Big Baby

"But you forgot. The marrow is in my body. Whether I'm willing to accept this deal should be my choice. I should also hold the initiative in setting the terms of the deal. You shouldn't use money and power to force me, nor should you use family ties to emotionally blackmail me."

Besides, how much affection could there be between a mother and son who had not seen each other for over a decade?

Huo Jiu gave a mocking laugh. "Yet you presumptuously made the choice for me. Then you blamed me for not appreciating your kindness. You thought I should happily offer up my marrow with both hands, stay meekly with the Su family, and willingly work myself to the bone for them. Because you believed that only by doing so could your position in the Su family become more secure, and your life with them become easier. Only then would the Su family truly accept everything about you, including me—the burden you had with your ex-husband."

"I didn't—" Lu Manzhen argued.

Huo Jiu quietly watched Lu Manzhen, wanting to hear how she would defend herself.

But after that one retort, Lu Manzhen simply stared blankly at Huo Jiu. She had suddenly realized that she could not refute his words with any sound reasoning.

Once that layer of hypocritical familial affection was stripped away, every single word Huo Jiu had said was irrefutable.

"The reason every word I say makes you angry is because I've spoken the truth you don't want to face yourself. If you put aside your identity as a mother and simply consider this from the standpoint of a business partner, you'll find that communication between us would at least become much easier."

Huo Jiu even thoughtfully gave Lu Manzhen an example. "Look at Su Shiyuan. He understands perfectly well that our relationship is nothing more than a transaction. Before he can be sure of getting me to lie obediently on that operating table, he'll comply with every demand I make. Because he knows clearly that he can't refuse me. He needs my marrow, but I don't need anything he can offer."

Huo Jiu paused, then said unhurriedly, "Using your own logic to understand this, the price you paid to escape the mire over a decade ago was abandoning your biological son. More than a decade later, the price you want to pay to secure your footing in the Su family is selling your biological son's marrow. From beginning to end, Huo Jiu has been a bargaining chip to be abandoned and sacrificed."

"If this truly is a transaction, then one side of the scale holds Huo Jiu's life and his organs, while the only thing you can offer is this so-called motherly love and family affection. Yet even that intangible familial affection has been torn apart. At the very least, what Huo Jiu received was incomplete."

"So do you think this deal is fair?"

Huo Jiu looked at the stiff-faced Lu Manzhen and delivered his final, heart-piercing question. "If you put yourself in his place, do you think Huo Jiu has been wronged?"

As soon as the words fell, an overwhelming sorrow surged up from the depths of his body, spreading through him and instantly drowning all six of Huo Jiu's senses. He could faintly hear sobbing by his ear. In his daze, Huo Jiu seemed to have fallen once more into that nightmare that endlessly repeated itself.

It was as though he could hear that soul, already dispersed—or perhaps one that had never existed at all—crying.

Author's Note:

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Big Baby

Lu Manzhen was speechless.

After a long silence, she asked in a strained tone, "Do you think our relationship can only be described as a transaction? In your eyes, did I do all those things only for myself?"

"What else could it be?" Huo Jiu asked calmly. "Or do you think that freely deciding what happens to a minor's body and forcing him to donate marrow against his will is a mother's right, or a mother's duty?"

Especially when they had been separated for over a decade, and this "mother" had not even properly fulfilled her duty to raise him.

Lu Manzhen opened her mouth, but she still could not answer Huo Jiu's question.

Her thoughts were a mess.

After a long while, Lu Manzhen ultimately dragged the conversation back to the point she cared about most. "So you still blame me, don't you? You think I didn't properly fulfill my duty as a mother. That I'm not a good mother."

"Then by your own standards, do you think you're a good mother?" Huo Jiu continued to ask.

Lu Manzhen still could not answer. Of course she knew the answer. No matter how many unavoidable reasons she believed she had, the fact that she had given up Huo Jiu for her own life back then was indisputable.

"No one would say your choice was wrong." Huo Jiu's gaze drifted slightly.

Compared to certain parents who had put their child into a coffin after he was born and secretly left him at someone else's doorstep on a winter night, Lu Manzhen had at least tried to stay by the original owner's side. She had simply failed to hold on in the end and left.

Huo Jiu blinked, then suddenly asked, "Why did you name the child Huo Jiu?"

Still immersed in her own thoughts, Lu Manzhen was slow to react. "Huh?"

Huo Jiu repeated the question.

He himself was called Huo Jiu because the old man's surname was Huo, and when he found him, he had happened to be placed inside a small coffin.

In the dead of winter, the newborn baby had been wrapped in torn cotton wadding and slept in that coffin all night without freezing to death. The old man thought he had a strong fate, so he named him Huo Jiu. It commemorated his origins, and Huo Jiu also sounded like "rescued." The old man thought the name meant that no evil could invade him and that he was free of all taboos.

But why had the original owner been named Huo Jiu? Wouldn't naming one's child after a coffin be considered unlucky?

Lu Manzhen looked at Huo Jiu in utter confusion. Her mind was completely blank. She simply did not remember why she had given Huo Jiu such a name.

Only after Huo Jiu brought it up did she realize something was wrong.

That was right! The character was so unlucky. A coffin that held corpses—why had she given her child such a name back then?

Mother and son stared at each other. After a long while, Huo Jiu shook his head and gave up. "Forget it."