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"It was you..." Aunt Zhao's face was a little embarrassed. "You're a guest of the Su family, at least. If you were really hungry, you could have told someone to make you something. Sneaking around the kitchen in the middle of the night scared me into thinking a thief had broken in."

The commotion downstairs also woke the family upstairs. Chairman Su and Lu Manzhen had just come down the stairs when they heard Aunt Zhao's complaints. Hearing Aunt Zhao refer to Huo Jiu as a guest, Lu Manzhen's expression immediately darkened.

Aunt Zhao had been with the Su family for many years. She was the maid Chairman Su's first wife had brought from her family home when she married him. After the first wife passed away from illness, Aunt Zhao worried that Su Zhuo was too young to be properly cared for, so she simply stayed with the Su family to look after him. She treated Su Zhuo like her own grandson and had doted on him for years. More than anything, she disliked the various women Chairman Su found outside. Naturally, she did not think much of the new Mrs. Su, Lu Manzhen, either.

What was more, Huo Jiu had thrown a tantrum earlier and smashed the family portrait of Chairman Su and his first wife. Though Aunt Zhao said nothing aloud, she was deeply dissatisfied with Huo Jiu. Naturally, her words were not pleasant now.

"The kitchen lights were on, and you still thought a thief had broken in. If I'd known you were all so timid, I should've played some rock music while cooking." Huo Jiu set down his soup bowl and said with a faint, mocking smile, "Being a good person really isn't easy."

Someone burning with a high fever had run into the kitchen in the middle of the night to cook for himself. Huo Jiu had wanted to be considerate of how hard life was for others, but unfortunately, they did not appreciate it.

Huo Jiu looked at Chairman Su. "If you wanted to starve me to death, you could've just said so. I wandered outside for a week, and no matter how hard things got, hunger never woke me up."

Huo Jiu was upset and did not want to argue with Aunt Zhao. He directed all his simmering anger at Chairman Su.

Chairman Su shook his head with a bitter smile. "You fell asleep during dinner. Your mother felt sorry for you, since your fever had only just gone down and you still weren't feeling well, so she didn't wake you. She thought that once you woke up, Aunt Zhao could make you a midnight snack based on what you liked."

Huo Jiu drained the entire bowl of dough-drop soup, leaving not even a drop of broth. "No need for you to make a midnight snack. Just wash the bowl."

Aunt Zhao muttered, "After such a big bowl of soup, you certainly have an appetite. I wonder whether Xiao Zhuo has any appetite in the hospital. His illness has relapsed again. It's worse than before."

After saying that, Aunt Zhao shot Huo Jiu a glare. "Xiao Zhuo only fell ill because he heard that the family portrait he took with Mr. and Mrs. Su had been smashed."

The culprit actually still had the mood to eat in the middle of the night. It was enough to make anyone furious.

Lu Manzhen's expression stiffened. She glanced at Chairman Su, feeling both guilty and annoyed, then hurriedly explained, "Huo Jiu didn't do it on purpose—"

Huo Jiu stretched lazily and asked offhandedly, "Since he heard about it at the hospital, who told him?"

Su Zhuo's condition had suddenly worsened, and he had already been hospitalized for over three months. The doctor had recommended a bone marrow transplant, but Su Zhuo had Rh-negative blood, and there were too few compatible donors. Only then had Lu Manzhen thought of the son she had with her ex-husband. She brought the original owner back from his father's funeral. After that, under the pretense of a physical examination, they arranged compatibility testing. By chance, the original owner learned the truth, caused a huge scene, and left the Su family.

Throughout that time, Su Zhuo had been living in the hospital and had not returned home.

Chairman Su immediately understood Huo Jiu's implication, and his face darkened. "Who told Xiao Zhuo about the household affairs?"

They knew Su Zhuo's condition had worsened and that he could not handle stimulation, yet they told such news to a child suffering from illness. Their intentions were clearly malicious.

Aunt Zhao's face stiffened, and she explained timidly, "It was the second young lady... When she went to visit Xiao Zhuo, she accidentally let it slip."

The second young lady Aunt Zhao spoke of was Su Zhuo's aunt. It was a terribly clichéd story of a younger sister falling in love with her brother-in-law. When the two sisters were young, both had fallen for Chairman Su at first sight. Unfortunately, Chairman Su only loved Su Zhuo's mother.

After Su Zhuo's birth mother died, this second young lady often came and went from the Su residence under the excuse of caring for her nephew, carrying herself like half the mistress of the house. Naturally, she wanted to marry Chairman Su. Su Zhuo's maternal family was happy to see it happen.

Yet Lu Manzhen, an outsider, had gotten there first.

Since they were romantic rivals, the second young lady naturally disliked Lu Manzhen. By extension, she had no fondness for Huo Jiu, that unwanted baggage, either. It was hardly surprising that when visiting Su Zhuo, she had "accidentally" let slip—embellishing the story of how Lu Manzhen brought her son from her ex-husband to the Su residence, how Su Shiyuan treated his stepson well, and how Huo Jiu repaid kindness by smashing the family portrait—thereby provoking Su Zhuo's condition to worsen.

Even more coincidentally, on the day the second young lady let it slip, Su Zhuo's friends happened to visit him as well. They saw firsthand how helpless and miserable Su Zhuo was during his relapse, so they naturally developed a dislike for the Huo Jiu they had never met. This also laid the groundwork for Huo Jiu being ostracized at school later on.

The original novel was an old-fashioned Mary Sue, everyone-loves-the-protagonist story. Every positive character in it liked Su Zhuo. Setting aside the plot and character settings, the main reason was naturally that everyone close to Su Zhuo received benefits.

For example, that second young lady had doted on Su Zhuo. After Huo Jiu and his mother revealed their vicious true colors later in the plot, she gained Chairman Su's approval. In the end, she successfully took her place and became Mrs. Su, just as she had wished.

Huo Jiu was not the original owner, and he had no interest in the plot's development or the grudges and entanglements between the characters. But since the other party wanted to set him up, Huo Jiu was not about to sit around and wait for death.

He just wondered whether the second young lady could still successfully marry Chairman Su after being branded as someone who would rather sacrifice Su Zhuo's health to stir up discord.

With a casual remark, he had dug a pit for a plot character with quite a substantial role. Having filled his stomach, Huo Jiu ignored the group of people with grim expressions and returned to his bedroom to catch up on sleep.

Over the next few days, Huo Jiu stayed obediently at the Su residence and caused no trouble. His high fever kept coming and going without improving. Huo Jiu worried that if it went on too long, it would fry his brain and turn him into an idiot. So he could only stay obediently at the Su residence to recuperate. Even if he had to grudgingly cooperate with some harmless plot developments while recovering, Huo Jiu pinched his nose and endured it.