Chapter 220 - 219: Rex’s decision
You get one life. That’s it. One shot. So why waste it living for someone else’s approval? Why cling to rules written by people too afraid to live? Do what makes you feel alive. Even if it’s wrong. Even if it’s ugly. Because in the end, there’s no prize for behaving. There’s only what you did—and what you didn’t dare to do.
Rex didn’t respond. Even though there was a dark, tempting truth hidden in the man’s words—something that tugged at the lonely corners of his soul—he held firm. After all, he had lived a whole previous life chasing approval, grinding through days without ever truly living, never even holding the hand of someone who loved him. It was a life wasted on survival, not experience.
And yet, he didn’t let the man’s sugar-coated nihilism seduce him. Not here. Not now. Because no matter how philosophical he made it sound, Rex knew exactly where he was—inside an exclusive mansion filled with elites, the very people who drained the life out of the world to fuel their endless appetite for power, pleasure, and domination. The rules they wanted to escape were the ones they themselves had bent and twisted to suit their games.
Yes, Rex was romantic. Yes, like any young man, he dreamt of love and passion and maybe even many beautiful women. But this? This was not love. Not even lust. This was a hollow parade of people chasing sensation because they had nothing left inside worth feeling. Women passed around like trinkets. Men trying to out-degenerate one another in a contest of apathy.
Just thinking about the scene disgusted him. Sharing bodies like borrowed clothes. Making out with women who looked as if their eyes had long forgotten how to focus. How many men had been there before him? How many after? He wasn’t a saint, but even his flaws had limits. Whatever he wanted from life, it was not this. Not this theater of rot dressed in silk.
His silence was his answer. And his revulsion, a quiet rebellion.
Not hearing his reply, the masked man chuckled softly—though it was less amusement and more an empty echo, like wind passing through a hollow shell. His eyes, hazy and unfocused, glinted with something unreadable. He didn’t seem to care that Rex had offered no response. Maybe he didn’t even register it. He turned to the man beside him—another masked figure, lounging like a statue—and without hesitation, leaned in to kiss him.
It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t passionate. It was mechanical. Perfunctory. The kind of kiss that carried no soul, only habit. Flesh seeking flesh, not out of love or even lust, but sheer boredom. Like this was just the next thing on a long, tedious list of indulgences.
Rex flinched.