To My Dear Mr. Huo

Standing there, Huo Jinyao looked cold and sharp-eyed.

“I know who drugged him,” he said.

“Who?” Su Qingsang couldn’t think of anyone who would do that. Almost everyone who had shown up today were relatives of the family.

Su Peizhen was the only one not related to the family. Was it her? Why would she drug Zhang Yichen?

‘And if it wasn’t her, who was it?’ Su Qingsang wondered.

Huo Jinyao shook his head and put both hands on Su Qingsang’s shoulders.

“Stay out of it and leave it to me. Go back to the room. Get some rest,” he said.

“What about…” Su Qingsang glanced at the bed. Zhang Yichen was still lying on it.

After the blood test results came out, the doctor gave him an early treatment.

The dose of the shot wasn’t heavy. It wouldn’t have caused such a strong effect if he hadn’t had alcohol.

“The doctor has given him a shot. He’s probably going to sleep for a while. He won’t need anyone here looking after him,” Huo Jinyao said.

Su Qingsang nodded. She didn’t want to look after Zhang Yichen in any case, not even if Huo Jinyao asked her to.

She was more than willing to take care of the Huo family relatives, but after what happened, she honestly didn’t think she had the courage to stay alone in the same room with Zhang Yichen anymore. He was a man, and she was a woman. She definitely needed to avoid that kind of situation.

“That’s what I thought,” she said, glancing at Zhang Yichen and sighing in her head. She didn’t leave hurriedly because she wanted to be respectful to Huo Jinyao.

Zhang Yichen had indeed put her in an embarrassing situation earlier, even though he didn’t mean it.

However, she wasn’t angry at him. After all, he had been drunk and drugged. In fact, she felt some pity for him. She wondered who had done that to him and why.

She took thought it was a bad prank, but Huo Jinyao thought differently.

He escorted Su Qingsang to her room and then headed straight upstairs to Liu Tongjia’s room.

Liu Tongjia was still angry. It had been quite a while, but her anger still hadn’t subsided at all.

He knocked on the door and then walked in.

He clenched his fists on either side of his body, looking at Liu Tongjia with a complicated expression.

Liu Tongjia felt uncomfortable under his gaze. But before she could say anything, Huo Jinyao took a few large steps up to her.

He stared straight at Liu Tongjia. His eyes were filled with a mixture of disappointment and something else.

“Why did you do that?” he asked.

Liu Tongjia looked at him with a confused face. As if she had no idea what he was talking about.

“Mom, tell me. Why did you do that?”

“What did I do?” Liu Tongjia pulled a sullen face and said, “Is this because I scolded your wife?”

Huo Jinyao gave her a bitter smile, smirking at Liu Tongjia. He couldn’t believe that she was still pretending that nothing happened.

“Mom, am I really your son? Are you really my mom? Does it pain you to watch me being happy?” He said.

“What are you talking about?” Liu Tongjia was infuriated now. “And what gives you the right to talk to me like this? Don’t you have any respect for me? I’m your mother!”

“You want me to respect you, but have you ever respected me? Have you ever treated me as your son? Have you?”

Huo Jinyao took another step forward. He was tall and strong, easily looming over her. Because of his intimidating stature, Liu Tongjia instinctively stepped backward even though she was the older one.

“Huo Jinyao, get out.”

“I’ll leave when I made things clear.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“My uncle, Zhang Yichen, is drugged.”

“Dru-drugged?” Liu Tongjia’s eyes widened with surprise and she said, “How could he be drugged? He’s drugged with what?”

Her surprise was, Huo Jinyao noticed, fake.

Huo Jinyao smiled coldly. He said, “Mom, you of all people would know exactly what kind of drug my uncle has taken. Isn’t that right?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

All these years, Huo Jinyao had been tolerating his mother’s attitude and tried to be understanding.

He was aware of why Liu Tongjia didn’t like him.

And he knew that there was no way for him to change the way she thought about him. He had gotten used to her cold attitude.

However, he had never expected that one day, Liu Tongjia would do something like this to his wife.

Zhang Yichen might be in love with Su Qingsang, but Su Qingsang was innocent.

She shouldn’t have suffered all that.

“Huo Jinyao! Mind your attitude,” said Liu Tongjia.

“What about your attitude, Mom? Do you think you’ve been acting like a mother?” Huo Jinyao hadn’t wanted to say that. He had been holding his pain inside for a very long time. The burden was so heavy sometimes that he could barely breathe.

No one should ignore the abuse coming from their parents. He couldn’t do that anymore.

“Huo Jinyao, are you accusing me?”

“Am I not allowed to?” Huo Jinyao looked at her with sharp eyes. He was accusing her, point-blank.

“You say that you’re my mother, but would any mother do what you’ve done? In order to make me despise Qingsang, you drugged my uncle. I know that you don’t like me. You can hurt me if I’ve made you unhappy, but don’t hurt Qingsang.”

“I, I…”

Liu Tongjia stuttered, her eyes widening even further. She couldn’t believe that Huo Jinyao was really accusing her of drugging Zhang Yichen.

“I thought that maybe your grievance had eased—more or less. So many years have passed, Mom. But I was wrong. I don’t want to bring up the past again, but I want you to know that I’m done tolerating you.”

After he finished speaking, he turned and began to leave. But suddenly, Liu Tongjia stepped up to stop him.

“You think I drugged Zhang Yichen?”

“Isn’t that true?”

“Why would I do that?”

“So I’d misunderstand Su Qingsang. You did that to make us unhappy. You’ve been doing things like this the entire time, haven’t you? You’d do anything to upset me.”

“Huo Jinyao!” Liu Tongjia almost exploded with anger. She didn’t want to argue with Huo Jinyao about this. She nodded vigorously.

“Alright, alright. So I want you to misunderstand Su Qingsang? Do you call that misunderstanding? Huh? That woman was arm in arm with Zhang Yichen when you couldn’t see her. That’s not something I made up. I’m just trying to show you the facts.”

“I believe Qingsang. What do you mean, show me the facts? Is the fact that you drugged my uncle in order to frame Qingsang?”

“I drugged him?” Liu Tongjia said wrathfully. “He’s the nasty man who’s been having nasty thoughts!”

“He’s just been drugged by you. And the only reason for that is because you hate to see me happy.”

Liu Tongjia nodded quickly. She was seething with rage. She never thought that Huo Jinyao would ever storm into her room and accuse her like that.

She felt as though a fire was burning up inside of her, evaporating her sanity.

“Yeah, yeah, I did it. You’re right! I hate having to see you be happy. What gives you the right to be happy? Huo Jinyao, do you think you have the right to be happy?”

She pointed at Huo Jinyao and snarled fiercely. Anger flowing freely as if she finally let out all the grievances that had been piling up inside of her for decades.

“You, you, you have no right to be happy! Everything you have doesn’t belong to you. They all belong to Jinkai! You took your brother’s place. You killed him! And now, you are shamelessly hoarding all the happiness that belonged to someone else!

“Why would I want you to be happy? I don’t! You killed my son, my daughter. You killed my children and now, you’re still living a carefree and happy life. How did this happen? Huo Jinyao, what gives you the right to ask me for a happy life?”

Liu Tongjia’s eyes flashed red as she spoke.

Deep down inside, she wasn’t a mean person. She was just a mother who loved her children deeply. But Huo Jinyao had killed her love for others.

“When you killed them, you should have known that you’d go to hell! Huo Jinyao, every day of your life should be a living hell. You have no right to live a happy life! Am I wrong to think that?”

The rage burning up further sharpened Liu Tongjia’s voice. While she was speaking, she started to tremble.

She couldn’t control that anger of hers anymore, and she didn’t want to.

All these years, she had tried to be civil towards Huo Jinyao. But the façade was so fake, the peace between them so fragile, that even a gentle nudge would shatter it.

At this moment, she lost control of her emotions. And she let them run out of control, shattering the peace that never existed.

Huo Jinyao looked at her. She had lost her temper like that once before.

When his brother and sister died, she had grabbed his shoulders, shaking him furiously, refusing to believe what had happened.

“How can you be so cruel?” she had questioned him. “Why didn’t you die?

“Why weren’t you the one who died instead?”

Those memories were morbid and unpleasant. Huo Jinyao closed his eyes. When he opened those eyes again, they were clear, as if no emotion had ever touched them.

“That’s what you really wanted to say to me, isn’t it?

“That’s what you truly feel about me. You’ve been having these thoughts all these years. You’ve been trying to hide them, but they never went away.

“You’ve always wished that I was the one who died in that accident, didn’t you?”

His voice was soft. Every word he said splattered on Liu Tongjia’s heart like large raindrops.

Somehow, his repeating her thoughts back to her felt a little uncomfortable. She did her best to shrug off that discomfort, though.

“You said that not I,” she said. She had not said that just now, but she had said something like that when Huo Jinyao was a kid.

Huo Jinyao nodded, standing perfectly straight.

He was tall strong and mature.

He was Huo Jinyao, an indestructible man.

He forced himself to calm down. Liu Tongjia had hurt him deeply, but he refused to wear that pain on his face, not even a little bit.

He stared at Liu Tongjia, calmly and quietly. His eyes looked like the bottomless sea.

“Mom, I want you to know that actually, I’ve been thinking those thoughts of yours all these years. I’ve been blaming myself for not the one who died in that accident.”

Liu Tongjia quivered slightly. Her legs had grown weak. She had to clench all her muscles to stay upright on her feet.

“I mean it from the bottom of my heart.” Huo Jinyao looked at her and enunciated each word, with a very gentle voice.

“I wish I was the one who died.

“You will be so much happier now if I had died then, instead of them.”

After he said that, he closed his eyes for a moment. He didn’t want to stay any longer, so he turned and headed toward the door.

The moment his hand touched the doorknob, he paused. Without turning back, he fixed his eyes on a corner of the door and said, “The Tianyu Group belongs to my father and my grandfather. You don’t like me, so you want it to be passed to someone else. I understand, and I don’t care about that. But my grandfather has said that since my older brother is gone, I’m his eldest grandson. So, as his oldest grandson, I need to take responsibility for the family.”

“I’m currently responsible for both the Tianyu Group and the Huo Family. If you really don’t want me to be the president of the Tianyu Group, I will talk to my grandfather and convince him to replace me with someone else. I don’t need any of that. You can do whatever you want to the Tianyu Group, or anything that belongs to the Huo Family. You can even do whatever you want to me. But, Su Qingsang is where I draw the line. You can take away everything I have, and you can hurt me as much as you want, but if you hurt Qingsang, I’ll make you regret it.”

His knuckles turned white from gripping the doorknob so hard while he spoke. At last, he opened the door and left without looking back.

After he left, Liu Tongjia felt her legs give way and in the end, she fell to the ground.

Looking at the closed door, she wondered—for a moment—if she had done something wrong after all.

But there was no one there to give her an answer. Huo Mingguang wasn’t around, and she couldn’t possibly talk to anyone else about what happened.

She crossed her legs into a sitting position on the floor. The floor was carpeted, so she shouldn’t be feeling cold. Yet somehow, she felt waves of cold air coming at her from all directions, shrouding her like a cloak.

She pressed a hand to her heart, trying to convince herself that she wasn’t in the wrong.

‘What did I do wrong?’ she wondered to herself, ‘Huo Jinyao’s attitude is absolutely despicable! What did he mean by Su Qingsang is where he draws the line? Is Su Qingsang the only one who matters to him? So the rest of the family doesn’t matter to him at all? Does he only care about Su Qinsang? In his eyes, am I still his mother?’

Liu Tongjia continued telling herself that Huo Jinyao was wrong, that he had behaved outrageously.

Also, he had wrongly accused her of drugging Zhang Yichen. Liu Tongjia found that ridiculous. Zhang Yichen wanted Su Qingsang so badly all on his own. There was no need for her to drug him.

She told herself that she did nothing wrong, nothing at all.

But still, Huo Jinyao’s words and the look on his face while he spoke kept running through her mind. She couldn’t erase them from her mind, no matter how hard she tried.

‘I wish I was the one who died,’ those words repeated themselves in her mind, over and over again.

She trembled and collapsed to the floor once more. She used both hands to prop up her body from the floor, trying as hard as she could to cast those thoughts out of her mind.

‘I did nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong.’

She had told herself that her hatred of him was justified for so long, but this time around, she wasn’t so sure anymore.

…

By the time Huo Jinyao returned to his room, Su Qingsang had just come out of the shower.

She had smelled like alcohol because of Zhang Yichen and that made her feel very uncomfortable.

Not every doctor was a clean freak, but most doctors stayed neat and clean out of habit.

Huo Jinyao came in just as she finished blow-drying her hair.

“Jinyao?”

Earlier, he had told her that he was going to find the person who drugged Zhang Yichen. She asked him who it was, but he refused to tell her.

He came into the room, looking upset. Su Qingsang looked at him with concern.

Before she could approach him, Huo Jinyao walked up behind her and held her.

“Jinyao?”

He held her so tightly that he seemed to want to rub her into himself.

Su Qingsang couldn’t turn her body to hug him back. So she raised her arms and gently put them around his waist.

Neither of them said anything.

Silence settled comfortably in the room.

Su Qingsang felt Huo Jinyao’s heartbeat on her back. His heart was beating faster than usual.

She wanted to raise her head, but her head was being pressed tightly against his chest.

That posture made her very uncomfortable, but she couldn’t push him away. She didn’t want to push him away.

She stayed close to him and let him hold her. He was holding her so tightly that she even felt a bit of pain.

It was only after his heartbeat slowed down did she start talking.

“Who drugged him? Will you tell me who drugged him?”

Huo Jinyao didn’t say anything. Su Qingsang could sense that his body had tensed up.

She thought for a moment. No one else could make Huo Jinyao this upset except his mother.

“Was it your mother?”

She wasn’t sure. She couldn’t think of any reason why Liu Tongjia would do that.

Huo Jinyao’s body became rigid when he heard what she said. Sensing that, she realized she must have guessed right.

She quickly raised her head, even though he was still trying to press her head to his chest.

She couldn’t really believe that. Her pretty eyes were filled with shock.

“Re-really?”

Huo Jinyao pressed his lips together, holding her tight.

Su Qingsang didn’t know what to say. She was smart enough to figure out Liu Tongjia’s motive.

“She drugged Zhang Yichen, so you’d see what he’s done to me, and you’d misunderstand me, right?”

That sounded plain ridiculous. Had Liu Tongjia come up with such a complicated plan just to drive a wedge between her and Huo Jinyao? If that was the truth, Su Qingsang would probably admire Liu Tongjia for her insidious foresight. No average person could think of a plan like that.

Huo Jinyao looked at Su Qingsang, held her once again, saying, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Qingsang…”

Su Qingsang sensed his regret, but somehow, she felt odd, as though something was not right.

“Wait for a second,” Su Qingsang raised her head, looked at him, and said, “That doesn’t really make sense, does it? Well, what if I didn’t go out to take the call? What if I didn’t go out into the hallway? Her plan would have failed then, wouldn’t it?”

“Why did you go into the hallway?” Huo Jinyao recalled what had happened earlier.

Su Qingsang glanced at her phone, saying, “I went out to take a call. It was from Mengwan. I didn’t want to wake you up, so I went out.

“So, you see,” she continued saying, “This doesn’t make sense at all. There’d be no chance for her plan to succeed if I didn’t go out. How could she have known that I’d go out to take a phone call at that very time?”

“I think she didn’t need to know that,” said Huo Jinyao with a cold face. Thinking about how Liu Tongjia had treated him all these years made him feel truly upset.

“I think she’d find another way to make you go out at that time, even if you didn’t take that call,” he said.

“Why are you so sure about this?” She asked.

“Of course, I’m sure about it. She was the one who prepared the hangover soup. She knows which room my uncle usually stays.” Lowering his head, Huo Jinyao looked at Su Qingsang with a grim face.

“You were lucky because you got away. Also, Uncle is strong-minded enough to keep himself from hurting you. Otherwise, she would have called all the family members over and let them see the two of you together. Everyone would have misunderstood you,” he said. “If that had happened, you wouldn’t be able to stay in this family no matter how much I trust you.”

Old Master Huo loved Huo Jinyao and thought highly of him. However, he would never let something like that taint the reputation of his family.

Both Huo Jinyao and Su Qingsang were fully aware of that.

If Su Qingsang and Zhang Yichen had been caught in bed together, what would Old Master Huo and the others think? Su Qingsang could have explained that Zhang Yichen was drunk and drugged, but who would believe her?

Zhang Yichen was a relative of Huo Family, Old Master Huo’s own nephew. The family probably wouldn’t want to think badly of him, but they wouldn’t mind accusing Su Qingsang of seducing him.

Zhang Yichen was a serviceman. Awful accusations like that might get him kicked out of the army.

Thinking about all those possibilities, Su Qingsang realized that the person who had drugged him was truly wicked and cruel.

“But…” She still thought it was weird. It didn’t sound like something that Liu Tongjia would do. “I mean, your mother doesn’t like me—true—but what reason does she have to hurt your Uncle? He is your great-aunt’s son, after all. Your great-aunt’s favorite son!”

“She has her own reasons,” said Huo Jinyao expressionlessly. He was thinking about the time that he had spent in the army, together with Zhang Yichen. Before he went abroad to study, he spent almost all summer and winter vacations in the army with Zhang Yichen. Zhang Yichen was not only his uncle but also a very good friend of his.

Liu Tongjia knew about that. Huo Jinyao believed that she simply wanted to destroy everything that made him happy.

She hated even the sight of someone being kind to him, no matter who that person was.

By drugging Zhang Yichen, she could not only tear Huo Jinyao and Su Qingsang apart but also strain Huo Jinyao and Zhang Yichen’s relationship. She could kill two birds with one stone by doing this.

Su Qingsang hung her head. She still felt that something wasn’t quite right. What Huo Jinyao said did make sense though.

“You don’t need to explain her actions,” said Huo Jinyao. “She admitted to it.”

Upon hearing that, Su Qingsang’s eyes widened. This time, she was really shocked.

“She admitted it?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Once again, Huo Jinyao squeezed Su Qingsang tight. She couldn’t see his eyes, which were filled with pain.

It hurt so much, to be targeted by his own mother.

“Huo Jinyao, I think Aunt is probably…”

Su Qingsang attempted to say something to defend Liu Tongjia and then realized how pointless that would be.

She recalled what Liu Tongjia had told her about the kidnapping and the death of Huo Jinyao’s brother and sister.

She raised her head to look at Huo Jinyao. She still had so many questions about that moment.

She refused to believe that Huo Jinyao was that kind of person, especially since he was still a kid when the accident happened.

Holding on to Su Qingsang, Huo Jinyao rested his jaw on the top of her head.

His eyes strayed to a corner of the room as he recalled the kidnapping, which was like a nightmare for him.

“Darling, do you know why my mother hates me so much?”