The Assassin's Enemy Lover

To him, a bathroom was like a special place. His mother used to say a bathroom should be spotless so spotless that one wouldn’t mind eating a snack in there.

Zi Han didn’t agree about the snack part but he definitely agreed that it had to be spotless. This place was so unbearable that he high tailed out of there so fast leaving behind a cloud of dust.

He decided to go to the so called high end hotel in the city. Yes, this might attract other people since the so called rich nobles in this city were only a dozen or so but Zi Han couldn’t stand this disgusting place. Like he said before he wouldn’t wrong himself.

Using a different face he walked into the so called luxurious hotel. He was met by a man with big George Washington hair and sparkly lashes. It seemed the high-class society in this place had a weird sense of fashion.

The man’s smile that was glowing like he was seeing a walking bank stiffened when he saw the clothes the man was wearing. This person was dressed like a poor peasant though on him the clothes looked amazing. He was pretty certain that if a few nobles saw him they would treat him as a trendsetter. Tomorrow there would be plenty of people vying to buy the so called low class peasant clothes.

Zi Han saw that the man glanced at his clothes and understood his dilemma. He rubbed the back of his neck and said, “One room please... for one night.”

“Sir, do you know how much it is a night?” said the man trying to maintain a professional attitude.

Zi Han who had traded a few things with the merchants at the gate this morning took out some silver coins which was the currency of the Republic.

.....

The man’s eyes shone when he saw the money in his possession. “This way sir,” said the man while making up a story about this young man in his mind. Maybe the young man was some rich woman’s boy toy who was running away from the cougar or maybe he was a hunter that stumbled upon some wealth and decided to treat himself. But judging from the young man’s regular looking face, he decided on the latter story rather than the former.

Zi Han wasn’t even aware that this man had given him a back story. He just seriously scrutinized the rooms available but none of them were satisfactory. They were far behind the standards of the Federation. The only thing that mattered to him the most was the bathroom so he checked it first and ignored the rest.

“I will take this one,” he said and the man with the George Washington hair nodded his head before passing him a room key.

“Thank you, sir. Breakfast will be served tomorrow morning and check out is at eleven a.m.”

Zi Han nodded his head and the man closed the door. As soon as that door closed Zi Han couldn’t resist the urge to run a cleanliness test of the room thus he asked Igneous to scan it. He also asked to check for surveillance or something like that.

What he found was that this place was in no way clean. They were conspicuous stains everywhere. Secondly, there was illegal surveillance, well, illegal for the Federation. Zi Han took out five small pebble shaped devices and as he stretched out his arms they opened up with tiny legs and red eyes before leaping out of his hand.

They began to sanitise the room from top to bottom. Zi Han picked up the destroyed surveillance and sighed. How much he missed his home. How much he missed his mother and his grandfather. How much he missed his boyfriend.

As he lay on the bed facing the ceiling, Zi Han wondered where Yi Chen was in this big city. He pulled his pillow from his storage space and hugged it tightly with a blank expression. He couldn’t wait to continue his search tomorrow.

After the city gates opened today he spend so much time in popular public spaces looking for Yi Chen by asking around. The coordinates on the ring showed that he was around the market but after a day of searching he couldn’t find him.

Zi Han closed his eyes imagining Yi Chen’s face when he sees him tomorrow. He imagined Yi Chen hugging him tightly while kissing him deeply. A smile crept up his face imagining how happy Yi Chen would be to see him but just as he was immersing himself in this beautiful imagination a sudden thought crossed his mind.

“Shit,” he swore having discovered why he had searched the entire day but still couldn’t find Yi Chen. He pulled up the tracker for that ring and as expected it was still in the market area.

His heart churned as he sat up instantly having realised what might have happened.

“That bastard,” he muttered as anger rose in his chest. He realised that Yi Chen had sold his ring and it was in a store in the market street. That was the only possible explanation. This realisation angered him so much that he couldn’t wait to find Yi Chen tomorrow. He couldn’t wait to cuss him out till his ears fell off.

That being said, Zi Han didn’t sleep well at all. He was so angry that he punched his pillow several times but that didn’t give him a sense of relief at all.

Yi Chen who had been sleeping in the kitchen of the small cottage suddenly felt chills all over his body. He raised his hand and touched his aching chest. He couldn’t help but think of his wife. Was his wife angry with him? Was that why his heart hurt so much?

While he was rubbing his chest, the curtain from Mi Mi’s room opened and the girl who was supposed to be sleeping walked out her steps light. Yi Chen didn’t say anything. He watched her tip-toe towards him stopping only a few feet from him.