Almost blind | Haobin

54| Too Young to Be This Broken |54

"How could you hide something like that from me?!" Ricky’s voice tore through the room like a hurricane crashing into glass. His chest heaved, his arms flung out helplessly into the air as if trying to grasp something—anything—to make it make sense. His eyes were wide, wild, bloodshot. And behind them, a shimmer of tears. Not falling yet, but hanging there, trembling at the edge of control. Like everything else in him.

“How could you know something like that and not tell me?! Me?! His father! His damn father!”

Gyuvin flinched like the words had struck him. “Ricky, please—calm down, just listen to me—”

“Don’t!” Ricky snarled, yanking his arm away when Gyuvin stepped closer. “Don’t tell me to calm down like I’m overreacting. Don’t try to touch me. You—you let me live in that lie!”

His voice cracked on the last word, and with it, so did his knees. He collapsed onto the couch like the wind had been knocked out of him. His whole body curled inwards, hands gripping his face, like he wanted to rip it off and throw away the guilt that had just slammed into him like a freight train.

His tears finally came.

“Oh my god,” he choked out. “How could this happen?”

They ran down his sharp features, streaking his cheeks and sinking into the lines time hadn’t dared to touch before. Ricky, who never cried. Ricky, who always held himself together. He was unraveling, thread by thread, and he didn’t care who saw it.

He couldn’t even look at Hao right now.
Couldn’t even think of him without wanting to die from the shame.

How did I not see it?
How could he be so blind?
So fucking oblivious?

All those years… Hao’s silence. His skittishness. The way he tensed when touched. The way he always looked like he was dragging himself through life in that damn hospital, the same place that was supposed to help him.

He had trusted Julson. With everything. With his son's healing. With his mind. For God's sake. He trusted hes making everything to keep Hao alright and safe.

And that man—that monster—had taken everything.

“I could’ve done something… God, anything to stop it. I should’ve—I’m his father. I’m supposed to know everything, supposed to keep my child safe, not be this blind, this oblivious, only finding out the truth months later. I thought… I thought they were helping him in that hospital. I thought he was in safe hands. I really believed that…"

“Safe hands. God, what a fucking joke.”

“Ricky, I didn’t know how to tell you,” Gyuvin murmured, voice trembling. “It wasn’t my story to tell. I didn’t want to hurt Hao more. He didn’t want to talk about it. I thought—”

“No!” Ricky screamed. “No, don’t give me that! Don’t you dare stand there and act like you were doing this to protect him. You were protecting yourself. You didn’t want to be the one to break me. You didn’t want to watch me fall apart like this. So you stood there and said nothing. You let me smile in front of my broken son who went throught hell!”

Gyuvin stood frozen. His mouth opened, but no words came.

Ricky leaned forward, shaking his head, his voice dropping into a whisper—quieter, but even more lethal. “He was raped. By someone I trusted. Someone I put him with. That blood is on my hands. And you—you watched me, day after day, thinking I’d never need to know.”

The weight of it all collapsed over him again, and he buried his face in his palms, sobbing silently this time. Every breath felt like glass in his lungs. Every heartbeat like a countdown to something worse.