Chapter 175: Caught

*Runze’s POV*

The dining room is warm.

Mrs. Wen did an amazing job tonight. The table looks neat and formal, the way it always does when Grandmother joins us for dinner. It means we have more dishes than usual, and everything looks nice. The delicious smell of food reached me when I was still halfway down the hallway, and my stomach made a loud, hungry noise that was honestly pretty embarrassing.

Six months of pregnancy will do that to you.

I sit down carefully in my chair, shifting a bit because the backrest hits my body differently than it did two months ago.

The baby has been making its presence known in very specific ways lately. It isn’t anything dramatic, just a constant reminder that I am carrying someone real, growing, and very opinionated.

This little one has strong feelings about how I sit, how long I stand, and whether or not I ate enough at lunch.

I definitely ate enough at lunch.

But I am somehow starving all over again.

Mrs. Wen sets a big bowl of steamed fish right in front of me. The ginger and green onions smell so good that I have to stop myself from reaching out and grabbing it like a person who hasn’t eaten in a week.

Across the table, Grandmother unfolds her cloth napkin. She moves with the calm, steady pace of someone who has decided this dinner will go exactly according to plan. Bael sits right next to me. He is already picking up the serving chopsticks, looking relaxed, which is his usual state.

I pick up my own chopsticks.

Then I notice the small side dish near my bowl, mild ginger and scallion sauce, perfect for me.

But right next to it, just out of my reach, is a plate of cold sesame noodles. Mrs. Wen made them for Bael. I’ve been thinking about those specific noodles ever since I smelled them in the hall, but I can’t have them. Cold dishes are still on my strict food list, and the doctor was very clear about that the last time at the hospital.

I look at the noodles.

I look back at my plain steamed fish.

Bael notices where I’m looking. Without saying a word or even turning his head to look at me, he reaches out and slides the plate of sesame noodles a few inches further away.

I sigh, lift my chopsticks, and start eating my fish.

The trouble starts when Grandmother sets down her teacup.

She doesn’t do it quickly or aggressively. It is just the careful, deliberate way she places it on the table when she is about to say something she has already fully decided.

"I heard," she says, looking down at her bowl, "that you were working today."

The piece of fish in my mouth suddenly becomes very hard to chew.

I swallow it carefully. "I was just—"

"Using the sketchbook I gave you," she continues, her voice smooth and even, still not looking up from her food. "For the project."

Beside me, Bael picks up his tea. His face is totally blank, he looks way too calm, which makes me highly suspicious.

I really thought this afternoon’s incident was a secret. I thought it had been contained.

Clearly, it hadn’t. Bael totally told on me.

***

It had started normally enough. That was the thing. It felt like a completely reasonable idea at the time.

The work for the DingShan competition was totally done. I wasn’t supposed to be doing any work, but I also couldn’t just sit around doing nothing for weeks.

My brain was starting to feel completely useless. So, when my eyes landed on the sketchbook on my nightstand, the nice one Grandmother gave me that was just sitting there looking expensive, I thought to myself: drawing isn’t real work. It’s just thinking with a pencil.

Except I wasn’t just drawing.

I was drawing the initial design ideas for Grandmother’s project. It was technically work, and I knew it, but I did it anyway because the idea came to me so clearly and I didn’t want to forget it.

I had been sitting there for about forty minutes with the book on my knees, my pencil moving fast, when the bedroom door opened.

It was Bael.

He took one look at me, at the sketchbook, the pencil, and the very obvious building designs that were definitely not casual doodles, and stopped right in his tracks.

We sat in total silence for about four seconds.

"Stop," he said.

"I’m almost done with this part," I replied, keeping my head down.

"Runze."

"Just two minutes."

He walked across the room and stood right in front of me. He had that specific look on his face he gets when he has already decided how an argument will end and is just waiting for me to realize it. I kept my eyes glued to the paper.

"The doctor said no long periods of deep focus," Bael said, his voice level. "No screens, no detailed drawing, no—"

"It’s just a rough concept sketch," I interrupted, shifting the book slightly so it didn’t look quite as organized as it actually was. "Nothing detailed."

Bael walked over, standing right by the side of my chair. He looked down at the dark graphite lines filling the paper, then at the clock on the wall. He had left the room forty minutes ago to handle a phone call. From the sheer volume of work on the page, I obviously hadn’t put the pencil down once since he stepped out.

"You’ve been at this since I left," he said plainly, his eyes tracking the dark dust on the side of my hand. "That counts as sustained concentration, Runze."

"I was mostly just thinking," I muttered, looking up at him and keeping my thumb over a particularly detailed corner of the drawing. "The pencil was barely moving."

"The paper tells a different story." He didn’t reach for the book, but his presence alone made it very clear the drawing session was over.

"Put it away."

I opened my mouth to argue that a book didn’t have a screen and therefore shouldn’t count, but before I could voice the thought, there was a firm knock on the door.

Mrs. Wen’s voice came from the hallway. "Dinner is ready, Young Master, Mr. Bael. Grandmother is already heading down."

Bael looked from the door back to me. He didn’t look angry, just entirely unyielding.

"You have five minutes to drop the pencil, wash your hands, and be at the dinner table," Bael said.

He didn’t wait for my answer. He just turned around and left the bedroom first, his footsteps fading down the hall.

I looked at the paper, sighed, and finally slid the pencil back into the drawer.

***

"I was only sketching rough concepts." I say now at the dinner table, because I still feel the need to defend myself a little bit.

"Runze." She says my name with that tone that means the conversation is officially over. It isn’t mean, but it is final. "You will not hold that pencil again until the doctor says it’s okay. Not for the project, not for anything that makes you focus too hard."

I look down at my plate and nod my head once. "Okay."

Beside me, Bael lifts his teacup. Over the rim of the porcelain, his eyes meet mine for a brief second.

He doesn’t say a word, but his face says everything. He looks exactly like a person who knows he was completely right, but is choosing to be nice and not brag about it.

"The project will still be there when you are healthy enough to do it the right way," Grandmother says softly, her voice gentler now. "It has waited this long. A few more weeks won’t hurt."

I look up at her, feeling a bit better.

She is already back to eating her food, relaxed, as if the conversation had never happened.

I look back at my plate and take another bite of fish. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I see Bael reach out. With total composure, he slides the plate of cold sesame noodles right back in front of himself.

He picks up a neat twist of noodles with his chopsticks, lifts them to his mouth, and eats them while looking directly at me.

His face is entirely blank, but his eyes are full of pure, deliberate arrogance.

He is absolutely bragging. We both know exactly what he is doing, and it is pure wickedness.

Before I can even glare at him, Bael leans in slightly. His shoulder presses warm against mine, and his head dips down until his breath brushes against my ear.

"This is your punishment for today," he whispers, his voice smooth and teasingly low. "Try to be stubborn and disobey me again, and it won’t be just cold noodles next time. I’ll make sure to eat every single thing you crave right in front of you, and you can watch me enjoy it."

My face instantly burns hot. I am furious, pissed off, and blushing all at the same time.

Without moving my upper body at all, I lift my foot and stomp down hard right on top of Bael’s shoe under the table.

Bael freezes. His jaw tightens slightly, and his fingers grip his chopsticks just a little bit harder as he absorbs the blow.

Across the table, Grandmother glances up from her bowl, her sharp eyes moving between the two of us.

I don’t blink. I look at her, pick up my water glass with a perfectly steady hand, and give her a sweet, totally innocent smile.

Beside me, Bael slowly exhales through his nose, pretending everything is completely fine as he sets his chopsticks down without a sound.

We are halfway through dinner when Bael’s phone vibrates in his pocket.

He pulls it out just enough to look down at the screen. He checks the caller ID, and instantly, a quick change passes over his face—his jaw tightens and his eyes go cold, getting that closed-off look he’s had since this morning. He hides the phone away.

He takes one more bite of food.

Then, he stands up. "Excuse me for a moment."

Grandmother nods without looking up from her soup.

He is gone for less than three minutes. I listen closely, but I don’t hear any talking in the corridor, which means he walked further down the hall to take the call in private. When the door opens again and he comes back, he sits down quietly, picks up his chopsticks, and fixes his cuff.

He looks normal, calm.

"Is everything okay?" I whisper, leaning in slightly.

"Yes," he says simply.

I look at the tight line of his jaw. Then I look at the sesame noodles, still sitting far away from me, cold and forbidden.

I look back down at my steamed fish.

I don’t ask him a second time.

But I notice it, and I save it in that quiet part of my mind where I keep all the things I’m not ready to face just yet.

I finish eating my dinner while Grandmother refills her tea. Bael sits close enough that his arm presses warm against mine, and the quiet light of the room surrounds us while the dark night settles over the trees outside.