316 The Moment of Realization in the Young Master’s Pas

He looked over the books she looked over. They were often scrawled over, with inked handwriting, yet he could not make sense of her notes. He couldn't understand what she was doing or the messages she was trying to decipher. The things she saw such deep secrets in were nothing but ordinary texts to him.

Regardless, he wanted to see that smile again. And so, he continued to read with her, in complete silence, the only sound coming from the fluttering of thin pages.

She barely took breaks. In those moments where she did, they would speak. She would not tolerate any fumbling of words or hesitation from him. His speech had to be perfect, as if rehearsed.

She demanded perfection. She needed perfection.

She believed that mistakes were deadly. At first, she would only fear the mistake of speech. Then, as time went on, she would begin to fear mistakes in everything. She would fear disorganization in the placement of books. She would fear any specks of dust on her desk, scrubbing at it with a rag herself for hours on end, no matter how much Zixu pleaded for her to stop. She would fear mistakes in Zixu's posture, his breathing, his every movement. He had to walk back and forth, over and over again, until she was assured that he would make no mistakes.

The fear was not persistent. She would fear different mistakes on different days. Zixu could never predict what her next fear would be, and so, he slowly learned to adopt the perfection day after day.

He thought, at first, that her actions were ridiculous. However, as he spent more time with her, listening to her tell him, in repeat, that mistakes would make them kill both her and him, he slowly began to believe her. Perhaps her fear had a true reason. Perhaps the "them" that she talked about all this time, the vague group of people that she could never completely name, were real.

He absorbed her fears until they almost became his own. She was his mother, after all. If there was something she feared, how could he not fear it too, even if he didn't understand?

Like the inconsistencies with her fear, she would also be inconsistent about "them". Most times, she didn't have names. Other times, she would be able to name them. His father, her husband for so many years. A personal maid who had served her since childhood. The chef that cooked the food she ate ever since marrying into the Yu Family.

They were all out to stab, poison, or strangle her. The washcloth a maid held became a rope for strangulation. The innocent food the chef served became a vessel for poison.

What she said back then was true. She only had him to trust.

Zixu would occasionally catch the careless gossip of maids, not noticing his small figure slipping by, saying that the Madam had gone crazy. They said that she was absolutely insane. 

He didn't think that they understood her. She was not crazy. She was just afraid. He saw her vulnerability. He saw fragments of the past mother he knew in her. If he just spent a little more time with her, she would recover from her fear.

Months crawled by. Slowly, they transformed to years.

He was twelve now. He knew a little better. 

One morning, he went to visit her as usual. It was early, but he had gotten used to waking up early. The courtyard was silent. Not even the maids were in there.

When he stepped closer to her room, that was when he heard something.

She was talking to someone. Her speech was murmured, hushed, yet in the complete silence, he could hear her. It was clear that she had something to say to someone in the room. Zixu, standing by the edge of the door frame, peeked in. 

No one was in the room.

His mother was sitting at her table, back perfectly straight, talking to someone who didn't exist. It wasn't like she was talking to only herself. She had pauses in her speech, mimicking the flow of an actual conversation. The tone of her voice rose and fell, shifting as if her emotions were the waves of an ocean.

All the words from the servants came back to echo in his head. His mother was insane. These doubts had already been growing within him for a long, long time. Now was the last straw. He shifted away, heart thudding, fingers curling up.

That sudden movement, that flinch away, caught her attention. Her voice immediately fell silent.

"Zixu," she called out, cautiously, "is that you?"

He stepped out from the shadows, posture tense. Was it right for him to ask the question? Could he bring it up?

"Mother," he began, "who were you speaking to?"

He could not help it. 

"What are you talking about?" she questioned in return, raising her eyebrows in disbelief. 

…

The doubts continued to grow, layering upon themselves in heavier and heavier folds.

Over the years, she had always been insistent that his father was plotting to kill her. There had always been a variety of ways that she would list. Now, however, it seemed like the method solidified into poison. Out of everything that she would say, poison was the most common.

If the trust and belief he had in her over the years was not wrong— if she was telling the truth— there should've been some evidence of his father's plotting in his room or study.

Ever since his mother began to isolate herself from the rest of the family, Zixu had also slowly distanced from his father. His younger self held the same fears towards the man that his mother no longer viewed as her husband, but rather a killer. Zixu had not visited his father's courtyard voluntarily for a long time now, but he could remember that the study was always locked when his father was away.

For the past week, he had been practicing picking locks until he had gotten rather skilled. Tonight, he would give it a try.

While the rest of the household was sleeping, Zixu snuck into his father's study with a candle and a lockpick. He looked through everything in there carefully, shuffling through all the books, papers, and boxes.

He could find nothing out of the ordinary in there. Everything, from the books to the brushes, belonged to a study.

Taking a deep breath, Zixu moved on to his father's room. He would not have another chance to search it during the day, when servants would patrol the courtyard. It was risky, considering that his father was sleeping in there, but it was a risk he needed to take.

Except, just like with the study, he found nothing in his searches. 

As Zixu stood at the last bookshelf in the room that he checked, he suddenly heard a voice behind him.

"What are you doing here?"

He spun around, the dim light from his candle illuminating his father's face. 

His father loomed over him, eyes unmoving and fixed on Zixu's face. At that moment, all the fears his mother held came rushing towards him.

This man was going to kill her. He was going to kill Zixu as well. 

Zixu was completely frozen. He didn't know what to do or how to react. Terror spread throughout every nerve, he could only blankly stare back at the man in front of him. He could barely breathe, his lungs feeling like someone dragged him underwater.

His mother was right. He made a mistake, tonight, going into this room. And now…

The pure silence was broken when the man repeated, gently, "What are you doing here, in the middle of the night, son? What's wrong?"

At these words, the fear ebbed away. 

Zixu blinked, shaking his head. He noticed that his hands were trembling, and he worked to steady them.

What was he thinking? The man in front of him was his father. It was his own father, by blood. This man could not hurt him. He would not. 

He felt that his eyes were beginning to water. Zixu looked back into his father's eyes, words beginning to roll out of him. Words that he had held back for so long, by himself. Words that he did not dare to tell anyone.

"Mother said— she said that you'd kill her. You'd kill me. Everyone was going to. We were alone. I could only trust her. She could only trust me."

His father visibly stiffened, voice dropping to a sharp hush. "What?"

Zixu could not control himself. Tears began to come down from his eyes, and he held himself a little closer, still rambling, "I thought you were going to— going to— kill her. So I went and looked. I looked everywhere. But I don't think that you will anymore, and I— I'm so— I don't understand. What's going on? What's happening? I don't get it. I don't."

His father shook his head, immediately stepping forward and pulling Zixu closer to him. 

"Son. Son," he said, "it's alright. Breathe. I am your father. I would never do anything to hurt either of you. Don't you believe me, as your father?"

Zixu pulled away for just a second. "What about what Mother has said? Shouldn't I believe her, considering that she is my mother?"

"It is different. Your mother has changed," his father remarked quietly. 

"Are you saying that…" His voice trailed off.

There was resolve in his father's eyes, yet it was a painful resolve. For just the flash of a second, Zixu could see the agony behind his father's perspective throughout all of this, with a woman that he had loved and married as his wife now irrationally fearing her, with a son that believed his mother and distanced himself. At that moment, Zixu felt immeasurable guilt.

His father whispered, a sigh laced with his words, "Yes. Your mother… something had gone wrong with her mind."

She was insane.