency Alert: Host’s vital signs are fluctuating severely. Pain perception is currently reduced by 50%. Would you like to further decrease pain sensitivity?]
Even with half the pain numbed, Felix’s mind swam in a haze of agony. It felt as though his skull were being pried apart by a white-hot wire.
"Reduce it… Please, reduce it to 90%, "he pleaded inwardly, his thoughts fraying and stumbling.
"But leave me 10%... I have to feel something, or I’ll lose myself completely."
The system responded at once. [Pain perception further reduced. Current shield: 90%.]
Yet even that sliver of remaining pain—a mere 10%—was enough to leave him dizzy and nauseous. It pulsed like a thin, relentless drill through his mind. He couldn’t begin to imagine enduring this without the system’s intervention.
To any observer, the young master looked utterly shattered.
His fair skin was drained of color, his eyes tightly shut, soft golden hair stuck to his sweat-slicked forehead and neck. He shivered faintly against the restraints, each breath a shallow, ragged struggle. He resembled nothing so much as a broken angel teetering on the edge of consciousness.
The cold voice returned, now tinged with a light chuckle.
“Poor little kitten. No one can withstand the Neural Echo for long. So stubborn… Very well. I’ll give you twelve hours to reconsider. Just remember—all it takes is a few names.”
Abruptly, the lights in the interrogation room shut off, plunging Felix into total darkness.
Alone, Felix let his mind drift, desperate for an escape from the pain. And strangely, it was the darkness that summoned a memory—one he hadn’t revisited in years.
It had been a night like this. Dark. Hopeless.
Back in the real world, Felix’s father had been a wealthy finance magnate—until he was accused of money laundering and embezzlement. Overnight, they lost everything. His father turned to drink, and on one especially brutal night, he’d stared at Felix—really looked at him—with a sickening mix of l**t and rage.
Felix had fought back, hurling a glass that struck his father’s temple. He fled the house, disoriented and bleeding, and stumbled alone onto the deserted main road.
There, under the chill glow of the streetlights, he saw him—a young, stern-faced Edmund, watching silently from his bedroom window. The moment Felix tried to look back, the boy was gone.
But then—a hand appeared right in front of him.
Felix lifted his head weakly.
There stood Edmund, wearing absurdly cute penguin-print pajamas, his expression far too serious for his age.
“Come inside, I’ll clean your wound.”
Without a second thought, Felix placed his b****y hand in Edmund’s.
He never forgot that moment—the boy with dark eyes, standing there in playful pajamas yet speaking with such firmness.
Just as the memory began to calm him, a sharp, escalating pain tore through his skull. The Neural Echo intensified—as it was designed to do every three hours.
“I’m really going to die like this,” Felix mumbled deliriously, hardly aware he was speaking aloud. “If this goes on… I’ll really…”
What he didn’t know was that every member of the Starfall Resistance was implanted at birth with a subdermal monitor—a tiny device that allowed command to track their vital signs and, in extreme situations, even listen to their surroundings.
Now, deep within the Resistance’s hidden base, several high-ranking officers were monitoring Channel F-07—linked to Young Master Felix.
Among them was General Gareth, listening intently to the boy’s ragged breathing and soft, despairing whispers.
No one had expected this—not from the spoiled, pleasure-seeking son of Commander Orion. Yet the delicate blond boy strapped to that chair wasn’t breaking. He was enduring.
Gareth’s eyes narrowed slightly, something new and intent flickering in his gaze.
“Interesting,” he murmured, his voice low.
One of the officers beside him glanced over. “What did you say, General?”
Gareth didn’t answer. His lips pressed into a tight line as he turned his deep, unreadable gaze toward the flickering channel screen.
- Writer
