My Taboo Harem! - Chapter 498: Son’s Duty: Mysterious Mother
Chapter 498: Son’s Duty: Mysterious Mother
She almost smiled.
Her eyes drifted to the flowers on the table. White peonies and pale pink ranunculus—fat, soft blooms bursting open like they were showing off, petals layered so thick they looked edible.
Her favourites.
“You brought my peonies,” she said. Softer now. The brightness in her voice catching on something tender. She reached for the bouquet, brought it close, buried her face in the petals.
“As always,” Phei said.
She inhaled deeply. Smiled with her eyes closed.
“So fresh. Only you bring me the good ones, Phei. The nurses try, bless them—but they always pick the ones from the hospital gift shop that smell like nothing and die in two days. Yours always last. You’re now my favourite.”
He chuckled. “What’s this? Wasn’t I your favourite son this whole time? Or are you shopping for a better one?”
She laughed—real, full, the laugh of a woman who still had joy stored somewhere the illness couldn’t reach. “Come on now. You can’ have it all. Best son. Only son. Favourite everything.” She patted his hand. “But then again… there is no competition.”
Her eyes moved past him then. Landed on the silver-haired girl standing quietly near the door—hands clasped, posture soft, watching the exchange with an expression that was equal parts warmth and bewilderment.
“And who is this?”
Phei glanced back. Smiled.
“My girlfriend. Maya Scarlett.”
Maya stepped forward. Bowed—slight, graceful, the instinctive courtesy of a girl who understood that some introductions carried more weight than others.
“Hello, ma’am. It’s lovely to meet you.”
The woman studied her for a long moment—the silver hair, the soft eyes, the quiet way she held herself—and then reached out and took Maya’s arm.
Not a handshake but something warmer. Both hands wrapping around Maya’s wrist with the careful grip of someone whose strength was limited but whose affection was not.
“Thank you,” she said. “For taking care of him.”
Maya blinked. “I—”
“I hope he’s not too clumsy and not giving you trouble.”
Maya’s surprise dissolved into a laugh—small, genuine, startled out of her.
“I wouldn’t mind,” she said. And then, softer, with that particular Maya certainty that came from somewhere deeper than thought: “In fact, the more trouble he is—the better.”
The woman laughed. Bright. Delighted. The sound filled the room and made the machines seem quieter.
“Oh, I like this one,” she said, looking at Phei. “I like her very much, Phei.”
Phei nodded. Something in his throat had gone tight. “She’s really good to me, Mother. She really is.”
Maya stepped back.
She didn’t understand.
This was perhaps the only thing she didn’t know about Phei—the only door in his life she hadn’t found, the only room she hadn’t mapped.
The woman he was calling Mother.
The hospital bed.
The flowers he brought as always.
The nurses who knew his name from months of visits. Diana. The gifts chosen with the care of someone who knew exactly what would make this woman comfortable.
Who is she?
While Maya turned the question over behind her quiet smile, Phei took the woman’s hand between both of his.
She sighed and looked at him.
That smile again—tired, bright, the smile of someone who had learned to carry pain gracefully because the alternative was letting it carry her.
She closed her eyes.
And then—something shifted.
She felt it before she understood it… a warmth spread from where his hands held hers not the warmth of skin not body heat but something else something deeper it moved through her wrist up her arm into her chest like liquid sunlight being poured straight into the rotting core of her flooding every shadowed place that hadn’t seen light in months.
It made her suddenly violently aware of just how fucking cold and hollow she had been for far too long as if her bones had been living in perpetual winter and someone had finally struck a match inside her marrow.
The exhaustion—that constant, crushing, bone-deep weariness that had become so familiar it felt like a second skeleton welded to the first—began to lift.
Like an invisible hand was peeling away layer after layer of leaden shit that had been crushing her for years.
The ache in her joints didn’t just soften; it unraveled, melting away as if the disease itself was being politely asked to fuck off for a while.
The heaviness in her lungs eased into something almost playful, no longer trying to drown her from the inside but retreating.
The thick fog that had been squatting behind her eyes—the weakness and hurting in her whole spine that turned sitting upright for more than ten minutes into a goddamn marathon—shattered and burned off like morning mist under a nuclear sunrise.
Thoughts came sharp and clean. Breath filled her chest without negotiation.
Her body stopped feeling like a slowly collapsing cage and started feeling like… hers again.
Actually hers.
She felt energised.
Not healed or cured. But alive in a way she’d forgotten was possible. Stronger than she’d felt in—God, how long? Weeks? Months? Years?
She couldn’t remember the last time her legs hadn’t screamed like they were filled with broken glass and rust.
The last time her chest hadn’t felt tight enough to crack open and spill her out onto the sheets. The last time she’d sat up without mentally counting the minutes until the room spun and they had to hook her back up to the machines like a failing battery.
Now the fire in her blood felt ancient and hungry, a quiet roaring that whispered she could stand if she wanted to.
Maybe even walk.
Maybe even laugh without paying for it later with a coughing fit that tried to turn her lungs inside out.
Her eyes flew open.
“Phei what are you—”
“Mother.”
One-word quiet firm the tone of a son who was asking her not to question this not to stop him not to argue or worry or do any of the things mothers did when their children gave them something that cost more than money something that might actually cost pieces of his own fucked-up soul.
She understood immediately.
Her mouth closed her eyes searched his face found the faint sheen of sweat forming at his temples the slight tension in his jaw the effort hidden behind the steady hands that held hers whatever this was it was costing him and he didn’t want her to see the price tag.
She let him.
“You see Mother,” he said and his voice was rougher now thicker the words coming slower like each one had to push past something heavy in his chest “I’d love to take you on a date someday walk you out of this room watch you step outside actually outside into the sun into the garden down there.”
His eyes were shining.
“You can’t even sit in a wheelchair long enough to look out the window ten minutes and you’re done ten minutes and they have to bring you back and lay you down and hook you back up and I have to—”
He stopped breathed his jaw worked like he was chewing on glass.
“So let me do what I can whatever this is… whatever I’ve got. Let me give it to you. I want to see you walk. I want to see you healthy. I want to see all of it happen.”
A tear slipped down his cheek.
She reached up slow her arm steadier than it had been and brushed it away with her thumb her palm stayed on his cheek warm the touch of a mother whose child was hurting and whose only medicine left was the simple press of her hand on his face.
“You know how much I want all of that too,” she said quiet gentle “but I don’t want you to—”
He sniffed shook his head her palm rode the motion staying right there.
“You know I won’t stop,” he said “no matter what you say you know that right?”
She smiled small sad the smile of a woman who had tried to argue with this boy before and lost every single time.
“Unfortunately,” she said.
“Good.”
“Thank you Phei.” Her voice cracked just once she pulled him closer arms around his neck face pressed into his shoulder holding him with a strength that shouldn’t have been possible five minutes ago and somehow was “thank you for everything. I can’t believe she left a man as you.”
Phei’s arms wrapped around her careful firm holding her like she was the most important thing in the world and the most breakable thing in it at the same time.
“You’re the only mother I’ve got,” he said into her hair.
She held him tighter.
The monitors beeped steady and slow almost smug about it.
The peonies filled the room with something sweet and alive mocking the sterile air.
And Maya stood near the door—silver hair catching the light, bright eyes wide, quiet mouth slightly parted—watching a boy she thought she knew everything about hold a woman she’d never heard of, and realising that the map she’d drawn of Phei’s heart had a whole locked room she’d never even suspected existed.
Who was this woman?
Is she his secret mother? His real mother? Someone else entirely?
Maya didn’t know.
For the first time since she’d decided to love this boy with every molecule of her strange, knowing, ancient soul—Maya Scarlett didn’t know.
