Chapter 28
A Red Thread
Half an hour ago
Huge and Sam stood guard at the door, preventing strangers from interrupting. The guards turned themselves into curious observers. The father and son had wanted to understand the mysterious girl. Sam watched intently as she treated his mother gently, enjoying Hanna's delicate acupressure techniques. Every press on her back or shoulders made his mother smile softly. From the past until then, only when Hoàng Kim was nearby did his mother forget all her sorrow.
He once enthusiastically tried to imitate his older brother. Unlucky for him, every time he helped his mother relieve her muscle tension, he would feel disappointed in himself because she ended up sore all day. Even though his mother had given him countless opportunities, he still felt frustrated with his own clumsy hands. Perhaps he was not born to be gentle. In the past, he felt jealous of his brother. Now, he envies his future sister-in-law. Sam pats his head, blaming fate for being cruel to him.
He thinks to himself:
Why am I a boy…
I wish I were a girl…
Damn it, fate gets my gender wrong…
His head curses to the point of swinging the dog leash, his mind complains about his gender, and he pricks up his ears to catch Huge's whisper:
- Ngọc and her daughters are at a distance!
The buzzing of mosquitoes is louder than Huge's voice. Sam feels as if someone has pressed a pressure point on him. His pupils glance left, spotting the girls who want to visit but are shy. He is speechless—they come neither too early nor too late, arriving in a dilemma.
Four women care about one man, each more beautiful than Miss. Hoang Kim has not yet died from the accident; he is about to be suffocated by fate. The younger brother does not know whether to feel happy or sad for his elder brother. Frowning, he clutches his stomach and runs into the toilet.
Huge silently curses the one pretending. The rough man is helpless with emotions, yet he pretends he has no cigarettes, throwing the nearly full pack of ten Hero cigarettes into the trash. The old man clicks his tongue, searching for smoke to satisfy his craving.
The son pushes responsibility onto his father. The father passes the responsibility on to the quiet space itself. With no one around, Ngoc and her daughters tiptoe to the door. Sam peeks out and notices the mother-daughter duo lurking outside; Sam silently slips around to the garden behind the room. Sam crouches, moving as if crawling to the window.
He tells himself this is not spying. He is measuring the temperature of emotions, how far apart the hearts still are, and where the red threads hide among hundreds of strands and thousands of clues. He needs to know these things to help the Silk Old Man and the Matchmaker Goddess save the fated relationship.
First, Sam "measures" his sister and niece. The mother and daughter face toward the distance; someone is very close to them. Distance is only a thought. Familial love and gratitude and affection push them forward. Shameful emotional barriers prevent immoral actions. Pain overwhelms unscrupulous intentions, feelings threaten to subvert propriety, reason buries their footsteps. Out of decency, they restrain themselves from actions that would shame the family.
The fear of losing those they care about rises amid the sound of bodies breaking, bones cracking and shattering echoing in terror; the girls startle awake from their hallucinations, hearing the heartbeat on the heart monitor. Victims struggle to breathe, their hearts weak—a cruel reality for those just emerging from a chaotic trance. From desperate eyes to a piercing heartache, they endure a deathly white phobia.
Silent shadows. The ones with feelings turn to stone.
The girls are like stone statues waiting for someone's return.
Stone statues do not cry for a thousand years; humans are weak and shed tears.
Outside the window, the Silk Old Man silently senses the pulse of emotions. Their hearts quietly wait for the knock at the door. Someone remains silent, unaware that anguish is clawing at the mother and her two daughters's hearts.
People prefer to endure pain once rather than suffer a lifetime. They willingly endure the pain for a lifetime together with that kind of suffering. The price of living true to their feelings is having their family cut off familial ties, while outsiders do not forgive those more pitiable than blameworthy.
Throughout history, when someone makes a mistake, their family sees them as pitiable, while the world regards them as blameworthy. But if the relatives of people within that society commit a wrong, those same people see their own family members as more pitiable than blameworthy. Society never sympathizes with strangers, yet it feels compassion when wrongdoing involves one's own relatives.
That price rendered the three guilty ones superfluous in this world. The mother and her two daughters remained immersed in their unforgettable "memories", so they felt ashamed in front of the unfamiliar girl. She cared for her family, but the mother and her two daughters cared only about their "relatives". The girls felt ashamed watching Hanna summon dreams back for the dearest loved one.
Those of the same bloodline felt sorrow recalling thirty years of separation; only then could a family reunite. But the moment of reunion with her descendants seemed less joyful than the happiness the mother felt when she was with Hanna. Happiness followed her into a perfect dream. The mother's smile at the corners of her lips sowed sorrow for the next generation. That smile carried her heart's wish… the shadow went with the back silhouette… about the happiest place in the family.
That wish remained forever just a dream for "those with feelings."
Gratitude — familial affection — pain — suffering for the sake of the heart's voice, all emotions push hidden thoughts to the top of the thermometer. The heat on the thermometer shows that the Silk Old Man has grasped the correct direction of the "emotional pulse".
Understanding the "pulse of relatives", Sam quietly turns the "measuring instrument" to measure Hanna. She expresses all her feelings toward the one she cherishes. The person who needs to understand cannot feel it. Perhaps no one knows her thoughts except for the peepers and eavesdroppers.
The young man was not unfamiliar with his mother's feelings toward Hanna. Although they came from completely different generations, the elder belonged to the old generation; the younger belonged to the new generation. The younger had not tasted the sour, sweet, bitter, and spicy, so they found it hard to understand the elder.
The elder has experienced joy — anger — love — hate, yet has refused to empathize with the young. It has been truly strange. There have been the young, then there have been the elders. The clumsiness of youth has become the memory of old age. Elders have held a mentality of looking down on those born later:
"I have eaten more salt than you have eaten rice!"
And they have forgotten that they have eaten more rice than salt in the past.
Whenever the elder has taught life lessons, the silent ones have not bothered to heed the elders. Others have appeared calm on the surface, yet quietly have ridiculed the classic lessons in their hearts. One always has appeared polite to elders, but no one has known whether they have been sincere or false.
Young people's inability to understand the elders has caused a gap between generations; and the elders' inability to sympathize with the young has dug the gap even deeper. This has been a chasm that can never be filled.
Thanh Hang saw Hanna twice, exchanging a few words that revealed their hearts. One elder, one young, both entrusted their feelings, caring for each other like relatives. Sam smiles at… human emotions… fully filling this bottomless pit. The son is very satisfied with that heart.
He transforms once again into the Silk Old Man, wants to reattach a red thread, opens the love thermometer to measure his future sister-in-law. The pure flower sows intense affection in the mother's heart. Then gentle feelings burn fiercely, scorching the thermometer with painful tears. Sam silently turns toward the "Waiting-for-husband" girls in his eyes.
The statues remain motionless, but they are not indifferent. The fragile and delicate statue bows her head, hiding eyes filled with thoughtful tears. She clutches the hem of her shirt with both hands, her shoulders still trembling with a sense of weakness.
The icy statue is no longer cold; the blurred tears at the corners of her eyes linger in her stunned gaze. She is vacantly and madly devoted, admiring the unfamiliar girl who cries for someone. In that lifetime, she cannot give that affection to the one she cares about.
The statue is dazed and unfeeling. Deep in the eyes without a soul, a flower is blooming for love.
A flower that blooms for love is the most beautiful flower.
They are statues, not flowers. Statues can only talk to themselves. They silently find this place, then quietly leave. The statue trudges back into the darkness — that invisible friend always listens to the confidant's thoughts in the quiet night.
Sam deeply contemplates a red thread that squeezes the breath of Hoang Kim. Every thread, every strand of affection is entangled and twisted in infatuation and morality, becoming overlapping emotions. If the statue cannot turn into a flower, the brother will lose all the air to breathe. But fortunately, the flower that blooms for love does not emit a rich fragrance.
He hopes the flower remains pure forever, not giving off a heavy scent like all vulgar flowers. He has always hated countless flirtatious girls, who fantasize and seduce his brother in order to become the most beautiful flower in the world.
The statue will become a flower. The flower remains as pure as it was at the beginning. By then, the "the Silk Old Man" may finally be able to untangle a red thread from this tangled emotion, even more complicated than the chaotic strands.
Sam sees his father lurking outside the door. He returns to the place where the father and son had just been secretly watching. The father and son walk into the waiting room to sleep until dawn. They return to the room just as Hanna opens the door. She greets her acquaintance calmly.
Sam does not recognize the drooping, silently crying and grieving flower from last night. All signs of weakness have disappeared, as if they had never existed.
Father and son Sam are surprised by Hanna's behavior. The next time they meet, the people from The Sun Kingdom only bow slightly, and Hanna lowers her head solemnly, as if she is familiar with Sam and his father. The girl smiles slightly and says softly:
- I'm going to buy food for Aunt!
Strange things happen one after another. Sam and his father think that the warm smile and gentle words belong only to Thanh Hang. Kindness and gentleness also turn to the father and son. She had once been shy and reserved; today she is intimate like family. The father and son are still unfamiliar with an attitude so far apart as heaven and earth. The father frowns, the son squints, unable to understand. She slips past them and walks toward the canteen.
Sam is quietly following. He wants to see if her treatment of outsiders is different from how she treats family. Hanna is always polite, able to measure her words and actions. The surveillance is hindered by a crowd of doctors and patients all buying things, with even regular passersby dropping in for breakfast.
Sam grows irritated at those blocking his way, cursing the crowd in his heart along with the former canteen owner—for it was that man who decided to expand sales and open to everyone… as a result… at this very moment, he nearly loses track of Hanna.
Blessing in disguise—because of the crowded throng, Sam is able to observe the mysterious girl more thoroughly. Hanna is always courteous, her conduct measured with precision. She is neither friendly nor indifferent to anyone. From a distance, Sam watches intently as she uses sharp words to persuade the man fighting for the last bowl of chicken porridge—his mother's favorite food.
Sam hides in the corner, waiting for Hanna to leave the dining hall, then raises his eyebrows, frowns, and silently returns, full of inner thoughts.
The pure flower is no longer a stranger.
But to his family, she remains a mysterious question mark.