Chà Chà Novel

Fang Fengzhi’s toes curled, his head falling back, his eyes too heavy to open. Yet the torment inside him held him at the edge of consciousness, refusing to let him slip into darkness.

“Mr. Min… please help me…”

His voice was raw.

A vein stood out at Min Zhi’s temple. The words came one by one through his teeth.

“How do you want me to help?”

Fang Fengzhi gave no answer. He curled inward, his legs pressed together, shifting helplessly among sheets his feet had tangled beyond recognition.

Min Zhi leaned closer. Gunsmoke descended over him at once, but the pheromones Fu Baiqi had left within his body resisted the unfamiliar presence. Fang Fengzhi turned his face away in distress.

For a moment, Min Zhi found him unbearably frustrating.

He wanted help, yet could not accept Min Zhi’s pheromones. A single breath made him flinch. What was Min Zhi supposed to do?

He caught Fang Fengzhi’s cheeks and turned his face back.

“I’m not the one who marked you.”

His gaze rested heavily on that anguished face.

“I can’t help you.”

He could not tell whether Fang Fengzhi understood.

Perhaps he did. His tears began to fall faster.

He frowned and clenched his teeth, trying to endure, as though holding on a little longer might carry him through. But the suffering did not loosen its grip.

The chamomile in Min Zhi’s nose was so faint he could scarcely distinguish it.

He released him. Sweat from Fang Fengzhi’s face lingered on his palm.

A thought came unexpectedly: would an Omega’s sweat smell of chamomile too?

He lifted his hand and breathed in.

It did.

Like the moisture left behind when chamomile petals were crushed—warm, damp, carrying a delicate fragrance.

Min Zhi’s eyes darkened.

Beside him, Fang Fengzhi kept struggling. The tie had rubbed his wrists raw against the headboard, but he seemed beyond noticing where he hurt. Only one thought remained: find the suppressants. Put out the heat.

He shook his head, his words breaking between breaths.

“I can’t bear it anymore… I can’t… it hurts so much…”

He drew into himself, trembling like someone suffering withdrawal with no relief in sight. His vacant eyes stared into nothing.

Then a sudden spasm swept through him. A cry escaped; his awareness reeled. His body tensed, then fell back, exhausted.

Min Zhi remained beside the bed.

Only when he noticed how purple Fang Fengzhi’s hands had become from pulling against the restraint did he reach out and undo the tie.

The episode granted Fang Fengzhi a brief stillness. But its cause remained, and the respite could not last. Before long, the relentless heat took hold of him again.

This time, Min Zhi reached for him.

What began as contact gradually crossed a boundary. His expression remained solemn, unchanged, even while his hands did something he knew he should not.

He paused.

“Do you want me to help?”

No answer came.

Of course. How much could an Omega understand in this state?

Min Zhi found his own question absurd.

He began to withdraw, but a sweat-damp hand caught his.

He stilled and looked up.

Fang Fengzhi’s face was flushed, his lips bright with feverish color. He looked at Min Zhi through his pain.

“Help me… please, sir…”

He had used a formal, deferential address.

For two full minutes, Min Zhi did not move.

His mind was empty. He simply watched the face before him, bewildered by a feeling he could not name.

Compared with the Omegas he had known, Fang Fengzhi was ordinary. There was little in that drawn, weary face to make someone look twice.

And yet the tiny mole on his eyelid was so beautiful.

Perhaps anyone with that mole could make him soften.

He kept looking at it, searching for an explanation.

A sharp ringing filled his ears until his head ached. His blood seemed to run faster, gradually overcoming the suppressant’s chill. Warmth spread through him again.

Perhaps it was a side effect.

Why else would his heart be racing?

Two minutes later, Min Zhi bent down and kissed Fang Fengzhi.

As their lips met, he thought he had chosen the wrong place.

It should have been the mole.

He left those soft lips and kissed the little mark on the Omega’s eyelid, as though proving to himself that it alone had moved him.

Fang Fengzhi blinked.

But that kiss could not hold him for long.

Min Zhi returned to his mouth with an urgency that could scarcely wait. His restraint quietly fractured, revealing the hunger he had refused to acknowledge.

Fang Fengzhi, however, was deeply uncomfortable.

Bearing Fu Baiqi’s mark, his body rejected every other person’s pheromones. The once-familiar gunsmoke tasted bitter now, thick enough to choke him.

He tried to push Min Zhi away, turned his face aside, and coughed.

Min Zhi watched his flushed, breathless face and did not force the kiss.

But neither did he leave.

The last boundary between them began to give way.

He was still lucid. He still knew he was wrong. The questions in his mind never ceased, but they were not enough to restrain his hands.

Min Zhi had never truly been intimate with an Omega. He did not understand their responses and mistook Fang Fengzhi’s involuntary reactions for signs of experience.

“Relax.”

But Fang Fengzhi’s body no longer answered entirely to him.

Pain mingled with unfamiliar sensations. He trembled and sometimes tried to draw away, but those feeble attempts did not make Min Zhi stop.

His face remained grave, almost composed. Only his increasingly heavy breathing betrayed the patience wearing thin beneath it.

Before going further, he looked at the Omega.

“Where are the condoms?”

He told himself this was Fang Fengzhi’s final chance to change his mind.

Fang Fengzhi pointed toward the drawer.

Inside lay an unopened box.

Min Zhi took it out, his expression unchanged. The chamomile was faint—so faint he believed it could not influence him.

He closed his eyes briefly.

This was not making love to Fang Fengzhi.

He was merely taking his husband’s place, helping him through the heat.

That was what he told himself.

But when their intimacy truly began, something unexpected made him realize.

“Is this your first time?”

Fang Fengzhi frowned, unable to speak through the pain. Tears slipped silently down his face.

Min Zhi did not need an answer.

He and his husband had never been intimate.

Never. Not even once.

Min Zhi’s brows drew together, sweat gathering at his temples.

Reason told him to stop.

He had no right to take that husband’s place. Still less could he excuse his actions by calling them help.

Unlawful. Immoral.

The thoughts were perfectly clear.

Yet he did not stop.

Fang Fengzhi shook violently and tried to draw into himself. The movement offered no escape; it only left him more helpless within the man’s reach.

The last of Min Zhi’s patience gave out.

What followed became too rough for Fang Fengzhi to bear.

His cries caught in his throat. His breathing broke apart, his limbs trembling. His body responded beyond his will, but the pain and fear remained, undiminished.

The physical differences of an Enigma became something he could scarcely endure.

Before he could recover his breath, the overwhelming sensations returned. His awareness grew confused. He wanted the torment to end, yet feared the man before him would cross the final boundary.

If the conditions for a permanent mark were fulfilled, he could become pregnant.

And he would be bound to Min Zhi forever.

That fear clung to what little clarity he had left.

But Min Zhi still did not stop.

Author’s notes:

Temporary marking: Pheromones are introduced through a bite to the gland. The mark disappears in less than a month.

Permanent marking: Following a bite to the gland, the union must fulfill the specific physiological conditions established in this ABO setting to complete the bond. Barring exceptional circumstances, the mark never disappears. The marked person will thereafter respond only to the pheromones of the person who marked them.