Chapter 52: Feeling the Disparity of Being Unloved for the First Time

Chapter 52: Chapter 52: Feeling the Disparity of Being Unloved for the First Time

Amy’s hand froze in midair. She stared at the empty kitchen. She realized her father truly hadn’t planned to brew any medicine for her. He had clearly brewed two bowls, yet he didn’t share even one with her. Amy felt as if an invisible crack had appeared in her heart. The pain made her whole body tremble. It turned out that in her father’s heart, Aunt Miche was more important than she was!

At this very moment, she missed her mother desperately. She remembered how her mother used to care for her meticulously whenever she fell ill. Once, she had playfully run off to the lake and developed a fever in the middle of the night. Her mother had stayed by her bedside all night long. Whenever a midnight headache kept her awake, her mother would gently wipe her tears, pat her back, and coax her to sleep with a soothing lullaby. But now that she was sick, her father didn’t care for her; instead, he went to look after someone else.

The more Amy thought about it, the sadder she became. She cried for a long, long time until her eyes swelled and her voice grew hoarse. The prolonged fever made her body ache, draining every ounce of strength from her. Was she going to die? But she didn’t want to die.

The desire to live forced Amy to drag her aching body out of bed. To prevent her condition from worsening, she draped a thick animal-skin coat over her shoulders. She went to the small hut next to the stone house and stood on her tiptoes to peer into the stone pot. However, the pot was too tall and large for her to see inside. Even when she stretched her neck as far as she could, she could only make out a dark mass of herbs.

Amy clung tightly to the rim of the stone pot, her rosy fingertips gradually turning white. She could vaguely see some black liquid remaining inside, so she wanted to pour it out to drink. But she was simply too short. She held a Stone Bowl, trying to scoop out the medicinal broth for a long time, but failed.

Looking around, she spotted a wooden stump stool on the ground. She tried to pick it up but couldn’t manage it at all. The stool was made from the thick root of a large tree. Though small, it was solid wood, making it impossible for her to lift with her current lack of strength. Already feeling miserable, this setback worsened her mood, and she burst into frustrated tears.

She had no choice but to try pushing the stump with her feet, inching it toward the stone pot. Though the distance was short, it took her half an hour to shove the stump into place. Stepping onto the stool, she finally got a clear view of the inside of the pot. Standing on her tiptoes with the Stone Bowl in hand, she reached in to scoop the black liquid. There wasn’t much broth left, and she was so short that even with the extra height, she barely managed to get any.

Just as she was about to drink, she lost her balance and tumbled headfirst into the stone pot. It was scalding hot. In her panic, she flailed around inside, eventually knocking the heavy pot over, which saved her.

After finishing feeding Miche her medicine, Loki intended to return and clean up the mess. As soon as he approached, he heard the commotion coming from the kitchen. He hurried over to check and found Amy collapsed on the ground, sprawled over a pile of medicinal dregs. Loki’s eyes widened in shock. He took a long stride forward, grabbed Amy by the back of her collar, and hoisted her up from the floor.

"Amy, what on earth are you doing?!"

Tears of grievance welled up in Amy’s eyes. She opened her mouth, wanting to cry out in pain. But before she could make a sound, Loki scolded her.

"You just spilled a perfectly good batch of medicine! What kind of tantrum are you throwing?!"

Amy bit her lip. A tantrum? She only wanted to drink the medicine to cure her illness. Did her father really see that as throwing a tantrum?

"It’s just medicine! Is there really a need to act like this?" Loki demanded.

Amy laughed bitterly in her heart. Was there a need? Without this medicine, she would die of illness—wasn’t that important? If it wasn’t important, why did her father snatch her medicine to give to Aunt Miche? Grievance and heartache surged within her, yet Amy could only bite her lower lip tightly, unable to utter a single word in her defense. In her father’s heart, Aunt Miche was the most important anyway. No matter what she said, it would only sound like petty excuses to his ears.

"Why are you still playing the victim?" Seeing Amy’s seemingly fake victimhood only fueled Loki’s anger. "Since you have the strength to overturn a stone pot, your condition must be improving. I might as well give the remaining two packs of medicine to Miche."

Loki casually dropped Amy onto the floor. He crouched down, picked up all the medicinal dregs scattered on the ground one by one, placed them into a clean Stone Bowl, and took them outside to wash them with rainwater. Upon returning, he dumped the herbs back into the stone pot, added fresh water, and began to boil them again. This time, Loki wasn’t nearly as attentive with the fire as he had been when brewing medicine for Miche. After lighting the kindling, he stood by the stone pot, casually stirring the mixture with a ladle to keep the dregs from sticking to the bottom.

As soon as he heard a BUBBLE BUBBLE sound coming from the pot, he extinguished the firewood, scooped out the medicinal broth, and handed it to Amy.

"Drink it. Didn’t you want it? You can have all of this." Without caring whether the Stone Bowl was scalding hot, he shoved it roughly into Amy’s arms.

Amy’s palms turned bright red from the heat. She looked down and noticed that the medicine in her arms looked different from the previous batch. Even though she had been far away earlier, she had clearly seen that the broth Loki poured out then was pitch-black. But this time, the liquid was a faint brown—so diluted that she could see straight through to the bottom of the bowl.

Amy wondered if it was because the herbs had already been used and their potency had faded, or if her father simply hadn’t bothered to boil them properly. But one thing she knew for sure was that her father had been extremely dismissive while brewing it. There was absolutely none of the careful meticulousness he had shown the first time.

Amy felt deeply aggrieved, a sour stinging rising in her nose. However, she knew her father was furious right now, so she didn’t dare to cry. She was afraid that crying would make him even angrier, afraid that he would completely abandon her. She buried her face in the bowl of medicine, allowing her tears to flow uncontrollably. She swallowed the medicinal broth along with her salty tears. It was her first time drinking herbal medicine. It was so incredibly bitter that she fought the urge to vomit.

It took her a long time to finish the bowl.

"Are you done yet?" Loki was growing impatient waiting. He still needed to go take care of Miche. He didn’t have all this time to waste on Amy. Why was Amy being so unreasonable this time? It was true what they said—a cub always took after the one who birthed her!

"Y-yes, I’m done." Amy hurriedly set down the bowl, using her arm to haphazardly wipe away the tears on her face and the medicinal stains at the corners of her mouth. Finally, she took a deep breath, sniffing back her runny nose.

Having finished the medicine, Amy’s stomach let out an embarrassing RUMBLE. She hadn’t eaten a single bite since her fever started. She was already so famished that her stomach was practically touching her back.

"Father, I’m hungry. I want to eat some rice porridge..." Amy said cautiously, watching Loki’s expression. She was terrified of accidentally angering her father again and triggering another outburst.

"Where would I find rice? Eat something else." Loki’s voice had calmed slightly, but it still lacked patience.

"But whenever I was sick before, Mother would always make rice porridge for me, SOB SOB SOB." Amy’s tears fell like little pearls.

It would have been better if she hadn’t mentioned her mother. The moment she did, the grievance she had repressed for so long surged back into her heart. In the past, she had been cherished in her mother’s palms, raised with boundless love. But now, she was subjected to endless wrongs, experiencing the stark, heartbreaking contrast of being unloved for the very first time.