*Bael’s POV*

The quarterly development meeting has been running for thirty-two minutes.

Bael sits at the head of the conference table, laptop open, half his screen showing the presentation slides while the other half displays the financial projections he’s supposed to be cross-referencing.

The development team is walking through their analysis of the eastern district expansion...market viability, zoning complications, projected timelines that hinge on approvals they don’t have yet.

All of it relevant, all of it requiring his attention and eventual approval.

Wang Yue, the team lead, is explaining something about commercial zoning restrictions in the third phase.

His voice is steady, professional, exactly the kind of competent presentation Bael expects from senior staff.

Bael should be listening, and he is.

Except some part of his mind...an irritatingly persistent part, keeps circling back to whether Runze ate lunch today.

It’s 1:47 PM.

Mrs. Wen should have brought food to him at noon.

But Runze has been getting progressively worse about actually stopping to eat when he’s absorbed in work, and lately he’s been absorbed constantly.

Yesterday he’d skipped lunch entirely.

When Bael asked about it later, Runze had just blinked at him like the concept of stopping for food genuinely hadn’t occurred to him.

"I forgot."

How does someone forget to eat?

Bael forces his attention back to the presentation.

Wang Yue has moved to the next slide, a color-coded timeline with phases marked in green, yellow, and red based on risk assessment.

Standard format.

Clear, logical, easy to follow if you’re actually paying attention.

Bael is paying attention mostly.

But there’s still that nagging awareness that Runze is probably sitting in that study right now, bent over his desk, surrounded by sketches, completely oblivious to things like time or meals or basic human maintenance.

Did he at least drink the tea Mrs. Wen brought mid-morning?

Or is it sitting there cold and untouched while Runze stares at the same design for two hours straight?

Like yesterday.

Bael had come home to find Runze in the exact same position he’d left him in that morning, working on the same residential cluster section, erasing and redrawing the same pathway over and over.

Bael had watched for twenty minutes before saying anything, and in that entire time, Runze had made the same adjustment four times, destroying perfectly good work because suddenly nothing was adequate.

Wasteful, irrational, and completely unnecessary.

The design had been fine...better than fine, actually, but Runze couldn’t see that through whatever spiral of self-doubt he’d gotten himself into.

Grandmother’s expectations, probably.

That comment about top three had lodged itself in Runze’s mind and now he was second-guessing everything, tearing apart solid work and rebuilding it for no reason except anxiety.

Annoying.

Bael drags his focus back to the conference room.

Wang Yue is talking about contingency budgets now, explaining the allocation breakdown with percentage distributions across different risk categories.

Important information.

Directly relevant to whether they can afford delays if the zoning approvals don’t come through on schedule.

Bael should be asking questions.

Should be challenging the contingency percentage, asking about alternative timelines, ensuring they’ve actually thought through the variables.

Instead he’s wondering if Runze took any breaks yet or if he’s been sitting in that chair for five hours straight without moving.

His posture has been terrible lately.

Shoulders hunched, neck bent at an angle that’s going to cause problems if he keeps it up.

Yesterday evening he’d been rubbing his lower back like it was bothering him, but when Bael pointed it out, Runze had just shrugged and gone back to work.

Stubborn.

Impossibly stubborn about the most ridiculous things.

Bael gave Runze what he wanted.

That was the whole point of the past two weeks.

After that office incident, that stupid, overblown reaction to a simple boundary, Runze had started sulking. Avoiding Bael, sleeping at the far edge of the bed, making every interaction feel strained and complicated.

Childish.

Obvious attention-seeking behavior that Bael recognized immediately for what it was.

And it had been distracting.

Genuinely distracting in a way that interfered with Bael’s ability to focus on work, on decisions that actually mattered.

So Bael had solved it.

Runze wanted attention? Fine. Bael would give him attention. More than he wanted, even.

Enough that he’d stop with the sulking and the avoidance and just go back to being manageable.

Strategic management of an ongoing situation.

It had worked, technically.

Runze stopped sulking almost immediately.

Stopped avoiding him, stopped sleeping at the edge of the bed like Bael might spontaneously combust, stopped making everything unnecessarily difficult.

Started being cooperative again.

Problem solved.

Except now Bael is sitting in a quarterly development meeting thinking about whether Runze ate lunch instead of listening to budget allocations.

Which is objectively worse than the original problem.

At least when Runze was sulking, Bael knew what the issue was.

Knew how to identify it, address it, resolve it.

Now Runze is fine, perfectly fine, completely cooperative, doing exactly what Bael wanted, and somehow Bael is more distracted than he was when the actual problem existed.

It makes no logical sense.

He gave Runze the attention he was clearly seeking.

Runze should be satisfied now.

Should stop being so absurdly high-maintenance about basic self-care.

All he has to do is eat regular meals and take appropriate breaks.

What’s so difficult about that?

What is so impossibly complicated about stopping work for twenty minutes to eat food that’s literally brought directly to him?

And yet every single day it’s the same thing.

Skipping meals, working too long, ignoring obvious physical discomfort like pain is optional or irrelevant.

Just last week Bael had found him still working at 1 AM, looking exhausted but insisting he needed to "finish this section" like the competition deadline was tomorrow instead of three weeks away.

Irrational, self-destructive.

Completely lacking in basic time management or self-preservation instinct.

This is exactly why Xue Lian is a better choice.

No unnecessary complications, no constant supervision.

The slide changes again.

Implementation timeline now, with milestones marked in quarterly increments.

Someone is explaining the phasing strategy, why they’ve structured it this way, what flexibility they’ve built in for delays.

Bael should be focused on this.

This is important.

This affects millions in projected revenue and determines whether the expansion happens on schedule or gets pushed to next fiscal year.

But his mind keeps drifting back to that study.

Back to Runze sitting there surrounded by sketches, probably developing another headache from staring at designs for hours without rest.

And yesterday...

Yesterday had been particularly bad.

That whole spiral with the residential cluster, erasing and redrawing the same element over and over, destroying good work because suddenly it wasn’t perfect enough.

How is he so annoyingly stupid?

He’s talented, Bael has seen enough of the work to recognize that, but he sabotages himself constantly with this perfectionism, this inability to recognize when something is finished and actually good.

Tears apart solid designs because of doubt that serves no practical purpose.

Then he won’t eat properly, sleep properly, or take care of himself in any of the basic ways required to actually function as a competent adult.

He just works himself into the ground and apparently expects Bael to... what?

Monitor his eating schedule?

Track his break times?

Stand in doorways at midnight dragging him to bed like he’s incapable of basic time management?

This wasn’t part of the plan.

Giving Runze attention was supposed to solve the distraction, not make it worse.

Was supposed to make him cooperative and manageable and stop taking up space in Bael’s head during important meetings.

Instead here he is, sitting in a room full of senior staff, thinking about whether someone drank enough water today.

Ridiculous, completely ridiculous.

"Mr. Bael?"

The voice cuts through his thoughts.

Bael’s attention snaps back to the room.

Everyone is looking at him.

The presentation has stopped.

Shen Rui, sitting to Bael’s right, is watching him with that specific look of professional concern.

Bael processes the situation in a second.

They’ve finished a section.

They asked him something.

He didn’t hear it.

At all.

"Hmm," he says, voice even. "Could you repeat the question?"

Wang Yue nods.

"We were asking if you had any concerns about the contingency allocation before we move to the implementation timeline."

Bael hadn’t heard the contingency allocation.

Hadn’t heard any of it.

Had been too busy thinking about Runze’s lunch schedule to pay attention to the financial breakdown he’d specifically requested.

"Go back," he says. "Recap the budget allocation from the beginning."

Wang Yue clicks back several slides without hesitation, professional enough not to show any reaction to the fact that Bael clearly wasn’t listening the first time.

He starts explaining again.

Numbers, percentages, contingency planning distributed across risk categories.

Bael forces himself to actually focus this time.

He makes it through the rest of the presentation without missing anything else, asks appropriate questions about timeline flexibility and risk mitigation, approves the overall strategy with minor adjustments to the contingency distribution.

When the meeting finally ends, the team files out with the usual efficiency. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

Bael sits there for a moment in the empty conference room, staring at his closed laptop.

This is unacceptable.

Getting distracted in meetings, missing critical information, having to ask for recaps like he’s unprepared.

Unacceptable.

He solved the problem, eliminated the distraction.

So why is it worse?

Why is Runze still taking up space in his head during important meetings?

Why can’t he just be obedient about basic things like eating and sleeping and taking care of himself properly?

All Bael did was give him attention.

That should have solved everything.

Instead it somehow made everything worse.