Huo Mian’s mother, Qin Mei, scolded her daughter without the slightest courtesy. “You’re going to take me out? What could I possibly do if I went with you?”
“Can you support me? The Yu family promised to provide for me in my old age. This senior wellness center has good food, comfortable beds, and all the medical equipment you could need.”
“I’m not leaving. I’m staying here until I die!”
Huo Mian’s eyes reddened as she sniffed. “The Yu family has already called off our engagement. I’d feel terrible letting you continue living here. As for supporting you, don’t worry. I may not be much, but I did study overseas…”
Qin Mei let out a laugh. “You know better than anyone how much that overseas degree is actually worth! The biggest regret of my life is giving up my career to have you!”
Huo Mian’s face went pale. “Mom…”
Qin Mei was already growing impatient. She turned toward the hallway and shouted, “Nurse! Nurse! I want to file a complaint! It’s this late, and you still haven’t made the visitor leave. Are you going to let this old woman get any sleep?”
Yu Zhining, who was standing outside the door, heard her and instructed the nurse, “Have Huo Mian and the psychologist leave.”
Yunqi Senior Wellness Center was merely a therapeutic residence for middle-aged and elderly people. Everyone living there was a client.
They had a great deal of freedom and would occasionally travel together.
They weren’t patients who needed to be forced into treatment.
If they didn’t want treatment, they didn’t have to receive it.
The nurse acknowledged him, then went inside and said to Huo Mian and the psychologist, “The client needs to rest. Please leave.”
Huo Mian had no choice but to leave with the psychologist.
They had just reached the doorway when Qin Mei spoke again.
“Oh, you’re really leaving? I knew it. You say you want to take me out and be a filial daughter, but deep down, you’ve wanted to get rid of me, this burden, for ages, haven’t you? Go on, then. Hmph. Luckily, I never expected anything from you in the first place!”
Huo Mian no longer knew whether she should leave or stay.
Even the nurse felt sorry for her.
This old woman kept telling her daughter to leave, but the moment her daughter actually did, she started playing the victim again.
The way these mother and daughter pulled each other back and forth was even more tangled than a tragic romance.
The nurse lightly touched Huo Mian’s hand and gave her an encouraging look, urging her to go outside first and not be afraid.
Huo Mian hesitated. Then she glanced at Yu Zhining outside the door and finally walked out.
After they had gone some distance away, they stopped to talk.
Yu Zhining glanced at the expert. She was a woman in her forties who looked quite professional.
The expert gently comforted Huo Mian. “Don’t let her affect you. Your mother has been verbally invalidating you for a long time. That’s a continuous process of weakening your sense of self-worth. You shouldn’t blame her, either. She’s a patient. After giving birth to you, she never received proper emotional care during the postpartum period…”
Huo Mian choked back a sob. “She’s a patient? Her emotions seem more stable than mine.”
The expert said, “Many highly controlling mothers function perfectly well in society. They’re extremely friendly toward outsiders, but with their own children, they do nothing but deny and belittle them.”
The nurse stood not far away, nodding in complete agreement.
The old woman was always so kind to the nurses. She showed none of the signs of a domineering mother who constantly put others down.
She was also extremely popular at the wellness center and had made countless friends among the other residents.
No one had expected that she could treat everyone else so well while treating her own daughter like this…
The expert continued, “Miss Huo, your mother doesn’t say these things because she doesn’t want to leave with you. On the contrary, she’s trying to provoke your guilt.”
Huo Mian drew in a deep breath. “But I really want to cure her. I want to reconcile with her, because I don’t have any other family…”
The expert said, “You’ll build a family of your own in the future.”
Huo Mian looked up at Yu Zhining, fragile and shattered. “No, I won’t. Not anymore. The Yu family doesn’t want me either. I have no one to rely on…”
Yu Zhining looked at Huo Mian as well.
After a long silence, he said, “It’s true that I don’t have those kinds of feelings for you. But even if I did, I couldn’t guarantee that I’d be able to love someone for the rest of my life. So how could you dare rely on me forever?”
All color drained from Huo Mian’s face. She hadn’t expected him to be so heartless.
Yu Zhining earnestly offered her some advice. “The most important thing for you right now is to find a job.”
Huo Mian: “…”
That was so unbelievably unhelpful.
Yu Zhining genuinely had no intention of provoking or mocking her.
He truly believed that human beings had too many emotions simply because they had too much free time.
Just look at himself back then… and Yu Xiaxing… They had suffered terribly, too.
Afterward, he had started studying medicine. He no longer had time to suffer over relationships between people.
He only suffered over studying medicine.
So, as long as Huo Mian found a job, she would have work to suffer over and would stop suffering over her family.
The nurses passing by all thought that Director Yu was truly cold-blooded.
He hadn’t comforted her at all. Instead, he had told her to go find a job…
After a long while, Huo Mian took a deep breath and said quietly, “I understand. Thank you.”
Yu Zhining nodded and accepted her thanks.
He turned around and went to instruct the nurse on duty. “Ms. Qin complained today that someone was forcing treatment on her, didn’t she? Add a new rule. From now on, anyone entering a client’s room must receive confirmation of consent from the client herself.”
The nurse immediately nodded. “Understood.”
With the matter temporarily settled, Huo Mian and the expert could only prepare to leave the floor.
They had taken only a few steps when the door behind them was suddenly pushed open.
Qin Mei leaned halfway out and called sarcastically, “Huo Mian! You’re really leaving just like that? You abandoned me here at the wellness center to wait for death all these years while you went overseas to enjoy yourself. And now you claim you’ve come back to take me away? You just wanted to put on a fake show, didn’t you? You were afraid people would call you unfilial!”
Huo Mian stopped in her tracks. Her body trembled.
Qin Mei shouted angrily, “Get back here!”
Huo Mian closed her eyes. In the end, she still turned around, intending to return to her mother’s side.
Yu Zhining called out to her. “Huo Mian.”
Huo Mian stopped but didn’t turn around.
Yu Zhining reminded her, “You can take care of your mother, but that doesn’t mean you have to bear the burden of her emotional outbursts.”
Only then did Huo Mian raise her head and look at him. Her gaze was soft. “It’s all right. She’s my mother. The hurt she causes me all comes from her love for me. If she didn’t love me so deeply, she wouldn’t try so hard to control me.”
Yu Zhining: “…”
If she was determined to look at things that way, there was no point continuing the conversation.
When someone willingly interpreted abuse as love, anything outsiders said would sound like an attempt to drive a wedge between them.
Besides, the wellness center allowed family members to stay temporarily to accompany and care for their loved ones.
As long as both mother and daughter had no objections, Yu Zhining couldn’t forcibly drive either of them away.
Yu Zhining’s expression didn’t change. “Suit yourself.”
Huo Mian gave a small nod. “Thank you, A-Ning. I never expected that even after we became strangers, you’d still care about me.”
With that, she turned and went back into the room.
Click.
The door slammed shut.
Outside, the nurses continued to feel sorry for Huo Mian.
Just look at what that girl had been manipulated into believing.
The relationship between mother and daughter was truly more terrifying than any romance between a man and a woman.
—
Inside the room.
Huo Mian pulled a tissue from the table and wiped the tears from her face.
Qin Mei sat on the edge of the bed and studied her daughter for a moment. Then she suddenly smiled.
“You said the Third Brother had no sympathy for you, but look at him now. If you truly had no chance at all, he wouldn’t have said those things in the end.”
