Chapter 74 - An Adult mao mao

Chapter 74: Chapter 74 - An Adult mao mao

The hospital room changed before Jua could pull himself out of the memory.

The workbook disappeared from the floor. The chair became wider, the curtains darker, and the flowers beside the window were replaced by a small plant with dust gathered along its leaves.

Mao Mao was older.

Jua watched him enter carrying a bag from a pharmacy. He was tall now, though his clothes hung loosely from his shoulders, and there was a hollowness beneath his cheekbones that made Jua look twice. His hair needed cutting. He pushed it away from his eyes with an impatient movement, set the bag down, and immediately checked the man lying in the bed.

There was no greeting at first.

He examined the blanket, the position of Jua’s arm, the equipment beside him. Only after everything seemed to satisfy him did he sit.

"I brought the cream they asked for."

His voice had deepened.

Jua stood beside the bed, listening to it with an ache he couldn’t quite swallow. Somewhere between the last memory and this one, the child’s voice had disappeared. He hadn’t been there to notice when.

Mao Mao took a small tube from the bag and placed it in the drawer. His movements were familiar with the room in a way that made Jua uncomfortable. He knew which drawer to use, where to leave the receipt, how far to move the chair before sitting.

This had become part of his life.

The door opened behind him.

Ying Rui entered slowly, carrying nothing. Grey had spread through his hair, and his face looked tired in a way Jua remembered from the first hospital memory. This time, however, it seemed to have settled there.

He stopped beside his son.

"Have you eaten?"

Mao Mao nodded without looking up.

His father glanced at the unopened food container on the table.

Neither mentioned it.

For a while, Ying Rui stood watching the bed. Then he pulled another chair closer, though he didn’t sit immediately.

"The doctor spoke to me."

Mao Mao’s fingers stopped against the edge of the blanket.

Jua felt the change before he saw it. A familiar dread moved through the memory, so practised that it had arrived before Ying Rui finished speaking.

His son already knew the conversation.

"They’ve explained what continuing like this means," Ying Rui said. "I think we need to listen."

Mao Mao looked up.

His expression was frighteningly empty.

"He’s alive."

"I know."

"Then there’s nothing to discuss."

Ying Rui lowered himself into the chair. He looked at Jua for a moment before turning back to his son.

"We have to consider whether keeping him on support is what he would want. Whether it’s time to let him go."

Mao Mao was on his feet so quickly that the chair scraped hard across the floor.

He caught his father by the collar and hauled him forward.

Jua moved instinctively, reaching for his arm. His hand passed through it.

"Don’t touch him!"

The shout filled the small room.

Ying Rui’s eyes widened. His hands rose to his son’s wrists, but he didn’t try to wrench himself free.

"You don’t get to decide that," Mao Mao said, his voice shaking with fury. "None of you do. I won’t let anyone hurt Jua. Do you understand?"

His father stared at him.

Jua could feel how violently the young man’s heart was beating. Beneath the anger was a fear so complete that there was scarcely room for anything else. Mao Mao wasn’t hearing a discussion about treatment. He was hearing that someone intended to take Jua away, and that he had only seconds to stop them.

Ying Rui’s grip softened.

"All right," he said.

Mao Mao didn’t release him.

His father waited, then repeated it more quietly.

"All right. We won’t do anything."

Eventually, the fingers loosened.

Ying Rui sat back, his collar twisted. He straightened it slowly while Mao Mao remained standing over him, breathing hard.

Jua looked between them, helpless.

He wanted to tell Mao Mao to sit down. To tell Ying Rui there was still someone inside that unmoving body, even if neither of them could reach him.

Instead, he watched the older man give a tired nod and accept a promise he clearly didn’t know how to keep.

The room blurred again.

This time, the feeling reached Jua before the image did.

Exhaustion. A heavy, hollow weariness that made even standing beside the bed feel difficult, though he had no body here to tire.

Mao Mao sat in the chair wearing black.

He looked older than he had in the previous memory. His hair was neatly cut, his clothes carefully chosen, but his face was swollen from crying. There was a crease in one sleeve where he had apparently slept in it.

A coat lay folded across his lap.

He stared at Jua’s hand for a long time before taking it.

"Dad died."

The words were quiet.

Jua went still.

Mao Mao rubbed a thumb over the knuckles resting in his palm.

"They said it was a heart attack."

He paused, apparently waiting until he could speak again.

"I wasn’t there."

Jua looked toward the door, almost expecting Ying Rui to enter as he had before. He could still see the man sitting in the other chair, straightening his collar after his son let him go.

Now that chair was empty.

"They called me," Mao Mao continued. "I thought he’d be angry that I hadn’t answered the first time."

His mouth moved as though he was trying to smile, but he couldn’t manage it.

"He was always complaining about that."

Jua remembered Ying Rui checking his return flight. The four plates on the breakfast table. His awkward attempts to lift Mao Mao comfortably.

He had only just begun trying.

And Jua had missed the rest.

Mao Mao bent over the hand he was holding. Tears fell onto the sheet, and he wiped them away hurriedly with his sleeve, as though the dampness might disturb its sleeping owner.

"I don’t have anyone left."

Jua crouched beside him.

"That isn’t true," he tried to say.

There was no sound.

Mao Mao’s breathing became uneven. He held Jua’s hand against his forehead and cried with a tiredness that made Jua wish he would shout instead. There was so little strength in it. He seemed to have used everything getting through the funeral and reaching this room.

Jua reached for the back of his head.

His fingers passed through his hair.

The helplessness was becoming unbearable.

He could watch every movement, feel the grief travelling through the bond, yet he couldn’t do the one thing he would have done if he had been there. He couldn’t draw him close. He couldn’t make him drink some water, take off the stiff coat, or lie down somewhere that wasn’t a hospital chair.

Gradually, Mao Mao’s crying stopped.

At first, Jua was relieved.

Then he saw his face.

The young man was staring at the bed without seeming to see it. His grip slackened, and Jua’s hand slipped back onto the sheet.

There was a tray on the nearby table, left over from a meal he hadn’t eaten.

Mao Mao reached toward it.

Jua saw the knife in his hand and moved before he understood what he was seeing.

"No."

He caught at the wrist.

His fingers closed on empty air.

The memory continued.

Mao Mao hurt himself with an awful, distant quiet, and Jua found himself reaching again, trying to seize the utensil, the hand, anything that might interrupt what was happening. He knew he couldn’t touch him. He had already tried. Still, he couldn’t stand there and do nothing.

The door opened during his third attempt.

A nurse stopped in the entrance, then hurried forward.

Her voice changed the whole room. Another person came running at her call, and suddenly there were hands where Jua’s should have been, taking the knife away, pressing cloth against the injury, keeping Mao Mao from slipping out of the chair.

He looked confused when they spoke to him.

Then frightened.

Jua stayed close as they worked, unable to make himself step back even when their bodies blocked his view. He needed to see that someone was holding him, that nobody was going to leave him sitting there again.

Mao Mao turned toward the bed as they helped him out.

"Jua Ge—"

One of the nurses answered gently, guiding his attention back to her. She stayed beside him as they took him through the door.

Jua tried to follow.

The memory would not let him.

He remained beside the bed, staring at the place where Mao Mao’s chair had been. The coat had fallen to the floor. An untouched meal sat on the table, and his own hand lay exactly where it had been left.

He had been there through all of it.

That was what hurt most.

Mao Mao had come to him because he had nowhere else he wanted to go, and Jua’s body had lain within reach while he cried, while he spoke about his father, while he became too overwhelmed to keep himself safe.

Jua knew he hadn’t chosen to leave him. He knew there had been nothing he could do from Soul Space.

Knowing did little to ease the sick feeling in his chest.

He wanted the memory to move forward. He needed to see the nurses bring Mao Mao back, bandaged and exhausted but alive. He wanted someone to sit beside him and stay until he slept.

The edges of the room began to fade before he could find out.