CHAPTER 108: CHAPTER 108; ABOUT THEM?

"About them? It’s not something you would need to know... It’s a secret and very private." With that response, she immediately went silent, lying in bed and tucking herself away.

Dr. Lin didn’t press her immediately. He watched as she turned away from him, drawing the silk coverlet up to her chin like a child hiding from monsters.

But he noted every detail, how her fingers trembled as they clutched the fabric, the faint bruising at her wrists, the rawness behind her eyes that spoke of nights unraveled by grief.

He leaned back slightly in the chair, his voice low and even.

"I’m not here to force anything out of you, Yueyao. But sometimes, the things we don’t say... they still come out. In the way we sleep, breathe, and break."

There was no response. Just the faint sound of fabric shifting as she curled tighter into herself.

He glanced at the maids again. "How long has she been like this?"

"We were hired just today, but we just heard she has been acting different, for several days now," one murmured. "She keeps asking for the baby in her sleep. A beautiful girl. She says her name sometimes, but we can’t make it out clearly..."

Dr. Lin nodded, his expression unreadable. Then he turned back toward the bed.

"Yueyao," he said quietly. "If there was a child... a daughter... what was her name?"

The silence stretched so long he thought she had slipped back into whatever distant fog she was wandering in.

But then, a whisper, so faint it was almost imagined:

"Yueqin."

The name hung in the air like a ghost.

Dr. Lin didn’t move. He let the silence settle again, let the weight of that name fold into the room. His pen stayed untouched in his breast pocket. There was no clipboard and no file.

Just presence.

"Did you see her?" he asked, gently. "Hold her?"

Yueyao’s eyes welled, but no tears fell. Her voice, when it came out, was a fragile breath of memory.

"My baby? My little princess? She was so tiny, how could I hold her when I was unable to protect her? She couldn’t even get to see the world... I see her all the time and she blames me, she blames me for being a useless mother... My little princess, I could give my life for her, but the dead can never wake up. I failed her...."

Dr. Lin remained silent for a moment, allowing her words to echo, letting the grief breathe in the room.

He didn’t take notes.

Didn’t correct her.

He didn’t interrupt the mourning that spilled from a wound clearly still fresh.

Instead, he leaned forward just slightly, his tone no louder than her own broken whisper.

"Yueqin, it’s such a beautiful name.." he repeated, softly. "Was she ever born... or did something happen before she could?"

Yueyao flinched.

She turned her face deeper into the pillow, away from him. "I don’t know," she murmured getting worked up. "I don’t remember the pain of labor. I don’t remember anything clearly. But I remember her. Her laughter. Her scent. I can feel her when I close my eyes... like she was real, more real than this place, than this life."

Her voice broke on the last words, cracking under the strain of memory and confusion.

The two maids exchanged a glance, one biting her lip, the other gently adjusting the pillow behind Yueyao’s head, though the woman barely noticed.

Dr. Lin’s gaze remained steady.

"Did you ever have a miscarriage or surgery? Or were you pregnant before getting married to Shen Xiao? Were you carrying twins?"

Yueyao’s breathing hitched.

There was a sharp inhale, then silence.

As if his words had struck a thread buried so deep she didn’t know it was there, until now.

She didn’t answer. But her entire body tensed beneath the silk sheets, the muscles in her back drawing taut like bowstrings. Her fingers twisted into the fabric.

Then, in a voice so low she murmured, "I don’t know anything, don’t ask me anymore... I don’t know anything... I’m not sick, I’m not sick, I just wanna leave this hell hole..."

Dr. Lin didn’t move right away. He watched her carefully, the way a seasoned physician reads not just symptoms but silence, especially the kind that screams.

Her voice had broken at the edges, thin and frayed, like she was unraveling in real time. And yet, beneath the panic, he heard something else too.

A wall that had been built over time. It was layered by layers. To protect something precious... or forbidden.

He crouched beside the bed again, leveling his gaze just below hers as she kept her face pressed into the pillow.

"You are not sick, Yueyao," he said gently. "You are remembering. And remembering something painful doesn’t make you mad, it means you survived it."

"I want to sleep...." She was dismissing them off. She no longer wanted to chat with anyone.

"What about Shen Xuan? He is your son you gave birth to! Don’t you want to see him? He is so cute and handsome." He spoke up trying to understand her hate towards her son.

Hearing Shen Xuan’s name, her eyes suddenly snapped open.

Something primal surged within them, hatred, sharp and immediate. It cracked through the fog of her confusion like lightning across a black sky.

"Don’t say his name!" she hissed, sitting up so suddenly the maids flinched. Her fingers clawed at the blanket, knuckles white. "Don’t you dare say his name in front of me!"

Dr. Lin didn’t move, though the maids instinctively reached for her, unsure whether to soothe or restrain. But he lifted a hand to stop them. His voice remained calm, steady, anchoring.

"Yueyao... why? Why does hearing your son’s name make you react like this? What did he do to you, or what did someone make you believe?"

Tears welled in her eyes, but they didn’t fall. Her lips trembled as if a thousand words wanted to pour out but couldn’t find form. She shook her head, strands of hair falling wildly over her face.