He didn’t mind worshipping her. He had brought a legend into his house for reasons that now felt small and human. In return, she had given him back, his child. Let the world and its frantic, selfish noise wait at the door. His devotion was here, watching over the deep and dreaming sleep of the one who had remade his world.
He reached out, his fingers impossibly gentle, and brushed the silken strands of hair that had fallen across her cheek.
"Tickling..." she murmured, her face scrunching slightly in her sleep.
A soft, fond chuckle escaped him. "Silly..." he whispered, his voice a low rumble in the quiet room. "Where is it ticklish?" He let his fingers drift to the bridge of her nose, giving her nostrils the faintest, most playful pinch for a second.
"Hmmm..." she humd, a sound of sleepy protest, and turned her face deeper into the pillow, away from his teasing touch.
The smile that spread across his face then was not one of reverence, but of pure, quiet joy. This was his only congregation. This soft breath, this sleepy grumble, was the only prayer he needed to hear.
---
**At the Hospital**
The sterile halls of the private wing were quiet in the afternoon, but the waiting room reserved for the Lu family was anything but.
Mrs. Lu sat slumped in an expensive leather chair, her face ravaged by tears and exhaustion. Around her, the Lu family had gathered, Lu Cheng, Lu Hao, various aunts, uncles, and cousins. Nearly fifteen people, all wearing expressions ranging from confusion to fury.
"What are we going to do?" Mrs. Lu’s voice cracked. "What are we *going to do*?"
She’d been asking the sa question for hours. No one had an answer.
Lu Cheng stood by the window, his phone in his hand, staring at Lu Yuze’s contact with barely suppressed rage. "The doctors still can’t find anything wrong," he said tightly. "Every test cos back normal. Brain scans, bloodwork, and toxicology were all normal."
"Then how is this normal?!" Mrs. Lu gestured wildly toward the room down the hall where Lu Zeyan was being monitored. "He can’t speak! He can’t feed himself! He doesn’t recognize his own mother!"
Her voice rose to near-hysteria. "All the dical records show nothing, *nothing*! How is that possible?"
"There has to be an explanation," Lu Hao said, though he sounded far from convinced. "People don’t just regress to infancy overnight without cause."
"Unless it’s not dical," one of the aunts said quietly.
Everyone turned to look at her.
"What are you suggesting?" Lu Cheng asked, his voice dangerous.
The aunt, a sharp-eyed woman in her sixties, t his gaze steadily. "I’m suggesting that maybe we’re looking for answers in the wrong place. The doctors can’t find anything because there’s nothing physical to find."
"That’s ridiculous," Lu Hao snapped. "What, you think it’s so kind of curse? Black magic?"
The aunt didn’t flinch. "I think," she said carefully, "that it’s convenient how this happened right after Lu Zeyan’s... altercation with that woman. Shuyin."
Mrs. Lu’s head snapped up. "This is all Shuyin’s fault," she said, her voice trembling with conviction. "She must have done this. She *must* have done this."
"Now you’re both being....." Lu Hao started.
"Am I?" Mrs. Lu stood, swaying slightly. "Think about it. Lu Zeyan was fine until he targeted her. And now he’s lying in that bed, babbling her *na* over and over. ’Shuyin, Shuyin, Shuyin’, that’s all he says when he’s not completely vacant!"
She turned to Lu Cheng, grabbing his arm. "You heard what the nurses said. When he’s agitated, he cries her na like he’s terrified. What if she did sothing to him? What if she... I don’t know, poisoned him sohow?"
"The toxicology ca back clean," Lu Cheng reminded her, but his voice lacked certainty.
"Then there’s sothing else!" Mrs. Lu’s grip tightened. "That woman is very strange from the mont she ca back from prison. Unnatural. Those old eyes that are different from what they used to be ..."
"What if she is the one? What if it’s her doing?" Apart from Shuyin, no one held a grudge against Lu Zeyan.
"This isn’t helping," Lu Hao interjected. "Even if, and I’m not saying I believe it, but even if Shuyin sohow caused this, what can we do about it? We don’t know where she is, or who is protecting her from the mont she got out of prison."
"And Lu Yuze hadn’t responded or said anything! What if it’s him? Yuyan had miraculously gotten better, what if it was a life force exchange?"
At the ntion of his brother’s na, Lu Cheng’s expression darkened. And now, they were having all kinds of speculations.
"Speaking of Lu Yuze," another uncle spoke up, "why isn’t he here? Why hasn’t he returned a single call?"
Mrs. Lu let out a sound sowhere between a laugh and a sob. "Because he’s cruel. Ruthless. He always has been."
"He’s not cruel," Lu Cheng said quietly. "He’s... strategic. Everything he does has a purpose."
"Then what’s the purpose of ignoring us now?" Mrs. Lu demanded. "This is his *nephew* lying in that hospital bed! His family! How can he be this heartless?"
Lu Cheng’s jaw tightened. "Because he knows sothing. Has to. This timing, Zeyan’s condition, Yuyan’s miraculous recovery, Lu Yuze’s sudden unavailability, it’s all connected."
"To sothing," the sharp-eyed aunt said.
"Yes, there has to be sothing," Lu Cheng agreed grimly.
Mrs. Lu sank back into her chair, fresh tears spilling down her cheeks. "So what do we do? Just accept that our son is gone? That he’s been reduced to this because of so woman’s revenge?"
"We keep trying to reach Lu Yuze," Lu Cheng said. "And if he won’t co to us..." He paused, his expression hardening. "Then we go to him."
"He has security, enhanced even further with several guards all over the place" Lu Hao pointed out. "That man, Ting Fei. And others. We can’t just force our way into his ho."
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