NASAY CH 49

Luo Xing stood at the door, feeling a surge of disgust at the sound of that familiar name.
He didn’t step inside, only resting his fingertips on the door handle while watching the man on the hospital bed. The man raised his head to meet Luo Xing’s gaze, quickly withdrawing his hand from the other man’s grip with some awkwardness.

Luo Zhiyuan seemed a bit flustered, rubbing his hands against the blanket as he spoke in a dry voice.
“Come in… Don’t just stand at the door; it’s cold.”

Luo Xing instinctively glanced at the other man in the room.

Ye Qiaoqiao also noticed him—it was the teacher from the registration desk during the competition at Beishi No. 1 High School.

The teacher stood up, unlike Luo Zhiyuan’s awkwardness, his expression warm and understanding. He smiled.
“You two can talk. I’ll… step out for a bit.”

Luo Zhiyuan’s eyes remained fixed on Luo Xing’s face, and he nodded gently.
“Go ahead. I’ll have a chat with Xingxing.”

Luo Xing frowned slightly.

Ye Qiaoqiao, having grown up around people with complicated relationships, noticed the subtle tension between the two almost immediately. Pressing her lips together, she said,
“Luo Xing, I’ll wait for you outside.”

Luo Xing nodded.
“If it’s too cold, just come inside. It’s fine.”

“Alright,” Ye Qiaoqiao responded before leaving with the teacher.

Once outside, Luo Xing turned back to the man in the hospital bed, who was visibly nervous and had already sat halfway up. Taking a deep breath, Luo Xing stepped inside.

Perhaps from excitement or guilt, Luo Xing noticed the tears welling in Luo Zhiyuan’s eyes. His face was red, and his lips trembled.

Luo Xing walked to the foot of the bed and stopped, remaining silent. He had never been good at initiating conversations. Even with Huo Xingzhou, it was always the other person who took the lead. In a setting like this, he didn’t know what to say at all.

“Thank you for coming to see me,”
Luo Zhiyuan said, forcing a smile. He pointed to a chair nearby.
“Please sit down. Do you want something to drink? It’s cold—should I… never mind, never mind. Do you want me to get you something to eat?”

“No need. Thank you,”
Luo Xing replied calmly, observing him for a moment.

Luo Zhiyuan gave a nervous laugh.
“It’s okay… just sit down. I’ll just chat with you for a bit.”

Luo Xing didn’t sit but stood quietly at the foot of the bed. The television in the small hospital room hummed softly, switching from one commercial to the next before eventually airing a heartwarming public service announcement.

After watching for a while, Luo Zhiyuan gathered the courage to speak. His eyes lingered on Luo Xing’s thin frame, then shifted to his small face. After a long pause, he finally asked,
“Your… mom, has she treated you well all these years?”

Luo Xing noticed how stiffly he kept his hands under the blanket, his posture visibly uncomfortable. When he asked the question, it was clear he was even more nervous than Luo Xing.

“She’s okay,”
Luo Xing answered quietly.

Luo Zhiyuan seemed relieved and nodded.
“I always thought she hated me and wouldn’t treat you well because of that. It’s good to know she didn’t take it out on you.”

It was obvious that Luo Zhiyuan wanted to turn this meeting into a confession, but Luo Xing didn’t know what attitude to take. He could only listen silently.

“Actually… I ruined her life. It’s only right that she hates me,”
Luo Zhiyuan said, suppressing the pain in his body. He clenched his jaw to endure it, his lips turning pale, and cold sweat ran down his face.

“If I had told her earlier that I liked men… she wouldn’t have ended up in this mess. You wouldn’t have been dragged into it either,”
he added.

Luo Xing lowered his head and looked at his fingers before finally speaking words he had held in for a long time.

“Let me ask… Did you know about my birth from the beginning?”

Luo Zhiyuan’s tear-filled eyes looked at him, and he nodded.
“Yes, I knew. When I found out your mother was pregnant, I wanted to compensate her. I hoped she would terminate the pregnancy so her life wouldn’t be ruined because of me. But she refused, even breaking ties with her family and leaving alone. By the time I found her, you had already been born.”

Luo Xing let out a light “mm” and said, “I see.”

I see.

A simple response, yet it expressed all of Luo Xing’s feelings toward this “father.” The excuses he had once made for him, the truth was… just this.

Luo Zhiyuan didn’t hear the coldness in his voice and continued talking.
“I’ve already hurt your mother. I couldn’t take away the only thing she had—you. Actually… I always wanted to meet you, but I didn’t know in what capacity I should do so.”

Tears streamed down his face as he spoke in a low voice, almost like a whisper.
“I’ve been nothing but a coward, too afraid to recognize you, too afraid to face you. I feared seeing the same hatred in your eyes that I saw in your mother’s.”

Luo Xing looked up at him, but after a few seconds, he lowered his eyes again, as if holding back some emotion.

Luo Zhiyuan observed his expression, feeling like he couldn’t grasp Luo Xing’s emotions at all. No matter what he said, it seemed like Luo Xing was merely listening to someone else’s story.

From beginning to end, his expression remained the same—calm, with no fluctuation of emotion.

Luo Xing lowered his eyes and sneered inwardly. He had once believed that Zhao Jiulan didn’t hate him because of this man, that she had taken good care of him. But the truth was that his birth had been an act of revenge against him.

She had poured all her hatred for Luo Zhiyuan onto him. No wonder, as he grew older, Zhao Jiulan’s gaze toward him became increasingly venomous. He resembled this man more and more with age.

Facing a face so similar to his own, Luo Xing found it utterly ironic.

Everything he thought he knew had never existed. Luo Zhiyuan was right—he was indeed a coward, living comfortably in his own delusion, imagining that Luo Xing had grown up well.

And so, he felt at ease.

On his way here, Luo Xing had thought about asking him if he didn’t know about his existence, or if there was some reason he hadn’t taken him away. But now…

He simply hadn’t wanted him.

There was no need to ask anymore. All the questions he had prepared on his way here suddenly felt meaningless.

“Do… you hate me?”
Luo Zhiyuan’s voice trembled, almost enough to bring tears to one’s eyes. But Luo Xing couldn’t hear it. He only saw the pain written all over his face.

Luo Xing felt like a heavy stone was pressing down on his chest, suffocating him, yet at the same time, leaving him feeling hollow. There were so many things he wanted to say, but when the words reached his mouth, they felt pointless.

He blinked, pinched his fingers, then slowly loosened them. After a long silence, he finally responded under Luo Zhiyuan’s expectant gaze: “I don’t know.”

Hearing that, Luo Zhiyuan suddenly smiled. Even though Luo Xing couldn’t hear it, he could still feel the regret and pain behind it.

“I don’t expect you to forgive me or call me ‘Dad.’ I just wanted to see you once before I die and tell you everything.”
Luo Zhiyuan struggled to sit up from the bed but collapsed back down from the intense pain in his bones. After a moment of enduring the discomfort, he propped himself up again.

This simple action had nearly exhausted all his strength.

“What’s your illness?”
Luo Xing frowned as he watched him struggle on the bed and still asked.

“If you can, please apologize to your mother for me when you go back. I owe her in this life… and can only repay her in the next,”
Luo Zhiyuan said. His voice suddenly stopped, as if lost in thought, and he was stunned for a moment.

“Leukemia.”

Ye Qiaoqiao stood outside for a while, feeling a bit cold. Although Luo Xing said he didn’t mind, she felt that this meeting was rather unusual. When she saw Lin Xicheng return, she quietly stepped into the hot water room across the hallway, waiting until he passed before coming back out.

Lin Xicheng was carrying something, but instead of returning to the ward, he headed to the doctor’s office.

She quietly followed, leaning against the door to eavesdrop.

“Doctor, if the bone marrow donor is his biological son, then the match…”

Ye Qiaoqiao froze for a few seconds, listening in disbelief to the excited voice of the man inside as he spoke to the doctor. The more she listened, the deeper her frown became.

Biological son?
So Luo Xing… is the son of the man in the ward?

Ye Qiaoqiao furrowed her brows slightly, thinking back to how Luo Xing had been staring out the window during the car ride earlier. He was usually quiet, but he was also thoughtful and knew how to avoid making others uncomfortable.

She had always liked Luo Xing—not just because of Yin Hangzhou, but also because she thought Luo Xing was a genuinely good person.

He was so cold and distant—something must have happened. Judging from her instincts, Luo Xing probably hadn’t met this man before. His first meeting, which should have been a happy one, was actually a setup… to deceive him into donating bone marrow?

Ye Qiaoqiao clenched her fists tightly as she watched the man in the doctor’s office, his joy barely concealed. He was clearly celebrating because he had found a high-match bone marrow donor for himself.

She suddenly remembered visiting an elder with Ye Ren before. The elder had the same illness. Unlike peripheral blood donations from unrelated donors, relatives had to undergo bone marrow aspiration, which was much more painful than donating peripheral blood.

The donor had to be given mobilization injections for five days, causing the cells in their body to grow rapidly in preparation for the procedure.

At that time, she was still young and frightened by the painful groans she heard. She didn’t quite understand why the elder was suffering so much.

Ye Ren explained that the mobilization injections caused intense bone pain as the bones grew, making it feel like the cells inside the body were about to burst out of the skeleton.

The rapid growth of bone marrow came with a high price—sleepless nights filled with unbearable pain. Every inch of the skin felt swollen and on the verge of bursting like an overinflated balloon.

And that was just the beginning—only a fraction of the pain. The donor would then have to draw 400cc of blood twice at different intervals, just to prepare for the procedure, to ensure they wouldn’t die on the operating table due to excessive blood loss during the bone marrow aspiration.

This was all just pre-op, not even a tenth of the real suffering to come.

Ye Qiaoqiao’s fingers trembled as she thought about it. Luo Xing’s health wasn’t even that great to begin with. If he went under the knife and something went wrong… wouldn’t his life be at risk?

Their lives mattered, but Luo Xing’s life didn’t?

Ye Qiaoqiao turned slightly, hearing Lin Xicheng already discussing scheduling the matching test with the doctor. She frowned, holding back the urge to curse aloud. Did he really believe Luo Xing would definitely donate?

Or… had he already thought of a way to force Luo Xing into it?

As for the man in the ward, if it weren’t for his illness, would he even acknowledge that he had a son?

No.

Ye Qiaoqiao clenched her teeth. Luo Xing was so kind. Agreeing to come here was one thing, but donating bone marrow was an entirely different matter.

And what if this man resorted to moral coercion or other manipulative tactics to pressure him?

As she paced back and forth, her phone lit up with a message from Lu Qinghe, saying the first round of the competition had ended, and they were now on a break.

Huo Xingzhou couldn’t even bear to let anyone speak harshly to Luo Xing about his deafness, yet they wanted him to endure such unimaginable pain?

Life and death were matters of fate, but that so-called father had never raised Luo Xing, never given him a shred of love or warmth. He had no right to demand that Luo Xing suffer for him.

How ridiculous.

Ye Qiaoqiao made a decisive call to Huo Xingzhou.

The other side quickly picked up and chuckled,
“Wow, calling me instead of Qinghe? What’s up…”

“You need to come to Beishi immediately,” Ye Qiaoqiao said sternly.
“Your boyfriend needs saving.”