"Where the fuck is she?!" I scream, ready to grab ahold of this man by the jugular and hurl him across the room. Every part of me is shaking, and I can't seem to make it stop. My nails are pressing into my palms so hard that I can feel them drawing blood, and my jaw is locked so tight that I'm about to break my own skull.
In the distance, I can hear my friends calling to me, probably yelling at me to stop. But this time, I can't even hear what they're trying to say.
Involuntarily, I blink, as I have done once every six seconds for the past two and half days, and once again, I am predictably, torturously, taken back to the moment when I last saw her.
"Ah Si," she says, beaming with her beautiful, little round moon face. What she really had said had probably been along the lines of "See you tomorrow, Ah Si," or something like that. But as soon as I hear my name, it's game over, as my brain works in overtime to imprint those words into my memory. My name. And it's not just my name, but the way she says it, full of love and care and a perpetual concern she holds for everyone around her.
"Ah Si."
I clench my jaw even harder now, reminded once again of what I have lost —no, what the man in front of me has taken from me—and it's a wonder that I haven't exploded like a firework already, splintering into a million pieces with a screaming, deafening roar.
I try to keep my composure as I repeat myself, which I know for a fact makes me seem even scarier.
I manage to get it all out without moving a muscle, while he on the other hand, has begun to quiver. In fact, I don't even need to leap at him now, because the daggers I'm shooting at him from my eyes are doing the trick already.
"I —I" He starts to blubber, just a common criminal at his core, after all. Pathetic.
I sneer.
"Yes, you what?" I prompt, the sharpness of the ice in my voice as steely as the blood that has dripped down to my fingertips.
"I don't know," he finally gets out, pleading with me in his voice because he probably anticipates violence, retaliation, and all the resources of the Dao Ming group pitted against him and his family.
"Well, lucky for him, violence is the last thing on my mind right now, because I am still blinking, like the stupid fucking human being I am —a prisoner to my own biology and goddamn sentiment— and I can no longer stand straight. Because all I can see is her face. Which reminds me that I don't even know where she is. And who knows what has happened to her without me being there to protect her.
When Mei Zuo and Xi Men catch up to me, they are just in time to literally catch me, a role I'm sure they never once anticipated having to fill. Because I, the all-powerful Dao Ming Si, am falling. And I don't know how to stop.
I am falling in love, I am falling from grace, and I am literally, alarmingly falling to the ground.
"Ah Si!" is the last thing I hear before I land with a thud and my world goes dark.