My Sister Ah Wan

Part 4

8

My mother arrived sooner than we expected.

When she saw what I was wearing, her already unpleasant expression grew even darker.

But she still forced a smile as she spoke to my sister, "Ah Wan, you should rest now. Mom has something to discuss with Fang Yin."

My sister didn't let go of my hand. "What's going on? Did something happen?"

"It's nothing, don't worry," she said, then turned to me, "Fang Yin, come outside with me."

"Mom, Yin Yin isn't going anywhere. If you have something to say, just say it here."

"Ah Wan, be good!" My mother's tone grew harsher. "Fang Yin, come outside. Do you really want to disturb your sister's rest?"

My sister was about to say something, but I gently squeezed her hand.

"What do you want to talk about?" I asked. "Is it about me moving out, or me visiting my sister, or maybe about me wearing new clothes?"

"Fang Yin!" my mother scolded in a low voice, "You're so young and already living with a man. Don't you know what shame is?"

"Mom, what are you talking about? What living with a man? That's Bo Yan, and to Yin Yin, he's like a real brother!"
"A real brother?" My mother scoffed coldly. "Is there a blood relation?"

"No!" I replied. "But I'll be living there for a while. I've already applied for a leave of absence from school. Starting today, I'll be coming to the hospital every day to take care of sister!"

"I don't agree!" My mother's voice rose sharply. "You'll move back home and go to school properly. Ah Wan is still sick, and you're just causing trouble!"

Looking at her, I calmly said, "I'm not asking for your permission; I'm informing you."

"Fang Yin, what exactly are you trying to do?"

"Enough!" My sister's weak voice forcefully interrupted. She looked pale and fragile, barely able to stay upright.

"Ah Wan, what's wrong?" My mother's face was full of concern as she looked at my sister, her hands trembling slightly.

"Mom, I don't have much time left. I want Yin Yin to stay with me. Please, just grant me this one wish!"

My mother's eyes filled with tears. "Fang Wan, what nonsense are you talking about!? What do you mean you don't have much time left? What are you trying to do? Stabbing a knife into your mother's heart?"

"Mom, please, just this once, okay?"
"Mom will agree to anything, anything at all, just don't say things like that. Mom can't handle it, I really can't!"

After all the commotion, my sister quickly fell asleep.

My mother gently stroked her forehead and tucked her in.

Then she turned to me, her expression cold.

"Fang Yin, you're doing this to get back at me, aren't you?"

"What?" I was momentarily stunned, not expecting her to say such a thing.

"You're using Ah Wan to get back at me. Seeing her upset makes me upset—does that make you happy?"

I suddenly laughed.

In my previous life, a therapist once asked me, "Do you hate your parents?"

I shook my head and said no.

She asked me why.

I said, "I can understand. To them, my sister was their true child. My birth was merely to extend her life, but unfortunately, things didn't go as planned, and I let them down. No one is perfect, and when extreme expectations lead to overwhelming despair, the resulting disparity can drive people to act irrationally. Later on, everything they did to me was because they obsessively believed it was truly for my sister's benefit. They didn't realize it was wrong."
I even enthusiastically analyzed it for her. "This kind of situation is actually quite common. It's like when parents start disciplining their children physically—once it happens the first time, it tends to happen repeatedly, and the severity escalates. Do you know why?"

"Because in the parent-child relationship, parents hold absolute power. Their actions towards their children come at no cost to them. Not only do they suffer no losses, but they can also achieve their goals—so why wouldn't they? "

"Absolute power leads to absolute dictatorship. They don't realize they're doing something wrong."

At that time, the therapist looked at me with pity.

Later, I overheard her talking to Xie Bo Yan on the phone, saying that I had chosen emotional detachment as a way to cope with extreme pain.

I didn't agree with her.

But now it seemed that I was indeed the one who was wrong.

She said I was getting back at her.

So, she knew that what she did would make me resentful.

Suddenly, I felt as if a light had been switched on in my mind.

Since we both understood, then we could talk it out logically.

I said, "A normal adult male ejaculates between 2 to 6 milliliters of semen each time, with over 60 million sperm per milliliter. This means that each ejaculation releases between 120 million to 360 million sperm, of which more than 60% are motile, equating to 72 million to 216 million active sperm. Taking the median, that's 150 million."

"A normal adult female releases one egg at a time, sometimes two to three, but let's take the average—two eggs."

"In this scenario, the probability of a single sperm fertilizing an egg is 1 in 75 million."

"What nonsense are you spouting?" My mother interrupted me.

I continued, "Of course, this is an ideal scenario! What I'm trying to say is that if the sperm and egg had met a day earlier or later, a minute earlier or later, or if a different sperm had combined with a different egg, it wouldn't be me."

"It wasn't my choice to be born. My genetic makeup was determined by you and Dad. It was your sperm and egg that, against odds of one in millions, made that choice."

"I'm not guilty of anything. The blame doesn't lie with me!"