Chapter 256: Hatred
At first, Fang Jingjing also felt strange and moved by the sudden appearance of this kind-hearted person, but Fang Mu, unable to bear hiding it from her, still told her his true purpose.
After learning the ins and outs of the matter, Fang Jingjing fell into stunned silence and a long period of silence.
From her shocked expression, Fang Mu felt that the girl seemed unaware that her brother had died years ago; her eyes revealed confusion and sadness, and her thin face, tormented by illness, seemed even paler.
Fang Mu was about to comfort the girl when he noticed Fang Jingjing’s body trembling slightly; he then startled awake to the realization that Fang Jingjing seemed to be fearing something.
As if struck by a major blow or trapped in some inescapable nightmare, Fang Jingjing became dazed and absent-minded for a period afterward; no matter what Fang Mu asked her or what he had her do, she only responded with simple nods, and finally, with others’ help, she barely completed signing the consent for the surgery.
The hospital planned to let Fang Jingjing’s body recover a bit more, performing the kidney transplant surgery six days later.
Because Fang Mu had prepared early, even before Fang Jingjing signed the surgery agreement, he had already followed the doctor’s instructions to condition his body, ready as a qualified donor to begin the surgery at any time.
However, on the night before the kidney transplant surgery was set to proceed, Fang Jingjing suddenly leaped down from the balcony of the hospital room without any warning.
This suicidal pitiful girl ultimately left only a will and an old-style key in the hospital room.
In the will, Fang Jingjing wrote that she ultimately still did not want to accept Fang Mu’s repaying kindness, expressing apology to him between the lines, then beginning to recount her bitter life experiences.
The father of siblings Fang Jianhua and Fang Jingjing mysteriously disappeared in a massive flood in the southern region in 1998 before Fang Jingjing was born; afterward, the two children were basically raised by their mother’s family at home.
Fang Jingjing also had little impression of her mother, because when Fang Jingjing was only four years old, her and her brother’s unlucky mother also perished in a mountain body landslide accident.
The brother and sister, having lost their parents, could only rely on their maternal grandfather and maternal grandmother from then on.
Without parents to discipline them, the siblings grew up almost wildly in a small village in the countryside; before Fang Jianhua learned the bad habit of gambling, Fang Jingjing had a very close relationship with her brother, the two relying on each other outside, after all, the two siblings without parents were extremely vulnerable to bullying by children of the same age in the village.
After Fang Jianhua developed his addiction to gambling, he seemed like a changed person, no longer caring about his once-cherished younger sister and maternal grandparents, disappointing the family immensely; especially after Fang Jianhua stole the family’s only two thousand in savings and fled far away leaving a pile of debt, Fang Jingjing, who suffered greatly from the mess he left behind, decided to sever all ties with him.
Her hatred and unforgiveness toward her brother was probably one of the reasons Fang Jingjing was unwilling to accept Fang Mu’s intentions, but Fang Mu, reading this part at the time, felt extremely confused by it, because no matter how unwilling she was to accept, it shouldn’t warrant such an extreme act as death to express refusal.
Continuing to read, Fang Mu discovered the second reason that made him feel suffocated.
Although Fang Jingjing had little impression of her mother, she at least had some lingering thought; relying on vague memories and old photographs, she could still recall the warm times she spent with her mother.
But the image of her father was different from her mother’s; Fang Jingjing only had fantasies about him.
Because there was no actual reference, after that flood she didn’t remember, all the photos of her father at home mysteriously disappeared just like her father, so she could only use her brother’s descriptions to fill in the image of the father she had never met in her brain.
Fang Jingjing only knew that her father’s profession was an editor at a small publishing house; her brother said her father had a weak body, a gentle and scholarly appearance, very fitting the public’s impression—or rather bias—of a literary scholar.
After Fang Jianhua left home, Fang Jingjing grew even more envious of the peers in the village whose parents were still alive; she constantly longed for, when facing threats and insults from debt collectors, a figure who wasn’t strong but willing to give everything for his family to stand up and protect them.
For the peace of her maternal grandparents’ family life, after finishing high school, Fang Jingjing eagerly came to the city to labor, deciding to repay her worthless brother’s debts and also inquire about news of him.
Perhaps, in her heart, she still retained memories of her brother’s good side, hoping he hadn’t left home to dodge debts but for some unavoidable reason.
And on the day Fang Jingjing first met Fang Mu, when Fang Mu explained that he wanted to repay the kindness from ten years ago by having her replace her brother as the object of repaying kindness.
Fang Jingjing then learned that her brother had long been dead, and she suddenly realized the true reason for her brother’s disappearance.
Fang Mu’s life-and-death turning point ten years ago was also the turning point in her family’s fate, because her brother had silently left home that same year.
Fang Mu, unaware of this, poured out his heart, but it plunged Fang Jingjing into deep pain; she had mostly guessed that her brother hadn’t ruthlessly left home but had been forced to “separate” from her.
Thinking that she had deeply misunderstood her brother for ten years, while enduring hardships in those ten years that only she could understand, Fang Jingjing’s psychological defenses nearly collapsed entirely at that moment, which was also why she appeared confused, pained, and fearful then.
And at that moment, Fang Mu also sensed from Fang Jingjing’s text another emotion she felt toward him at the time: a kind of anger or resentment, because Fang Mu had her deceased brother’s heart.
Therefore, in Fang Jingjing’s eyes at the time, Fang Mu was both a kind-hearted good person toward her and an enemy who took her brother’s heart.
This conflict and complex emotions made Fang Jingjing’s mind a mess; after dazedly signing the surgery consent form, she felt regret and unimaginable despair, choosing suicide.
Fang Jingjing’s suicide was largely due to guilt toward her brother, perhaps also hatred toward Fang Mu—more accurately, hatred toward people like Fang Mu with such backgrounds; her suicide might also stem from not wanting to give Fang Mu the chance to repay kindness, causing emotionally rich Fang Mu to develop a knot in his heart and suffer.
But Fang Mu was reluctant to conjecture in that direction; though he could sense anger directed at him in the text of the will Fang Jingjing left, he could also feel her sincere apology toward him.
He personally believed the remaining reason Fang Jingjing gave up her life was that she no longer knew how to live on; previously, she had strived to survive to repay debts and find her brother, but now she understood those debt collectors who came to her home were deliberately sucking her blood and exploiting powerless poor people like them, and she could no longer possibly find her brother, so she had lost hope for life and the power to survive.
At the end of the will, Fang Jingjing noted that although she gave up the kidney transplant, she hoped Fang Mu, if willing, could repay the kindness in another way: by taking care of the elders in her hometown, letting them enjoy their old age peacefully.
Fang Jingjing felt this repayment might be too heavy, far exceeding the kindness of one heart, so she also decided to give something back to Fang Mu.
That key and what it could open was what she decided to give to Fang Mu; this key could open a small box in her rental room, which contained her father’s mourning articles; considering her father’s profession and Fang Mu’s writer profession matched quite well, she felt the things inside would likely be of some use to Fang Mu.
