She had learned that lesson from him, Lu Zeyan himself. He had been cruel first, and now she was returning that cruelty with equal intensity.
For six years of her youth, they had strung her along. If she wasn’t sacrificing herself to support Lu Zeyan’s career, she was accompanying his parents, caring for them, tending to every unspoken expectation. She gave, and gave, and gave, without complaint.
After all that support and all those sacrifices, what did they expect?
There was always a debt. And there was always soone who had to pay for it.
He would not interfere in his wife’s revenge, nor would he ddle in it. Whatever she chose to do to calm her heart, he would allow it.
Lu Yuze picked up the phone, scrolling through the ssages without opening them.
*Brother, please call. Ergency.*
*Lu Yuze, Zeyan is in the hospital. We need you.*
*Why aren’t you answering?? Your nephew needs you!*
*This is serious. Call us imdiately.*
And on. And on.
He set the phone back down, still on silent.
Let them wait.
Let them feel the helplessness, the desperation of needing soone who wouldn’t co. The sa helplessness Shuyin had felt when they’d plotted against her. The sa desperation the original Shuyin had experienced, crying out for justice that never arrived until her demise.
Karma, as Shuyin had said, worked hard.
Lu Yuze settled back into his pillow, his eyes returning to his sleeping wife.
He would respond to his brother. Eventually. This weekend, as he’d told the secretary to schedule. Not a mont sooner.
Because right now, the only person who mattered was the woman sleeping in this bed. His wife, Shuyin. The rise and fall of the blanket over her shoulder was the only urgency he acknowledged. Everything else was a distant noise.
Six months ago, when his only daughter, Yuyan, their granddaughter, and his niece had fallen into a coma, that noise had been a crushing silence.
He had held vigil in those cold hospital corridors utterly alone. They hadn’t called to ask how a father survives watching his child suspended between life and death. After a few formal visits in the first terrifying month, they had simply... disappeared.
"We have a business to run."
"There are obligations."
Their excuses were always smooth, logical, and bone-deep hollow. They were delivered not with apology, but with the crisp finality of a boardroom decision, precisely when he needed them the most.
This was not a new pattern. Support had never been a currency in the Lu family for him. For as long as he could rember, he had navigated life’s trials alone, his surna a label without warmth, his place at the table a formality.
This final, profound isolation during Yuyan’s illness was rely the culmination of a lifeti of quiet exclusion. It was what had led him, years ago, to make the clean, silent cut, to separate himself and his daughter from the cold spectacle of their so-called family.
A part of him, a small, weary part he tried to silence, still wished it could have been different. He had wished, for twelve long years, that they could have simply seen him, seen the father standing guard over a child whose body was frail and whose health was a daily battleground.
He had wished for a word of shared burden, a glance of true sympathy, anything to break the solitary watch that stretched from her infancy to the edge of tragedy. For twelve years, he had stood beside her sickbed alone, until this fragile, miraculous mont of her recovery.
Instead, they had delegated their sympathy. They sent overpriced gift baskets to the hospital room, arrangents of imported tropical fruit and cellophane-wrapped gourt snacks, delivered by silent couriers. It was a transaction. As if exotic fruit could tabolize into presence, as if a ribboned hamper could substitute for a brother’s hand on his shoulder, a father’s steadying silence, or a friend’s shared, understanding grief in the deepest hour of the night.
They sent packages when what he needed was people. They managed a task when he was drowning in an ordeal.
What made them think their current crisis deserved his attention? Yuyan, his bright, fierce girl, had been stolen from him for six months. She was finally cured, finally laughing again in her room down the hallway, and he would not let the world’s chaos touch her, or the mother who had exhausted herself at her bedside.
He had a mountain of his own work. The company he had built and placed in Yuyan’s na, a fortress of wealth and security for her future, now far surpassing the Lu family’s own ventures, did not run itself. It had been neglected, set aside while he fought for his daughter’s life.
He, too, had etings to attend.
Files to review that would secure his daughter’s legacy.
Decisions to make to ensure her empire was unshakable.
A future to fortify.
They were "busy" then, when his child’s light was almost extinguished.
Let them learn what it ans to be t with that sa, immovable busyness now.
He looked at Shuyin, asleep in the soft lamplight, and his heart settled into a profound and quiet rhythm. He bent and pressed his lips to her forehead, a silent sacrant.
The cool, smooth touch of her skin held the echo of deep, still waters. It was her magic, her true and ancient magic, that had done what all the world’s science could not.
Just over a week ago, she had drawn Yuyan back from the silent depths, a miracle perford not by the doctors, but by her Magical essence.
If he had to spend ti, it would be here, in the peace of her deserved rest. If he had to worry, then let every concern be for the gentle rise and fall of her breath, for the faint, jade-green luminescence that seed to linger beneath her closed eyelids as she replenished what she had given.
He didn’t mind worshipping her...
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