Chapter 32 - ​Chapter 32: The Gravity of Obsession

Don't do it, Xuan! I'm here! I'm right here!" Ning gasped, her voice a shredded ribbon of sound. She turned in his arms, her blood-stained hospital gown fluttering against his torn uniform. Her extreme level of lovingness was a fever that had finally broken her sanity. She didn't look at her parents, who were wailing behind the police line; she only looked at the pulse thrumming in Xuan's neck. "If we jump, we jump together. No one else gets the pieces," she whispered, her eyes locking onto his with a terrifying, shared madness. Xuan's grip softened for a heartbeat, his own tears—hot and thick with jealousy—falling onto her upturned face. "They want to cure us, Ning. They want to make us 'normal' so they can auction you off to the highest bidder." He looked back at Wei Chen, his lips curling into a snarl of extreme anger. "You saved her family? I saved her soul! I am the one who knows the shape of her nightmares!" The misunderstanding between the couple and the "rescuers" was a chasm wider than the river below. Wei Chen signaled the snipers, his jealousy masked as duty. "End this," he mouthed. But as the red laser dot appeared on Xuan's chest, Ning saw it. With a scream of extreme possessiveness, she threw herself in front of him, her body a human shield. "No! You won't take him!" The crack of a warning shot rang out, missing them by inches, but the sound was the final blow to their tether to reality. They weren't just a couple anymore; they were a suicide pact written in the stars. The extreme level of their misery was so heavy it felt like gravity was pulling the bridge itself down into the dark, churning water.