No Rain, No Flowers: a Jun Wu x Xie Lian

A Mother's Love

Hong-er trembled as he lay in his little bed in his bedroom, his good eye closed as he stayed in the thick of his dream.

Not all of Hua Cheng's memories were locked away in his head, beyond reach where the cursed shackle kept them bound, only those from the first three years of his life remained.

There were very few left, but he distinctly remembered sitting on the lap of someone he knew was 'mama', resting his head against her chest as she stroked his hair and sang him a song in a language he could not remember while his little fingers played with her elaborate silver necklace.

He was not sure if the 'mama' of those memories was the same as the mama he knew now, as mama was a boy while 'mama' was a girl and mama never wore the silver jewelry 'mama' always wore, but their hugs felt the same and neither of them were scared of his ugly eye.

But on this night, he dreamed of 'mama' being yelled at by a man his brain said was 'baba' -but looked nothing like the baba he knew- about not making dinner.

'Mama' defended herself by saying she had been too sick to cook and apologized, but 'baba' slapped her across the face, which caused her to fall to the floor, and said making dinner was the least she could do since he worked so hard to pay for her expensive medicines.

Hong-er tried to help 'mama' and push 'baba' away, but there was nothing a three-year-old could do to a grown man, and 'mama' begged Hong-er to go back to bed.

Luckily -or unluckily, depending on how you looked at it- his memories cut off there as if he had been plucked out of that scene and dropped into mama's arms in the coat closet that day.

Because of that, he had no memory of 'mama' dying when he was five and 'baba' remarrying less than a month later, no memory of his cruel stepmother who never cared when he was sick or when strangers hurt him because of his cursed eye and hit him every time she got mad -and worse of all in his mind, sold all of 'mama's' jewelry and took centuries to find again-, no memory of his two older stepbrothers that bullied him and always stole and ate his meals so he starved, no memory of running away from home when he was ten and living on the streets and everything that happened after.

As far as Hong-er knew mama was 'mama' and baba was mama's new husband who didn't hurt them like 'baba' did and mama wasn't sick anymore, and baba never made mama cook -he cooked- and mama cleaned and played with Hong-er all day.

Waking up from the memory veiled as a nightmare, Hong-er crawled out of his bed and left his room, walking to the master bedroom and opening the door to peek in.

"Yes?" Baba asked, immediately looking at him

"Had nightmare." The toddler answered, not meeting the man's gaze

Mama sat up slightly, "Come here, baby."

Hong-er immediately crawled up on the bed and straight into mama's arms, falling back asleep to the gentle beat of his heart.

Maybe tomorrow he would remember to ask mama what happened to all his pretty jewelry.

***

A few hours later shortly after the sun rose, Hong-er was woken up by his mama and carried back to his room to be bathed and readied for the day.

Set into his bathtub after his pajamas were taken off, he let his mama clean him while playing with one of his bath toys -pushing the floating boat around.

After his hair was washed, Hong-er looked up at his mother, "Mama, what happened to your necklace?"

The brunet's hand immediately went to his neck, pulling on a chain holding a crystal ring, "I have my necklace, San Lang."