Chapter 73 - Soul’s memories

Chapter 73: Chapter 73 - Soul’s memories

The longer Jua Gu examined the mark, the less he liked what he found.

What had first appeared to be a single rune was made up of finer lines, layered so closely that he could barely distinguish them. Whenever he followed one, it seemed to lead him deeper into another section. There was no obvious beginning, no loose end he could grasp and carefully draw free.

He had read about soul marks before. He knew what they were supposed to do and the sort of commitment required to form one, but he had never personally carried such a bond.

Reading about something and finding it embedded in his own soul were proving to be very different experiences.

Jua frowned against the pillow.

This wasn’t going to be undone in a day or two.

He needed to understand how Mao Mao had formed it before attempting anything. Pulling at the wrong place could hurt them both, and he wasn’t foolish enough to start tearing into a bond merely because he was angry about its existence.

He guided a thin thread of energy toward the edge, intending only to trace it.

The mark warmed beneath his attention.

For a moment, he felt a pulse that didn’t belong to his own body. It was quick and uneven, accompanied by a pressure in his chest that made him stop.

Then his vision began to swim.

Jua tried to withdraw, but the room had already blurred around him. The weight of the blanket vanished from his legs, and a sharp, medicinal smell filled his nose.

When the shapes settled again, he was standing beside a hospital bed.

Everything looked washed out. The walls, the sheets, even the flowers on a table near the window seemed drained of colour. He could hear a monitor and the faint sound of someone moving outside, but both were muffled, as though the room were shut behind thick glass.

A child sat beside the bed.

Jua recognised the untidy hair before he saw his face.

Mao Mao.

He was small again, his feet barely reaching the floor from the chair. There was a plaster across one palm and a dirty mark near the cuff of his sleeve. He had changed clothes since the accident, but whoever had helped him hadn’t managed to clean beneath all his fingernails.

He was holding a hand between both of his.

Jua looked toward the bed.

His own face lay against the pillow, pale beneath the bandage near his temple. There were dressings over one shoulder, and part of his arm disappeared beneath the sheet. He looked so still that Jua found himself checking the rise of his chest.

Mao Mao was checking too.

Every few seconds, his eyes moved from Jua’s face to the monitor, then back again. He held the injured hand carefully, avoiding the tape and bruising, his thumbs resting where there was bare skin.

"Gege?"

He waited.

Jua felt the hope behind that small pause as though it had opened inside his own chest. It was immediate and painful: perhaps this time, perhaps he only needed to hear him properly.

Mao Mao leaned closer.

"I didn’t get hit. The doctor looked at my hands too. They’re fine."

He turned his plastered palm slightly, trying to show the unconscious man.

Jua remembered those hands covered in his blood.

He stepped toward the chair, but nothing in the room responded to him. His fingers passed through the child’s shoulder when he reached out.

A memory.

He understood that now, though knowing it didn’t make him want to touch him any less.

Mao Mao lowered his hand and returned it to Jua’s.

"You don’t have to worry about me."

His voice wavered on the last few words. He swallowed, glanced toward the door, and hurried to continue before anyone could interrupt.

"I’ll take my medicine. And I’ll eat the vegetables. I won’t hide them anymore."

He watched Jua’s face closely after each promise.

Jua’s throat tightened.

The child thought they were negotiating. Somewhere in his frightened mind, there was still a way to make this right if he offered enough.

"I won’t keep asking you to play either," Mao Mao whispered. "You can study. I’ll sit quietly."

His fingers shifted around Jua’s hand.

"But when you’re finished, can you talk to me a little?"

The room remained unchanged. The monitor continued its steady rhythm, and the man in the bed didn’t open his eyes.

Mao Mao bent his head until his forehead nearly touched their joined hands. His shoulders moved once, then again, as he tried to cry without making a sound.

Jua crouched beside him.

He wanted to tell him that none of those things mattered. He could leave the vegetables, ask for another game, interrupt his studying as often as he liked. There was nothing he needed to earn here.

But the memory carried on without him.

The door opened, and Ying Rui came in.

Jua looked up. The man seemed older than he had outside the bookshop, though only a short time could have passed. His shirt was creased, and he stopped beside the chair with a weariness Jua had never seen on him before.

"Mao Mao. You need to sleep."

The child immediately tightened his hold.

"Just another minute."

Ying Rui glanced at the bed. He rested a hand on his son’s head and stood there for a while, allowing it.

Mao Mao used the extra time to look at Jua’s face again.

He seemed to be trying to remember every part of it, or searching for a movement everyone else had missed. His thumb brushed lightly over one knuckle.

When Ying Rui finally bent to lift him, he drew back.

"Dad, please."

"You can come back after you’ve rested."

"What if he wakes up?"

The question stopped his father’s hands.

Mao Mao looked between him and the bed, frightened now in a different way.

"What if he wakes up and I’m not here?"

Ying Rui sat on the edge of the chair beside him. He promised that someone would call them immediately, that Jua wouldn’t be left alone, and that Mao Mao could return as soon as he had slept.

The boy listened, but his fingers wouldn’t loosen.

In the end, Ying Rui had to help him lay Jua’s hand back on the sheet. Mao Mao straightened the fingers first, placing them where he thought they would be comfortable.

Then he leaned close to the pillow.

"I’m coming back," he whispered. "Don’t think I went away."

Jua stayed crouched beside the empty chair as Ying Rui carried him out.

The memory blurred before the door had fully closed.

He felt the bond tighten, drawing him onward. He tried to steady himself, but the room shifted around him, its details running together before settling into a different arrangement.

The bed was the same.

The equipment beside it had changed, and there was a different chair near the window. Someone had placed a schoolbag on the floor, half-open, with a workbook protruding from it.

Mao Mao sat at the bedside again.

He was older now. His legs reached the floor, and his school uniform had become too short at the wrists. There was a pen in his hand, though he wasn’t looking at the work spread across his lap.

He was looking at Jua’s fingers.

Sudden joy rushed through the memory, so fierce that Jua almost lost his balance.

Mao Mao dropped the pen.

"Gege?"

He leaned forward, catching Jua’s hand before it could move again.

"Do it again."

His voice rose.

"Gege, can you hear me?"

He was out of the chair before he finished speaking, pressing the call button repeatedly. When the nurse came, he turned toward her with a smile so bright that Jua knew what he was going to say before he said it.

"He squeezed my hand."

The nurse came closer.

Mao Mao moved aside, but barely. His eyes followed as she checked Jua, and he explained exactly what he had felt, demonstrating with his own fingers.

A doctor arrived a little later.

They spoke to Jua, asked him to respond, and examined the movement in his hands. Mao Mao stood near the head of the bed, waiting with his lips parted.

Each question seemed to hold the whole room still for him.

Jua could feel how certain he was. This wasn’t a possibility anymore. He had felt it. After all the waiting, he finally had something to tell his father.

The doctor repeated the request.

Nothing happened.

Mao Mao’s smile began to falter.

"He was holding my hand," he said. "Maybe you should let me try."

They did.

He sat down quickly and slipped his fingers into Jua’s palm, arranging them as they had been before.

"Like this," he explained.

Then, more quietly, "Gege?"

Jua watched him wait.

The hand remained loose around his.

After another examination, the doctor spoke gently to the nurse. There had been no response they could confirm. They would continue watching, and Mao Mao should call again if he noticed anything else.

Nobody told him he had imagined it.

They didn’t need to.

He stood very still while they spoke, nodding at the appropriate moments. When the nurse asked whether he wanted her to call his father, he shook his head.

"Not yet."

The door closed behind them.

For a while, Mao Mao didn’t move.

Then he sat down and picked up Jua’s hand again.

He studied the fingers carefully, turning them enough to see where they had rested against his own. He adjusted his grip, waited, then changed it back.

"I was here," he murmured. "I felt it."

Jua stood beside him, unable to look away.

Mao Mao tried once more, pressing his fingers into the palm and watching for any sign of pressure. When nothing came, his mouth tightened, but he didn’t let go.

As Jua remained inside the memory, other impressions brushed against him. The same startled happiness in the middle of an ordinary afternoon. A face turning toward the pillow because he was certain he had heard his name. The conviction that Jua’s eyes had opened, gone before he could properly look.

Again and again, hope arrived before he could protect himself from it.

Jua understood, with a sickening ache, why the child had seemed so certain. For a moment, he had been certain too. The feeling had passed through the bond whole, carrying the relief of someone who finally believed the waiting was over.

Mao Mao lowered his head beside the bed.

His workbook slid from his knees, landing open on the floor. He left it there.

Instead, he placed his fingers back in Jua’s hand and watched them.

This time, when he thought he felt a movement, he didn’t call anyone.