Chapter 257: 253 Hatred

At first, Fang Jingjing also felt strange and moved by this kind-hearted person who had suddenly appeared, but Fang Mu, unable to bear keeping it from her, told her his true purpose.

After learning the ins and outs of the matter, Fang Jingjing fell into a state of astonishment and a long, drawn-out silence.

From the shocked expression on her face, Fang Mu sensed that the girl seemingly did not know her brother had been dead for many years; her eyes revealed confusion and sorrow, and that thin face, tormented by illness, seemed to turn a shade paler.

Just as Fang Mu was about to comfort the girl, he noticed Fang Jingjing's body trembling slightly, and only then did he realize, as if jolted awake, that Fang Jingjing seemed to be afraid of something.

As if having suffered a major blow or having fallen into some inescapable nightmare, Fang Jingjing became dazed and absent-minded for a period of time afterward; no matter what Fang Mu asked her or asked her to do, she would only respond with a simple nod, and finally, with the help of others, she barely managed to sign the consent for the surgery.

The hospital planned to let Fang Jingjing's body recuperate for a little while longer, with the kidney transplant surgery scheduled for six days later.

Because Fang Mu had been prepared for a long time, he had already strictly followed the doctor's orders to condition his body well before Fang Jingjing signed the surgical agreement, and as a qualified donor, he could begin the surgery at any time.

However, on the night before the kidney transplant was set to take place, Fang Jingjing leaped from the balcony of her hospital room without any warning.

This poor girl who took her own life left behind only a suicide note and an old-fashioned key in the hospital room.

In the suicide note, Fang Jingjing wrote that she ultimately was unwilling to accept Fang Mu's repayment of the favor, expressing her apologies to Fang Mu between the lines, and then she began to recount the bitter life experiences she had endured.

The father of the siblings Fang Jianhua and Fang Jingjing had mysteriously disappeared in a massive flood in the south in 1998, before Fang Jingjing was even born, and after that, the two children were basically raised by their mother's side of the family.

Fang Jingjing did not have a deep impression of her mother either, because when Fang Jingjing was only four years old, she and her brother's unfortunate mother also tragically perished in a landslide accident.

Having lost their parents, the siblings could only rely on their maternal grandparents for survival from then on.

Without parental discipline, the siblings grew up almost wild in the small village in the countryside; before Fang Jianhua picked up the bad habit of gambling, Fang Jingjing's relationship with her brother was quite close, and the two siblings were each other's support in the outside world, as two siblings without parents were easily bullied by other children in the village.

After Fang Jianhua developed a gambling addiction, he seemed like a different person, seemingly no longer caring about the sister he once cherished or his grandparents, which at one point disappointed his family to the extreme; especially after Fang Jianhua stole the family's only two thousand yuan in savings and then ran away, leaving behind a mountain of debt, Fang Jingjing, who suffered greatly from the mess he left behind, decided to sever all ties with him.

The hatred and inability to forgive her brother were likely one of the reasons Fang Jingjing was unwilling to accept Fang Mu's intentions, but Fang Mu, who was reading this passage at the time, felt extremely confused, because even if the other party was unwilling to accept it, it shouldn't have reached the point of using such an extreme method as death to express her refusal.

Continuing to read, Fang Mu discovered the second reason that made her feel suffocated.

Although Fang Jingjing did not have a deep impression of her mother, she at least had a memory to hold onto; relying on faint recollections and old photographs, she could still think of the warm times her mother had spent with her.

As for the image of a father, unlike her mother, Fang Jingjing only ever had fantasies about him.

Because there was no actual reference point, after that flood she didn't remember, the photos of her father in the house had mysteriously disappeared just like her father, and she could only rely on her brother's descriptions to piece together the appearance of the father she had never met in her mind.

Fang Jingjing only knew that her father's profession was an editor at a small publishing house; her brother said that her father's health was not very good and that he looked scholarly and refined, which fit the public's impression—or perhaps a certain "prejudice"—of a literary scholar.

After Fang Jianhua left, Fang Jingjing envied the peers in the village whose parents were still alive even more; she constantly longed for a figure—not necessarily strong, but willing to give everything for his family—to stand up and protect them when they were being threatened and insulted by debt collectors.

For the sake of her grandparents' peace, Fang Jingjing came to the city to work immediately after finishing high school, determined to pay off the debts of her good-for-nothing brother, while also incidentally inquiring about news of him.

Perhaps, in her heart, she still held onto memories of the good side of her brother, hoping that he hadn't left home to dodge debts, but for some other unavoidable reason.

And on the day Fang Jingjing first met Fang Mu, when Fang Mu explained to her that he was repaying a favor from ten years ago and wanted her to take her brother's place as the recipient of his gratitude.

Only then did Fang Jingjing learn that her brother had long since died, and she also 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 for the fate of Fang Jingjing's family, because her brother had also left home without a word that same year.

While Fang Mu, who was unaware of this, was pouring out his heart, Fang Jingjing fell into deep pain; she had mostly guessed that her brother had not left home out of heartlessness, but had been forced to "separate" from her.

Thinking that she had deeply misunderstood her brother for ten years, and that during these ten years she had endured hardships that only she could understand, Fang Jingjing's psychological defenses almost completely collapsed at that moment, which was the reason for her confusion, pain, and fear at the time.

And it was at this moment that Fang Mu also sensed from Fang Jingjing's writing another emotion she had felt toward him at the time; it was a kind of anger or resentment, because Fang Mu was using the heart of her tragically deceased brother.

Therefore, in Fang Jingjing's eyes at the time, Fang Mu was both a kind person who had shown her goodwill and an enemy who had taken her brother's heart.

This contradictory and complex emotion made Fang Jingjing's mind very chaotic; after dizzily signing the surgical consent agreement, Fang Jingjing felt a wave of regret and a despair unimaginable to others, and she chose to commit suicide.

A large part of the reason for Fang Jingjing's suicide was guilt toward her brother, and perhaps there was also a sense of hatred toward Fang Mu—or more accurately, hatred toward people with backgrounds similar to Fang Mu's; perhaps she also committed suicide because she did not want to give Fang Mu the chance to repay the favor, causing Fang Mu, with his rich emotional world, to develop a mental block and suffer because of it.

But Fang Mu was not very willing to speculate in that direction; although he could feel a kind of anger directed at him from the words in the suicide note Fang Jingjing left behind, he could also feel Fang Jingjing's sincere apology toward him at the same time.

He personally felt that the remaining reason for Fang Jingjing to give up her life was actually that she no longer knew how to go on living; previously, her efforts to live could be for the sake of paying off debts and finding her brother, but now that she understood those who came to her house to collect debts were intentionally bleeding and squeezing poor wretches like them who were unable to resist, and that she had no possibility of finding her brother again, she had lost hope for life and had no motivation to survive.

At the end of the suicide note, Fang Jingjing added a note saying that although she had given up on the kidney transplant, she hoped that if Fang Mu was willing, he could repay the favor in another way: by taking good care of the elderly back home so they could enjoy their twilight years in peace.

Fang Jingjing felt that the weight of this repayment might be too heavy, far exceeding the favor of a heart, so she also decided to return something to Fang Mu.

That key and what the key could open were things she decided to give to Fang Mu; this key could open a small box in her rented room, which was her father's legacy, and considering that her father's profession during his lifetime was quite compatible with Fang Mu's profession as a writer, she felt that the things inside would likely be of some use to Fang Mu.