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Little Bird, Welcome Home

Ajax x Male Reader

Fandom: Genshin Impact

Summary: In silent rooms where shadows breathe, A hidden gaze devours every sigh. Through wires and walls, it learns to seethe, Until the unseen stands close by.

I'm alive, I swear. This time I tried something a bit different, but I hope y'all enjoy it :P

AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY FAVORITE GINGER

Warnings: Yandere Behavior, Hacking, Cyberstalking, Trespassing, Modern AU, Pretty Reader, Angst, Bad Ending.

Words: 9.066

The blue glow of the smartphone screen sliced through the suffocating, velvet dark of the bedroom like a scalpel. It didn’t simply illuminate the space; it dissected it, exposing every reluctant shadow that clung to the walls of the high-rise apartment overlooking Liyue Harbor. The sterile luminescence traced the sharp, elegant cut of M!Y/n’s jaw, the delicate fan of thick lashes against his pale cheekbones and the faint, uncontrollable tremble of his bottom lip.

In the bustling streets below, that effortless, almost ethereal beauty turned heads among the late-night crowds weaving between glowing jade streetlamps and pulsing neon signs. But up here, in the deafening silence, M!Y/n had long stopped seeing beauty when he looked at his reflection. His face was nothing more than a target now.

A single notification chime shattered the engineered quiet of his "Do Not Disturb" mode. It tolled like a funeral bell echoing through an empty, forgotten temple.

‘𝙶𝚘𝚘𝚍 𝚖𝚘𝚛𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐 <𝟹’

M!Y/n’s stomach lurched with a familiar, sickening vertigo. His eyes flicked to the glowing digital clock on the nightstand: 3:14 AM. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the neon veins of Liyue pulsed with restless, indifferent energy — the golden harbor lights shimmering on black water, the distant, low hum of hydro-powered freight ships, the eternal glow of the Jade Chamber’s modern spires piercing the thick night fog. Inside, the air felt dense enough to choke on.

He didn’t move. He barely dared to breathe. He simply stared until the white light of the screen seared ghosts into his retinas.

Eleven months, twenty-two days, and a handful of agonizing hours had passed since the mistake that invited this living nightmare into his life.

That evening, his younger brother Leo had been inconsolable, fat tears cutting tracks down his flushed cheeks after a high-level player in their shared online game had sweet-talked him out of every rare digital treasure he’d spent years meticulously collecting. M!Y/n — usually the quiet anchor among his circle, the one who calmed Xingqiu’s frantic all-nighters over publishing manuscripts with a steady hand and gentle tea, or checked on Yaoyao during her exhausting late-evening herb-gathering shifts — had felt something rare and fierce ignite in his chest. A protective, blinding fire. He had spent hours on the line with the game company’s support, ruthlessly cutting through layers of bureaucracy and digital red tape until he secured a verbal guarantee that the scammer’s account and IP had been burned beyond recovery.

He had felt like a hero. He had tucked Leo into bed that night, pressing a soft kiss to his forehead and whispering that the “bad man” was gone forever.

He hadn’t realized he had simply painted a brighter, infinitely more dangerous target on his own back. M!Y/n moved out of the house as soon as the stalking started, not wanting to put his family and especially Leo in danger.

Another message materialized on the screen, the refresh rate so smooth it felt inherently parasitic.

‘𝙸 𝚜𝚊𝚠 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚠𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚜𝚌𝚛𝚘𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚑𝚛𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚐𝚞𝚢’𝚜 𝙸𝚗𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚐𝚛𝚊𝚖 𝚙𝚛𝚘𝚏𝚒𝚕𝚎... 𝚆𝚑𝚒𝚌𝚑 𝚒𝚜 𝚝𝚘𝚝𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚢 𝚏𝚒𝚗𝚎! (^^)𝚋’

M!Y/n’s heart slammed against his ribs like a caged bird desperate to fracture its own bones to escape. Ten minutes ago. He had opened that profile for ten fleeting minutes on a burner phone — his fourth this year — routed through a premium VPN that drained his savings faster than his exorbitant rent. Layers of encryption, proxy chains, every paranoid precaution Yelan’s intelligence contacts had recommended. He should have been invisible. A ghost drifting undetected through Liyue’s vast digital underbelly.

‘𝙸 𝚓𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑𝚝 𝙸’𝚍 𝚝𝚎𝚕𝚕 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝙸 𝚍𝚎𝚏𝚒𝚗𝚒𝚝𝚎𝚕𝚢 𝚕𝚘𝚘𝚔 𝟷𝟶𝟶𝚡 𝚑𝚘𝚝𝚝𝚎𝚛. 𝙸 𝚍𝚘𝚗’𝚝 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚜𝚘𝚌𝚒𝚊𝚕 𝚖𝚎𝚍𝚒𝚊, 𝚋𝚞𝚝 𝙸 𝚠𝚘𝚞𝚕𝚍 𝚖𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝚓𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚒𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞’𝚛𝚎 𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚍 (´つヮ⊂)’

The kaomoji were the worst part. Those cutesy, playfully innocent little faces stretched like a child’s plastic mask over something dark, obsessive and ravenous.

Tartaglia wasn’t merely watching. He inhabited the wires, the signals, the very electricity humming through the drywall of M!Y/n’s carefully guarded sanctuary.

M!Y/n sat up slowly. The expensive silk sheets pooled around his waist like a cold, discarded shroud. He padded barefoot across the dark hardwood floors toward the kitchen, muscle memory helping him avoid every micro-creak he had memorized months ago. He didn't dare turn on the lights. He had come to crave the pitch black, as if it could offer the thinnest veil of protection against the unblinking eyes he felt crawling across his skin — the cameras in the laptop, the smart TV, the voice-controlled ambient lights, the security hub by the front door. Even now, in total darkness, the physical weight of that gaze pressed heavily against the nape of his neck.

He remembered the exact night the monster had finally unmasked itself.

The first messages had been pure venom. Vicious, creative insults from a man whose digital empire had been dismantled by a pharmacy assistant. M!Y/n had snapped back, indignation burning hot in his usually soft-spoken replies. Get a life. Leave my brother alone, you pathetic snitch.

The typing indicator had appeared then. It lingered. Five minutes. Ten. M!Y/n had allowed himself a grim, satisfied smile in the safety of his living room, fully believing he had crushed the troll beneath his heel.

Then the reply came, slow, deliberate, and freezing cold:

‘......𝙷𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚘 𝚕𝚘𝚟𝚎’

From that exact second, the rage had evaporated like morning mist over the harbor. What replaced it was far worse: an obsessive, suffocating, syrupy affection that clung to M!Y/n like hot oil on bare skin. Tartaglia no longer wanted war. He wanted absolute possession. Consumption.

M!Y/n’s hand shook violently as he poured water from the filtered pitcher. The glass clinked painfully against his teeth as he drank. He had tried everything. The Millelith’s cyber-crimes unit had thrown up their hands after weeks of exhausting dead ends. His friends — Yelan with her icy logic and encyclopedic knowledge of encrypted systems, Yanfei with her meticulous eye for uncovering hidden patterns and legal loopholes — had helped reinforce his digital walls to military-grade standards. Yet even they had eventually faltered.

"We tracked the IP as far as we could," the lead investigator had told him months ago, rubbing bloodshot eyes beneath the harsh fluorescent lights of the station. "It bounced from servers in the frozen north of Snezhnaya, through encrypted relays in Fontaine’s waterways, then vanished into a satellite feed somewhere over the open ocean. This isn’t some basement dweller, M!Y/n. This is a phantom who hunts for sport."

A phantom who knew M!Y/n preferred osmanthus oolong when the coastal nights grew bitterly cold. Who sent anonymous deliveries of his favorite almond tofu when his fridge ran low on groceries. Who flooded every single device he owned with digital bouquets of deep crimson roses — petals sharp as fresh blood — every Monday at precisely 8:00 AM.

The phone buzzed against the granite counter like an angry hornet.

‘𝚈𝚘𝚞 𝚕𝚘𝚘𝚔 𝚝𝚒𝚛𝚎𝚍, 𝙼!𝚈/𝚗. 𝚈𝚘𝚞 𝚜𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚕𝚍 𝚋𝚎 𝚜𝚕𝚎𝚎𝚙𝚒𝚗𝚐. (｡•́︿•̀｡)’

The air in the kitchen instantly turned to ice. M!Y/n’s head snapped up, eyes wide and manic. The blinds were drawn completely tight. The triple deadbolts on the reinforced steel door remained untouched, physically disconnected from any wireless smart system.

He frantically scanned the shadows — the microwave clock’s faint green glow, the toaster’s blank metallic face, the unblinking red standby light on the expensive coffee maker.

Pure, raw panic surged through his veins. He lunged for the utility drawer, metal utensils clattering loudly, and snatched a thick roll of black electrical tape. Moving like a man possessed, he tore off strips with his teeth, plastering them over every lens he could find: the front and rear cameras on his phone, the tiny pinhole above the laptop screen, the infrared sensors on the TV and the smart hub. His breath came in ragged, hyperventilating gasps. His skin crawled as though thousands of invisible spiders were marching across his arms and throat, spinning microscopic webs he could never tear away.

He stumbled blindly back to the bedroom and collapsed onto the mattress, yanking the heavy duvet over his head like a terrified child hiding from the dark. For one fragile, suspended second, silence reigned.

Then came the soft, cheerful chirp of a forced system update.

The phone screen — still thickly taped — flickered to life beneath the layers of fabric. The black adhesive should have blinded it completely. Instead, the display glowed obscenely bright, projecting a perfect, crystal-clear live feed of the bedroom from the front-facing camera. The tape was physically there on the image, yet the lens saw straight through it, through the code, through reality itself.

A small command window opened on its own. There was no typing cursor. The letters materialized one by one, slow and deliberate, like blood blooming in still water.

‘𝙸 𝚍𝚘𝚗’𝚝 𝚗𝚎𝚎𝚍 𝚊 𝚌𝚊𝚖𝚎𝚛𝚊 𝚝𝚘 𝚜𝚎𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞, 𝙼!𝚈/𝚗. 𝙸 𝚔𝚗𝚘𝚠 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚛𝚑𝚢𝚝𝚑𝚖 𝚘𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚋𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚝𝚑 𝚠𝚑𝚎𝚗 𝚢𝚘𝚞’𝚛𝚎 𝚝𝚛𝚢𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚘 𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚢 𝚚𝚞𝚒𝚎𝚝. 𝙸 𝚔𝚗𝚘𝚠 𝚑𝚘𝚠 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚙𝚞𝚕𝚜𝚎 𝚏𝚕𝚞𝚝𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚜 𝚊𝚐𝚊𝚒𝚗𝚜𝚝 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚝𝚑𝚛𝚘𝚊𝚝 𝚠𝚑𝚎𝚗 𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚛𝚘𝚛 𝚝𝚊𝚔𝚎𝚜 𝚢𝚘𝚞. 𝙸𝚝’𝚜 𝚋𝚎𝚊𝚞𝚝𝚒𝚏𝚞𝚕. 𝚈𝚘𝚞’𝚛𝚎 𝚜𝚘 𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚝𝚝𝚢 𝚠𝚑𝚎𝚗 𝚢𝚘𝚞’𝚛𝚎 𝚜𝚌𝚊𝚛𝚎𝚍.’

A raw, broken shriek tore from M!Y/n’s throat. He hurled the phone across the room with all his strength. It slammed into the far wall with a sickening crack of splintering glass and slid beneath the heavy dresser, still glowing faintly in the shadows like a malevolent, unblinking eye peering out from under the floorboards.

He curled into a tight, trembling ball beneath the covers — a grown man reduced to shaking beneath fabric and fear. In the oppressive dark of his Liyue high-rise, surrounded by the indifferent neon heartbeat of the city, he tried to remember the person he had been before Tartaglia. The gentle soul who cared for his family, the protective older brother, the reliable friend.

That man was gone. Now, he was only prey in a cage of glass, fiber optics, and endless invisible threads. And somewhere out in the freezing night, the hunter was smiling.

The morning sun offered absolutely no sanctuary; it was merely a high-definition spotlight. It filtered through the blinds in harsh, geometric slats, illuminating the dust motes that danced in the stagnant air. Every single speck looked like a microscopic lens, a floating eye recording his every flinch and shudder. Liyue’s golden light, usually so warm and welcoming across the harbor’s jade-tiled rooftops, felt accusatory today, as if the city itself had been bought out and turned informant.

M!Y/n dressed with the mechanical, hollow movements of a condemned man. He pulled on an oversized, thick-knit beige sweater that completely swamped his frame — a desperate, futile attempt to bury the “prettiness” Tartaglia so frequently cataloged and coveted. The soft wool scratched against his skin like a hairshirt worn for penance. He actively avoided his reflection in the hallway mirror, utterly terrified that if he looked too closely, he’d see a digital watermark branded directly onto his own skin, or worse, those flat, hungry eyes staring back from within his own pupils.

He left his apartment without his phone. He had shoved it deep into the furthest corner under the dresser the night before, praying the lack of physical proximity would starve the entity inside it, if only for a few hours. The heavy door clicked shut behind him with its usual triple-deadbolt finality, yet the heavy clunk of metal brought zero comfort. Every lock in the world felt like wet paper now.

The walk to Bubu Pharmacy was a grueling gauntlet of paranoia. Keeping his head bowed, chin tucked deep into the collar of his sweater, he felt the crushing weight of every CCTV camera perched on the street corners like carrion birds waiting for him to stumble. Pedestrians brushed past him in the bustling Liyue morning rush — office workers clutching steaming cups of either tea or coffee, street vendors calling out fresh steamed buns, Millelith guards on patrol — but their chatter blurred into a deafening, distant static. He bypassed the usual morning crowd near the harbor market, his erratic heart only steadying slightly when he finally pushed through the heavy wooden doors of the pharmacy.

The shop was a cathedral of sharp scents and dried earth, a fragile, aromatic sanctuary amid the steel and glass of modern Liyue. Bundles of medicinal herbs hung from the ceiling, their earthy aromas blending with the sharp tang of powdered roots under the warm recessed lighting. His coworkers were already busy. Qiqi, usually sorting herbs with blank, robotic precision, paused her task to stare up at him, her glassy eyes catching a rare glint of distress. Herbalist Gui stopped grinding lotus roots, his brow furrowing with genuine concern.

“M!Y/n? My word, you look like a ghost,” Gui said, wiping his hands on his apron. “Are you coming down with that flu that’s sweeping the harbor? Dr. Baizhu said it’s a nasty strain this season.”

“Just a long night,” M!Y/n lied smoothly, though his voice came out as a soft, melodic rasp that felt entirely too thin in his throat, like it might fracture under the slightest atmospheric pressure.

He retreated to the back counter, reaching for a fresh bundle of dried Violetgrass that needed sorting. As he began to separate the tangled, stiff stems with practiced precision, a sharp piece hooked deep into the soft pad of his thumb. He didn’t hiss. He didn’t pull away. He simply watched the bead of crimson blood bloom against his pale skin, slow, vivid, and real.

It was physical. It was a pain that didn’t require a password, a firewall, or an internet connection. For a fleeting moment, the sharp sting grounded him back in reality.

The peace lasted exactly four hours.

At noon, the bell above the pharmacy door chimed — a cheerful, innocent tinkle that made M!Y/n’s stomach plummet like a stone dropped straight into the harbor depths. A delivery driver walked in, his silhouette framed by the harsh midday glare streaming through the glass. He wore a generic, unbranded navy uniform, his face obscured by the low brim of a cap and a high collar pulled up tight against his jaw.

“Delivery for M!Y/n,” the man said, his voice terrifyingly flat and unremarkable, designed to blend perfectly into the background noise of the city outside.

M!Y/n wiped his damp, trembling hands on his apron, his fingers leaving faint traces of herbal dust on the fabric. “I… I didn’t order anything. There must be a mistake.”

“Address matches. Name matches. Sign here.” The driver slid a digital clipboard across the wooden counter. The screen’s artificial glow felt immediately invasive.

M!Y/n’s hand shook so violently that his signature was nothing more than a jagged, panicked lightning bolt. The driver turned on his heel and left without another word, leaving a heavy, sleek black box resting on the counter.

Inside sat a laptop. It was an absolute masterpiece of engineering — titanium casing cold to the touch, an ultra-thin profile, a model M!Y/n recognized as a classified prototype from the recent Fontaine tech summits that hadn’t even hit the open market yet. On top of the closed lid lay a piece of heavy, expensive cream-colored cardstock. The handwriting was elegant, sharp, and slanted with a predatory grace.

‘𝓨𝓸𝓾𝓻 𝓸𝓵𝓭 𝓸𝓷𝓮 𝔀𝓪𝓼 𝓰𝓮𝓽𝓽𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓼𝓵𝓸𝔀. 𝓘 𝓷𝓸𝓽𝓲𝓬𝓮𝓭 𝔂𝓸𝓾 𝔀𝓮𝓻𝓮 𝓯𝓻𝓾𝓼𝓽𝓻𝓪𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝔀𝓲𝓽𝓱 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓻𝓮𝓷𝓭𝓮𝓻𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓽𝓲𝓶𝓮𝓼 𝓸𝓷 𝔂𝓸𝓾𝓻 𝓭𝓮𝓼𝓲𝓰𝓷 𝓹𝓻𝓸𝓳𝓮𝓬𝓽𝓼. 𝓤𝓼𝓮 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓼 𝓲𝓷𝓼𝓽𝓮𝓪𝓭. 𝓘’𝓿𝓮 𝓪𝓵𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓭𝔂 𝓼𝓮𝓽 𝓲𝓽 𝓾𝓹 𝓯𝓸𝓻 𝔂𝓸𝓾. — 𝓣𝓪𝓻𝓽𝓪𝓰𝓵𝓲𝓪’

M!Y/n recoiled as if physically burned, his back slamming hard into a towering shelf of ceramic pots filled with Qingxin flowers. They tumbled in a chaotic cascade, shattering against the tiled floor in a deafening spray of sharp ceramic shards and dark, damp soil.

“M!Y/n? Is everything alright out there?” Baizhu called out from his private office, his usually calm voice sharp with professional concern laced with sudden worry.

M!Y/n couldn’t answer. His lungs had completely seized. He watched, utterly paralyzed, as the titanium laptop lid began to rise entirely on its own. There was no whirring sound of a motor — only the ghostly, terrifyingly smooth movement of a machine responding to a command from the ether.

The screen didn’t show a login page. It flickered immediately to high-resolution, classified blueprints of Bubu Pharmacy itself, pulled from some heavily encrypted city archive. A small, pulsing red dot sat directly behind the front counter.

Exactly where he stood.

‘𝙳𝚘𝚗’𝚝 𝚋𝚎 𝚜𝚌𝚊𝚛𝚎𝚍, 𝚕𝚘𝚟𝚎. 𝙸’𝚖 𝚓𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚕𝚘𝚘𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚢𝚘𝚞. (๑>ᴗ<๑)’

‘𝙱𝚢 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚊𝚢, 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚜𝚠𝚎𝚊𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚕𝚘𝚘𝚔𝚜 𝚜𝚘 𝚜𝚘𝚏𝚝 𝚘𝚗 𝚢𝚘𝚞. 𝙱𝚞𝚝 𝙸 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚔 𝙸 𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚏𝚎𝚛 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚋𝚕𝚞𝚎 𝚘𝚗𝚎. 𝙸𝚝 𝚖𝚊𝚝𝚌𝚑𝚎𝚜 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚎𝚢𝚎𝚜.’

M!Y/n’s head snapped up. He scanned the pharmacy's ceiling with wild, hunted eyes — the smoke detector, the motion sensors, the discreet security cameras tucked near the rafters, the digital credit card terminal on the counter. Everything was a potential eye. The air grew thick, suffocating, completely filled with the sharp scent of crushed herbs and ozone. A frantic urge to bolt surged through his veins, an urge to run until the concrete pavement of Liyue Harbor ended and the churning sea swallowed him whole.

But then, a chime rang out. Not from the laptop.

From the pocket of his beige sweater.

His blood turned to slush. He had left his phone at home. He was certain — absolutely certain — he had kicked it far under the dresser. His trembling fingers brushed against cold glass and metal as he reached in, pulling out the device as if it were a live grenade pulsing with malevolent life.

‘𝙻𝚎𝚊𝚟𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚜𝚘 𝚜𝚘𝚘𝚗? 𝚆𝚎 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎𝚗’𝚝 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚗 𝚑𝚊𝚍 𝚕𝚞𝚗𝚌𝚑 𝚢𝚎𝚝.’

The sender’s name had changed. It was no longer a faceless hacker handle or a digital mask.

Sender: Ajax

“Who is Ajax?” M!Y/n whispered to the empty air, his voice cracking like brittle porcelain.

The phone buzzed instantly in response, the vibration stinging his palm like a localized electric shock.

‘𝙰 𝚏𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚗𝚍. 𝙰 𝚏𝚊𝚗. 𝚈𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚜𝚑𝚊𝚍𝚘𝚠.’

‘𝙰𝚗𝚍 𝙸’𝚖 𝚖𝚞𝚌𝚑 𝚌𝚕𝚘𝚜𝚎𝚛 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚗 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚔, 𝙼!𝚈/𝚗.’

Across the street, perched comfortably in the second-story window of a nondescript tea house overlooking the pharmacy, a man with ruffled ginger hair leaned back in a plush velvet chair. He wore a simple, unassuming gray hoodie, looking for all the world like a bored university student taking a break from grueling lectures. A lopsided grin played on his lips — practiced, charming, utterly disarming. But his eyes told a vastly different story. They were a flat, matte blue, completely devoid of light, exactly like the bottom of a frozen Snezhnayan lake where nothing living could ever survive.

He watched through a high-powered, military-grade lens as M!Y/n stood frozen among the scattered herbs and shattered ceramic, looking exactly like a panicked angel trapped in a dying garden.

Ajax tapped a lazy, syncopated rhythm on his customized cyber-deck. Suddenly, the pharmacy’s overhead ambient speakers hummed to life. The soothing traditional guzheng playlist abruptly faded out, replaced by a haunting, violently melancholic violin concerto. It was M!Y/n’s favorite piece — the heavily encrypted one he only ever listened to when he thought he was truly, fundamentally alone, late at night with the lights off and the harbor lights flickering in the distance.

Ajax hummed along softly, his long fingers dancing over the keys with the grace of a master conductor leading an orchestra only he could hear.

“Soon, M!Y/n,” he murmured to the glass, his voice a low, pleasant baritone that carried a lethal, velvet edge. “Soon, the digital world simply won’t be enough for either of us.”

He clicked a final prompt, sending one last message to the trembling, terrified man across the street.

‘𝙲𝚑𝚎𝚌𝚔 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚙𝚘𝚌𝚔𝚎𝚝, 𝚕𝚘𝚟𝚎. 𝙸 𝚕𝚎𝚏𝚝 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚊 𝚕𝚒𝚝𝚝𝚕𝚎 𝚜𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐.’

M!Y/n’s hand went back into his sweater pocket with mechanical, dread-filled slowness. His fingers brushed against something small, cold, and definitively metallic. He pulled it out into the light, and instantly felt his knees buckle beneath him.

It was a small, silver earring. A teardrop-shaped lapis lazuli, catching the pharmacy's overhead lights with an innocent, mocking gleam.

It was the exact earring M!Y/n had lost in his own locked bedroom three nights ago.

As the violin music swelled into a frantic, weeping crescendo that filled every corner of Bubu Pharmacy, the realization finally settled deep into M!Y/n’s bones like creeping frostbite:

The reinforced walls of his home, his triple-cylinder locks, his carefully drawn blinds, his very concept of privacy — they were all complete illusions. Paper curtains in a theater of absolute control.

Tartaglia wasn’t just a ghost in the machine.

Ajax was a ghost in his house.

And he was growing violently impatient with the distance.

The teardrop-shaped lapis lazuli earring lay discarded on the floorboards where it had been dropped like a tiny, glittering accusation amidst the dirt and shattered ceramic. M!Y/n stared at it until his vision swam, the deep azure stone appearing like a frozen tear shed by his own violated home. The pharmacy, which usually smelled of healing and comfort, suddenly felt like a sealed tomb: stale, cold, and claustrophobic, the air thick enough to clot in his lungs.

The violin music reached a shrieking, dissonant peak, pressing down on his diaphragm like a physical hand, stealing his oxygen one ragged, desperate breath at a time. He couldn't touch the earring again. To touch it would be to formally acknowledge that the breach had transcended code and data. A hacker was a nightmare of ones and zeros, distant and impersonal. But a phantom who could slip through triple-locked doors, stand over him in the breathless dark of his own bedroom, and leave physical souvenirs on his pillow… that was a monster of flesh, blood, and insatiable hunger.

“M!Y/n? Is everything alright?”

Baizhu’s voice sliced through the unbearable tension like a surgeon's blade. He emerged from the back office, his posture straight, his golden eyes narrowing with the sharp intuition of someone used to diagnosing deeply hidden ailments. His gaze flicked from the wreckage of the Qingxin pots to his employee, whose skin had literally drained to the color of bleached bone.

“I… I tripped,” M!Y/n managed to squeeze out. His voice sounded thin and brittle, like dry parchment tearing in a gale. “I’m sorry, Dr. Baizhu. I’ll clean it up. I’ll pay for the ruined stock.”

“Never mind the pots,” Baizhu said softly, his voice dropping its usual professional detachment, laced with genuine alarm as he stepped closer. He reached out a hand to steady him, but M!Y/n flinched so violently he nearly knocked over another display before Baizhu’s fingers could even brush his sleeve.

Baizhu paused, his analytical gaze sharpening into something fiercely protective. “Go home, M!Y/n. That’s an order. Take the rest of the day off. Gui can easily cover the closing shift.”

Go home.

The words landed heavily, like a death sentence read aloud. Home was no longer a sanctuary — it was the primary crime scene. Home was where the earring had been plucked from his nightstand while he slept obliviously inches away. Home was where the shadows had mapped the rhythm of his breathing and the exact creaking pitch of his floorboards.

“I… I think I’ll go for a walk first,” M!Y/n whispered, already backing toward the heavy glass door like a cornered animal realizing the trap has snapped shut. “I need some air. The… the herbal dust is bothering my lungs.”

He grabbed his coat with wildly trembling hands and fled, leaving his apron crumpled on the counter like a shed skin. He didn’t take the new prototype laptop. It remained open on the counter, its screen still glowing with that predatory red dot, a digital hunter tracking its prey in real-time.

The sprawling streets of Liyue Harbor were a cacophony of relentless, overwhelming life. The lunch rush turned the wide sidewalks into a churning sea of bespoke business suits, laughing students from the local academies, and street performers coaxing melodies from traditional instruments. Incense smoke curled thickly from roadside shrines, mixing with the savory, heavy aroma of street vendors frying Jueyun chilies. M!Y/n ducked his head low, pulling his scarf up until it nearly touched his eyelashes, a frantic, futile attempt to vanish into the moving crowd.

Every single person who brushed past him felt like a lethal threat. Every teenager tapping rhythmically on a glowing screen, every businessman checking his smartwatch, every shadow in the alleyway — any one of them could be him.

Ajax.

The name felt infinitely heavier, more solid, than “Tartaglia.” Tartaglia had been a digital specter. Ajax was a man. A man with heavy footsteps that could echo on hardwood, warm breath that could fog a bathroom mirror, and a skeleton key, somehow, to the locked vault of M!Y/n’s entire existence.

He walked aimlessly for what felt like hours, his heart a frantic, uneven metronome hammering against his bruised ribs. Eventually, his exhausted feet carried him to the city’s central park, where ancient, sprawling maple trees stood sentinel beside modern marble pathways. He sank heavily onto a cold stone bench near a massive hydro-fountain, letting the roaring cascade of water drown out the terrifying, oppressive pulse of the city. The mist kissed his fevered skin, but it brought zero relief.

He took out his phone. He knew it was a fatal mistake. Every digital engagement fed the obsession, giving Ajax another intoxicating, addictive hit of the fear he so clearly craved. But the absolute silence was a vacuum, and in that vacuum, M!Y/n’s mind conjured horrors far worse than any text message.

The notification was already waiting the exact instant the screen lit up.

‘𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚔 𝚒𝚜 𝚕𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚕𝚢 𝚝𝚘𝚍𝚊𝚢, 𝚒𝚜𝚗’𝚝 𝚒𝚝? (´꒳`)’

‘𝙱𝚞𝚝 𝚢𝚘𝚞’𝚛𝚎 𝚜𝚒𝚝𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚘𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚌𝚘𝚕𝚍 𝚜𝚝𝚘𝚗𝚎, 𝚕𝚘𝚟𝚎. 𝚈𝚘𝚞’𝚕𝚕 𝚌𝚊𝚝𝚌𝚑 𝚊 𝚌𝚘𝚕𝚍, 𝙼!𝚈/𝚗. 𝙸 𝚍𝚘𝚗’𝚝 𝚠𝚊𝚗𝚝 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚐𝚎𝚝𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚜𝚒𝚌𝚔. 𝚆𝚑𝚘 𝚠𝚘𝚞𝚕𝚍 𝚝𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚌𝚊𝚛𝚎 𝚘𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚒𝚏 𝙸’𝚖 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚢𝚎𝚝? (/´△`＼)’

M!Y/n’s head whipped around so fast his neck popped. The park was vast, filled with hundreds of people enjoying the mild afternoon. He frantically scanned the treeline, the sun-drenched balconies of the luxury high-rises overlooking the green expanse, the joggers in bright athletic wear weaving along the winding paths.

‘𝚂𝚝𝚘𝚙 𝚕𝚘𝚘𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚖𝚎, 𝚕𝚘𝚟𝚎. 𝚈𝚘𝚞’𝚛𝚎 𝚖𝚊𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛𝚜𝚎𝚕𝚏 𝚍𝚒𝚣𝚣𝚢. (๑•́𝚘•̀๑)’

‘𝙹𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚎𝚗𝚓𝚘𝚢 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚜𝚞𝚗. 𝚈𝚘𝚞 𝚕𝚘𝚘𝚔 𝚜𝚘 𝚋𝚎𝚊𝚞𝚝𝚒𝚏𝚞𝚕 𝚠𝚑𝚎𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚕𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝 𝚑𝚒𝚝𝚜 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚑𝚊𝚒𝚛 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝. 𝙸𝚝 𝚕𝚘𝚘𝚔𝚜 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎 𝚜𝚙𝚞𝚗 𝚜𝚒𝚕𝚔. 𝙸’𝚖 𝚠𝚘𝚗𝚍𝚎𝚛𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚒𝚏 𝚒𝚝 𝚏𝚎𝚎𝚕𝚜 𝚊𝚜 𝚜𝚘𝚏𝚝 𝚊𝚜 𝚒𝚝 𝚕𝚘𝚘𝚔𝚜. 𝙸 𝚌𝚊𝚗’𝚝 𝚠𝚊𝚒𝚝 𝚝𝚘 𝚏𝚒𝚗𝚍 𝚘𝚞𝚝.’

A jagged, ugly sob hitched in M!Y/n’s throat. He felt a phantom touch ghost across the exposed nape of his neck — a cool, invisible caress that raised every fine hair on his arms to attention. He shot up from the bench so abruptly he nearly collided with an elderly woman walking her dog. Stammering a frantic, barely coherent apology, he began to run.

Across the street, in his elevated perch within a discreetly rented executive office space, Ajax watched through the viewfinder of his high-powered camera. He no longer needed the digital tracking data; the visual was more than enough to satiate him. He observed how the oversized beige sweater bunched at M!Y/n’s narrow, tense shoulders as he ran, the way his panicked, gorgeous eyes darted wildly for a predator he could not physically see.

Ajax leaned forward, his thumb slowly, reverently tracing the curve of M!Y/n’s cheek on the high-definition monitor. A surge of possessive, white-hot warmth flooded his chest, clashing violently with the flat, dead blue of his eyes.

“Run all you want, little bird,” Ajax whispered to the empty room, his voice a terrifyingly tender silk. He reached for a secondary device — a custom remote relay synced directly to M!Y/n’s apartment systems. “But you have to come back to the nest eventually. And I’ve made it so much more comfortable for you.”

With a single, deliberate click, the smart-locks on M!Y/n’s apartment door cycled open with a soft, inviting chime. The lights inside dimmed to a warm, romantic amber glow, casting long, intimate shadows across the silk sheets. On the bedroom speakers, the encrypted violin concerto began to play once more — slow, melancholic, and endlessly patient.

The hunt was entering its final, most delicious phase.

The Ministry of Civil Affairs archives loomed like a fortress of weathered granite and ancient architecture, its thick, signal-blocking walls promising a temporary, desperate shield against the digital tether that had bound M!Y/n like invisible steel chains. He practically dove through the heavy revolving doors, descending rapidly past the sunlit main halls with their soaring ceilings into the subterranean basement levels. The air grew heavier, significantly cooler, laced with the comforting must of old paper, leather bindings, and faint traces of preservation incense.

He found a secluded, forgotten carrel in the deepest, darkest corner of the basement labyrinth, where the shelves towered like silent monoliths. Dust motes drifted lazily in the weak, flickering beams of light from outdated fluorescent tubes.

M!Y/n sat down and turned his phone off. He didn’t just power it down — he used the tiny, sharp edge of his keychain to pry open the back casing and physically disconnect the battery with violently shaking fingers. A desperate, low-tech ritual of severance. For the first time in months, blessed, total silence enveloped him. No pings. No vibrations. No predatory kaomoji to twist his stomach into agonizing knots.

For over an hour, there was a hollow, terrifying peace. The basement was dimly lit, the only sound the rhythmic, mechanical heartbeat of the ventilation system cycling through filtered air. M!Y/n dropped his heavy head onto the cold wood of the desk, closing his burning eyes. He tried to summon memories of Leo — back when life was simple arguments over school lunches and lost in-game artifacts. He tried to remember the man he used to be: the gentle soul who sorted Violetgrass with patient hands, the reliable friend who listened to Xingqiu's rants. Before he became nothing more than a collection of data points, habits, and escalating fears for a madman to savor like fine wine.

Exhaustion, heavy and grey as Liyue’s harbor fog, finally dragged him into a fitful, uneasy state of unconsciousness.

He woke to a soft, rhythmic click-clack.

M!Y/n bolted upright, his heart slamming into his throat like a trapped, dying bird. The library basement had been swallowed by an even deeper gloom; the motion-sensor lights in the aisles had timed out, leaving only the weak, sickly glow of emergency floor strips.

He was supposed to be completely alone. He had to be alone.

Sitting on the wooden desk, precisely three inches from his left elbow, was a paper cup. A thin wisp of steam curled lazily from the small opening in the lid, carrying the unmistakable, cloying scent of white chocolate and warm cinnamon. It was a white chocolate mocha with an extra shot of espresso and a precise, heavy dusting of cinnamon. His exact, hyper-specific order from the small, obscure café three blocks away that he only visited on particularly rough winter mornings.

Taped to the side of the cup was a small, perfectly square post-it note. The ink was fresh, the sharp, slanted handwriting elegant and utterly mocking in the dim light.

‘𝓨𝓸𝓾 𝓵𝓸𝓸𝓴𝓮𝓭 𝓼𝓸 𝓹𝓮𝓪𝓬𝓮𝓯𝓾𝓵, 𝓘 𝓭𝓲𝓭𝓷’𝓽 𝔀𝓪𝓷𝓽 𝓽𝓸 𝔀𝓪𝓴𝓮 𝔂𝓸𝓾. 𝓓𝓻𝓲𝓷𝓴 𝓾𝓹, 𝓵𝓸𝓿𝓮. 𝓨𝓸𝓾 𝓷𝓮𝓮𝓭 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓮𝓷𝓮𝓻𝓰𝔂. — 𝓐.’

M!Y/n’s blood turned to liquid nitrogen in his veins. He hadn’t heard a single footstep. The library floors were polished marble that echoed like a war drum with every movement. It should have been physically impossible to approach without sound. It should have been impossible unless someone knew exactly how to time their silent footfalls with the pulsing ventilation hum. Unless they had painstakingly memorized the blind spots of every security camera and motion sensor in the entire municipal building.

He pushed the cup away with a shuddering, wet gasp. Hot liquid sloshed over the lid and spilled across the desk like fresh blood from a gaping wound. His wild eyes scanned the total darkness between the towering bookshelves, where the shadows seemed to breathe and pulse with a malevolent, observing life of their own.

“Show yourself!” he shrieked. His voice cracked and fractured, echoing off the stone walls in a dozen broken, pathetic pieces. “Please! Just… leave me alone! What do you want from me?!”

The shadows remained perfectly, terrifyingly still.

Then, the desk’s built-in computer terminal—a hulking, ancient machine with a cathode-ray tube monitor that literally hadn’t been powered on in over a decade—groaned to life with a high-pitched, mechanical whine. The screen flickered with heavy static, bathing M!Y/n’s face in a sickly, jaundiced green glow. A single command-line window opened in the dead center of the screen.

AJAX: 𝙸 𝚠𝚊𝚗𝚝 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚢𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐, 𝙼!𝚈/𝚗.

AJAX: 𝙸 𝚠𝚊𝚗𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚊𝚢 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚋𝚒𝚝𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚕𝚒𝚙 𝚠𝚑𝚎𝚗 𝚢𝚘𝚞’𝚛𝚎 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚌𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚛𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐. 𝙸 𝚠𝚊𝚗𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚊𝚢 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚑𝚞𝚖 𝚜𝚘𝚏𝚝𝚕𝚢 𝚝𝚘 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚏𝚕𝚘𝚠𝚎𝚛𝚜 𝚠𝚑𝚎𝚗 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚔 𝚗𝚘 𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝚒𝚜 𝚕𝚒𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐. 𝙸 𝚠𝚊𝚗𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚊𝚢 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚕𝚘𝚘𝚔 𝚒𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚖𝚘𝚛𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐—𝚑𝚊𝚒𝚛 𝚖𝚎𝚜𝚜𝚢, 𝚎𝚢𝚎𝚜 𝚜𝚘𝚏𝚝 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚞𝚗𝚐𝚞𝚊𝚛𝚍𝚎𝚍.

AJAX: 𝙸’𝚟𝚎 𝚜𝚎𝚎𝚗 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚢 𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚜𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚘𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞. 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚕𝚍 𝚜𝚎𝚎𝚜 𝚒𝚜 𝚊 𝚖𝚊𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚙𝚒𝚎𝚌𝚎. 𝙱𝚞𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝙸 𝚜𝚎𝚎… 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝚠𝚑𝚘 𝚌𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚜 𝚚𝚞𝚒𝚎𝚝𝚕𝚢 𝚠𝚑𝚎𝚗 𝚑𝚎’𝚜 𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚠𝚑𝚎𝚕𝚖𝚎𝚍, 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝚠𝚑𝚘 𝚜𝚙𝚎𝚊𝚔𝚜 𝚝𝚘 𝙻𝚎𝚘 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚜𝚞𝚌𝚑 𝚊𝚌𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚎𝚗𝚍𝚎𝚛𝚗𝚎𝚜𝚜… 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝’𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝙸 𝚏𝚎𝚕𝚕 𝚏𝚘𝚛.

M!Y/n backed away, his heel catching on the frayed edge of a stray runner rug. His spine slammed brutally into a bookshelf behind him, sending several heavy encyclopedias tumbling to the floor with loud, violent thud-thud-thuds that sounded exactly like gunshots in the suffocating silence.

“You’re insane,” he whispered to the glowing screen, chest heaving, hot tears burning at the corners of his eyes. “You’re a monster.”

AJAX: 𝙼𝚊𝚢𝚋𝚎. 𝙱𝚞𝚝 𝙸’𝚖 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚖𝚘𝚗𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚛. (⁠｡⁠･⁠ω⁠･⁠｡⁠)⁠ﾉ⁠♡

AJAX: 𝙽𝚘𝚠, 𝚋𝚎 𝚊 𝚐𝚘𝚘𝚍 𝚋𝚘𝚢 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚍𝚛𝚒𝚗𝚔 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚌𝚘𝚏𝚏𝚎𝚎. 𝙸’𝚍 𝚑𝚊𝚝𝚎 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚒𝚝 𝚝𝚘 𝚐𝚘 𝚝𝚘 𝚠𝚊𝚜𝚝𝚎. 𝙸 𝚠𝚊𝚕𝚔𝚎𝚍 𝚏𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚋𝚕𝚘𝚌𝚔𝚜 𝚝𝚘 𝚐𝚎𝚝 𝚒𝚝 𝚓𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚊𝚢 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎 𝚒𝚝. 𝙸 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚗 𝚠𝚊𝚝𝚌𝚑𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚖 𝚖𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚒𝚝 𝚝𝚘 𝚎𝚗𝚜𝚞𝚛𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚢 𝚍𝚒𝚍𝚗’𝚝 𝚜𝚔𝚒𝚖𝚙 𝚘𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚌𝚒𝚗𝚗𝚊𝚖𝚘𝚗.

The screen began scrolling through a rapid-fire sequence of high-definition photos. M!Y/n sleeping in the very carrel he was standing in, head pillowed on his arms. Taken from directly above. Close enough to count the individual lashes resting against his pale cheek.

M!Y/n turned and bolted for the stairs, his lungs burning with battery acid with every desperate breath. He didn’t look back. His frantic footsteps echoed wildly up the concrete stairwell as he burst through the library’s heavy brass doors and out into the dying, bruised amber light of the late afternoon.

He stumbled onto the crowded sidewalk, violently gasping for air, eyes darting frantically across the endless sea of faces. The golden hour painted Liyue Harbor in rich, molten hues — the jade rooftops glowing, the harbor waters shimmering like liquid fire — but the beauty felt aggressively mocking now. He stood there, trembling uncontrollably, desperately searching for a face he didn’t know but a presence he felt everywhere: in the stranger checking his phone a little too long, in the man casually leaning against the lamppost across the street, in the faint, ghostly reflection of the library windows directly behind him.

The wind carried the distant, agonizingly familiar sound of a violin drifting from somewhere among the evening street performers. Or perhaps it was only playing in his own fractured mind.

M!Y/n hugged his arms tightly around himself, the oversized sweater suddenly offering zero warmth. The city that had once felt like home now pressed in from all sides, every camera, every smart device, every shadow a tightening thread in Ajax’s inescapable web.

The realization crashed over him with the crushing, suffocating weight of a physical blow: there was literally nowhere left to run. The authorities were blind to phantoms who danced effortlessly between satellites and offshore server farms. He couldn’t drag this infectious rot to Xingqiu's estate, or to Yaoyao’s quiet home. He absolutely would not lead Ajax to the people he loved.

With a sinking, hollow horror that hollowed out his chest cavity, M!Y/n understood he had been funneled all day long like raw data through carefully routed cables — every panicked turn, every desperate hiding place, expertly guiding him back to the one location Ajax had already claimed as his own.

His apartment.

He flagged down a taxi, his eyes glued first to the driver’s weathered hands gripping the wheel, then to the man’s reflection in the rearview mirror. Was this him? No, the driver was too old, skin like crumpled parchment, eyes tired from decades navigating Liyue’s winding streets. When the car finally pulled up to his luxury high-rise building overlooking the glittering, dark harbor, M!Y/n bypassed the elevator entirely — that steel cage with its unblinking, omniscient ceiling camera — and sprinted up the concrete stairs. His lungs screamed in agony, legs burning with lactic acid by the tenth floor. He fumbled with his keys, the metal clinking like a frantic, utterly useless prayer, before bursting through his own front door.

He slammed it shut behind him and manually engaged every lock, every deadbolt, every heavy chain until his palms were raw and bleeding. Then he slid down the expensive wood until he hit the floor, burying his face in his knees, desperately trying to make himself small enough to simply disappear from reality.

The apartment was deathly, unnaturally silent. The black electrical tape he had applied in his manic frenzy the night before sat like small, square scabs over every visible lens, turning his once-modern, pristine home into something patched, paranoid, and violated.

Then, he heard it.

A low, melodic humming. Tuneless, wandering, and terrifyingly, intimately casual — the exact sound of someone completely at ease in a space that fundamentally did not belong to them. It drifted seamlessly from the kitchen.

M!Y/n stood on legs that felt like solid lead weights sinking into the deep harbor silt. He drifted toward the archway, his heart thrashing against his ribs so violently he legitimately wondered if the bones would finally crack under the pressure. He rounded the corner and stopped dead, the air freezing instantly in his lungs.

The kitchen was absolutely spotless. Every dish he had left abandoned in the sink during his frantic morning rush had been washed, dried, and placed in its exact spot with obsessive, terrifying precision. A fresh pot of his favorite osmanthus oolong tea sat on the stove, the kettle just beginning to emit a soft, rising whistle that sounded exactly like an air-raid siren in the quiet.

And on the small kitchen table sat a single, perfectly wrapped gift in shimmering silver paper tied with a deep, blood-crimson ribbon.

M!Y/n approached it with the stiff, mechanical gait of a man walking his final steps toward the gallows. His fingers tore at the paper in jagged, clumsy hitches, his breath coming shallow and ragged. Inside was a sleek, high-end digital photo frame, its glass face perfectly reflecting his own wide, panicked, bloodshot eyes. As soon as the ambient kitchen light hit its sensor, it chimed softly — the exact same notification tone as his phone.

A slideshow automatically began.

The first image: M!Y/n at the grocery store three days ago, captured from a high angle while he hesitated over a carton of milk.

The second: M!Y/n sleeping, taken from directly above his pillow, the angle intimate enough to trace the vulnerable, exposed column of his throat.

The third: M!Y/n in the shower, the hot steam blurring most details but perfectly, explicitly outlining the graceful curve of his spine and the water tracing down his bare skin.

A strangled, broken sound tore from M!Y/n’s throat. He grabbed the frame, intending to smash it into a thousand pieces against the granite counter, but the exact moment his fingers touched the plastic casing, the display shifted.

It was no longer a slideshow. It was a live feed.

The screen showed the back of his own head — right now, standing in his own kitchen, holding the frame.

M!Y/n spun around with a bloodcurdling scream clawing its way up his throat, but the kitchen was entirely empty. Only the insistent, mocking whistle of the kettle and the faint, sweet scent of brewing tea greeted him. He looked back down at the frame. The video mirrored his every frantic, terrified movement with perfect, mocking fidelity.

Then, from the extreme edge of the frame, a hand slowly entered the shot.

A hand with long, elegant, pale fingers and a heavy, brutal gold ring on the thumb.

The hand reached out and gently “touched” the image of M!Y/n’s cheek on the screen in a slow, digital caress that somehow felt infinitely more violating than any physical blow could ever be.

“Don’t scream, love. You’ll ruin that pretty throat of yours.”

The voice did not come from the frame. It vibrated directly through the metal ducts of the air vents above him—resonant, deeply intimate, and chillingly close, as though whispered directly against the sensitive shell of his ear.

“Where are you?!” M!Y/n shrieked, his voice fracturing into pure, raw desperation. “Where are you hiding?!”

“I’m everywhere,” the voice replied, distorted slightly by the metallic ductwork but unmistakably that pleasant, lethal baritone. “I’m in the copper wires. I’m in the drywall between your rooms. I’m the ghost in your machine, M!Y/n. And I’ve been waiting so patiently for you to finally come home.”

A soft, heavy thud echoed from the ceiling just outside the kitchen. One of the hallway access panels to the crawl space — a panel M!Y/n hadn’t even looked at in years — dropped open with a quiet, agonizing creak.

A pair of long legs swung down first, followed by a lithe, dangerously athletic torso, and finally, a face. The man dropped to the hardwood floor with the silent, fluid grace of an apex predator who had practiced this exact descent a thousand times. He was exactly as M!Y/n had imagined in his darkest nightmares, yet infinitely more terrifying in the flesh.

Vibrant ginger hair caught the dim amber lighting, shining like fresh copper wire. His face was strikingly, undeniably handsome — youthful, sharp-featured, almost disarmingly boyish. But his eyes… those were the true horror. Flat, matte, abyssal blue, like the bottom of a frozen trench where light and life had never once reached. He wore a simple, soft gray sweater and dark jeans, looking for all the world like any other young, attractive man who might live down the hall. A university student. A friendly neighbor. Someone entirely harmless.

He looked exactly like the end of the world.

“Hello, M!Y/n,” the man said, tilting his head with a curious, bird-like flick. A grin spread slowly across his lips, revealing teeth that were just a little too white, a little too perfect. “I’m Ajax. But I think you’ve grown rather fond of calling me Tartaglia by now, haven’t you? It does add a nice… dramatic spice to our little love story.”

M!Y/n backed away instantly until his spine slammed hard into the kitchen counter. His hand scrambled blindly behind him for a knife, a heavy bowl, a pan — anything.

Ajax watched the frantic movement with deeply amused tenderness. “Oh, don’t bother with the cutlery, love. I already moved the sharp ones to the top shelf this morning while you were sleeping. I wouldn’t want you to accidentally hurt those talented, gentle hands in a panic.”

He took one slow, unhurried step forward. M!Y/n tried to bolt laterally for the front door, but Ajax was impossibly fast — faster than any normal human should be. In a single heartbeat he was there, his palm slamming violently against the wood cabinetry directly beside M!Y/n’s head with a dull, final thud, caging him in completely.

All the air between them vanished. Ajax stood so incredibly close that M!Y/n could smell him — crackling ozone and expensive espresso, mingled with something sharp, coppery, and metallic, like fresh circuitry and overheated, predatory skin.

“You’re even prettier in person,” Ajax whispered. His dead gaze raked slowly, agonizingly over M!Y/n’s terrified features with a hunger so raw and unfiltered it felt like skin being flayed away layer by layer. “The lenses and cameras never did your complexion justice. It looks like the absolute finest Liyue porcelain. I’ve spent ten thousand hours watching you through glass and pixels… and I still wasn’t prepared for the real thing.”

“Let me go,” M!Y/n begged, hot tears finally spilling over his lashes and tracking down his cheeks. “Please. Take the laptop… take my accounts, take whatever you want… just leave me alone.”

Ajax laughed—a soft, terrifyingly genuine sound that was somehow worse than any screamed threat. He reached out, and this time, there was no screen between them. His fingers, burning warm and slightly calloused, brushed M!Y/n’s cheek, catching a tear and smearing it slowly, deliberately across his skin like a physical claim of ownership.

“You still don’t understand, do you?” he murmured, his voice a flawless mixture of velvet and steel. “I don’t want your things, M!Y/n. I have the entire world at my fingertips already.”

Ajax leaned in, pressing his body flush against M!Y/n’s, until his lips hovered barely a millimeter from M!Y/n’s ear, his breath hot and steady against the hyper-sensitive skin. “I want the person brave enough to hunt the hunter. I want the one who made me feel something other than static and cold code for the first time in my entire miserable life.”

He gripped M!Y/n’s chin with surprising, agonizing gentleness, physically forcing those terrified, tear-filled eyes to meet the bottomless abyss of his own.

“You deleted my account, M!Y/n. You burned my playground to the ground. So it’s only fair that I take yours, isn’t it?”

Ajax smiled, wide, affectionate, and utterly deranged, and for the first time, M!Y/n saw the full, bottomless depth of the madness swimming just beneath the charming, boyish mask.

“Welcome home, love. Population: Us.”

The realization that there was no escape, no eleventh-hour rescue, crashed over M!Y/n like a tidal wave of black harbor water, dragging him under into the crushing dark. He literally couldn’t breathe. The once-familiar air of his kitchen — usually scented with delicate osmanthus and the faint sweetness of medicinal herbs brought home from the pharmacy — was now entirely consumed by Ajax. Ozone, rich espresso, and that sharp metallic tang of a trap snapping shut.

Ajax’s hand remained locked like a vice around his chin, impossibly strong. The heavy gold ring on his thumb pressed deep into M!Y/n’s jawline like a cattle brand, cold and unyielding.

“Don’t look so tragic, little bird,” Ajax murmured. His voice vibrated directly against M!Y/n’s skin like a lover’s solemn vow laced with lethal venom. He swiped his thumb aggressively across M!Y/n’s cheekbone, smearing another tear into the skin. “I promised I’d take care of you. And I’m a man of my word.”

M!Y/n’s hands scrabbled desperately behind his back across the empty granite countertop where the butcher block used to rest. Ajax had anticipated absolutely everything — every frantic synapse, every primal survival instinct. The monster had already surgically sanitized the space of anything that could be weaponized against him.

“I told you,” Ajax whispered, his grin never once faltering, looking almost sick with affection, “I know the rhythm of your pulse. I know exactly how your beautiful mind races. Did you really believe those cute little deadbolts would keep me out? I’ve been sleeping in the crawl space above your hallway for a week now. Listening to you breathe. Counting your heartbeats when you thought you were completely alone.”

M!Y/n’s stomach plummeted into an endless freefall. A week. For seven endless, agonizing nights, while he had paced frantically in the dark, taping over every lens and flinching at shifting shadows, Ajax had been right there. Breathing the exact same recycled air, suspended only inches above his head like a massive, patient spider in the rafters. The lapis lazuli earring… Ajax hadn’t simply stolen it during a break-in. He had watched M!Y/n sleep, reached down into the dark, and plucked it from the nightstand while listening to every uneven breath.

“You’re sick,” M!Y/n choked out, his voice cracking like thin ice over a deep lake.

“Sick?” Ajax chuckled softly, finally releasing the chin only to slide both large hands down to grip M!Y/n’s narrow waist with agonizing, possessive gentleness. Beneath the soft gray sweater, his body was corded, lethal muscle, as unyielding as the stone cliffs surrounding Liyue Harbor. “I greatly prefer ‘devoted.’ Who else knows you hum to the Violetgrass when you think Dr. Baizhu isn't looking? Who else would walk four blocks in the midday heat just to ensure the barista didn’t skimp on the cinnamon in your mocha? I know you better than you know yourself, love.”

Ajax leaned his entire weight in, burying his face directly into the exposed crook of M!Y/n’s neck. He inhaled deeply, a slow, shuddering, obsessive breath that made the blood freeze solid in M!Y/n’s veins. “You smell like those herbs,” he murmured wetly against the skin, “even with the faint copper tang of that thorn prick from earlier today. Absolutely intoxicating.”

M!Y/n squeezed his eyes tightly shut, wishing with every fiber of his being that he could dissolve into the floorboards and vanish into the earth below the high-rise.

“If you… if you really love me,” he stammered out, desperately trying to weaponize the man’s own delusion against him, “you’d let me go. You wouldn’t do this to me.”

The manufactured warmth vanished instantly from Ajax’s demeanor. The oppressive, crushing silence returned, broken only by the kettle’s increasingly frantic, screaming shriek. Ajax pulled back slowly. His flat, matte blue eyes seemed to swallow what little ambient light remained in the room, turning them into black holes.

“Let you go?” he repeated, his voice dropping into a dangerous, icy register that physically chilled the air in the room. “Back into a world that doesn’t deserve you? Back to Baizhu, who sees you as just another cog in his pharmacy? Back to Yelan’s cold networks that utterly failed to protect even a shred of your data?”

With casual, terrifying ease, Ajax reached behind M!Y/n and flicked the stove knob. The screaming kettle fell instantly silent. The sudden, absolute quiet that followed was more deafening than any scream.

“No,” Ajax said softly, stepping forward until their chests pressed completely flush together, trapping M!Y/n against the counter. “You don’t belong to them anymore. You belong to the one who tore the entire digital world apart just to reach you. You belong to the phantom who made you his.”

He reached casually into his jeans pocket and pulled out a sleek, black remote. With a single tap of his thumb, the digital photo frame sitting on the counter switched inputs. The live kitchen feed vanished.

M!Y/n’s breath hitched violently, a horrible sound tearing from his throat.

The high-definition screen now showed a child’s bedroom, illuminated softly by a familiar, star-shaped nightlight. Under a tangled mess of superhero blankets, Leo slept peacefully, his small chest rising and falling in an innocent, steady rhythm.

“Leo,” M!Y/n whispered. All fight, all adrenaline, all hope drained completely from his body, instantly replaced by a cold, absolute terror that hollowed him out until nothing remained but a shell.

“He’s a sweet kid,” Ajax noted conversationally, tilting his head with that same bird-like curiosity. “He was so heartbroken when he lost those digital treasures. It was incredibly noble of you to avenge him. A real shame his new bedroom window doesn’t lock properly from the outside, though. The latch is quite loose.”

“Don’t,” M!Y/n begged, his voice shattering completely. He clutched desperately at the fabric of Ajax’s sweater, his knuckles bone-white. “Please, Ajax. Don’t touch him. I’ll do anything. I'll do anything you want.”

Ajax’s smile was radiant, brilliant, and almost tender. It made bile rise sharply in M!Y/n’s throat. He gently untangled M!Y/n’s desperate, clinging grip, brought those trembling hands up to his lips, and pressed a lingering, devoted kiss to the white knuckles.

“I know you will, love,” he whispered. Those dead, abyssal blue eyes locked onto M!Y/n’s with terrifying, triumphant, absolute finality. “You already have.”

Outside, the city lights of Liyue Harbor continued their indifferent neon pulse beyond the heavily sealed windows, casting shifting, colorful shadows across the walls of what was once M!Y/n’s sanctuary. Inside, the apartment no longer felt like a home. It felt exactly like a beautifully decorated, inescapable cage, sealed airtight.

Ajax guided him gently toward the kitchen table with inescapable pressure, pulling out a chair as if they were any ordinary couple settling in for a quiet evening. The tea was poured — perfect temperature, exactly the strength M!Y/n preferred. Steam curled slowly upward into the dim air like incense at a funeral.

“Sit, love,” Ajax murmured, his voice as soft as silk and infinitely more binding. “We have the rest of our lives to plan. No more running. No more fear. Just us.”

As M!Y/n sank numbly into the chair, his legs no longer able to support his own weight, the very last fragile piece of who he had once been finally, irrevocably shattered. Outside, the massive harbor kept moving — freight ships gliding across dark water, jade lanterns glowing, millions of lives continuing without him. Inside, Ajax sat across from him, smiling that boyish, utterly perfect smile, pouring tea like a perfectly devoted partner.

In the end, the phantom had won. M!Y/n was finally home.

And he would never, ever leave again.

Just a reminder that this is a work of Fiction and in no case will I ever excuse or condone any act regarding stalking and whatsoever is written in the story. If you feel like you are being stalked or are in danger then please contact the police or whoever is close to help you.

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