kingnovel Chapter 1373 Mother and Son
Chapter 1373 Mother and Son
Time seemed to stand still the moment they heard that Lin Miaomiao was pregnant.
Gu Chengyuan held the receiver, his entire being seemingly drained of its soul, frozen into a lifeless stone sculpture.
The faint lights of the night market outside his office window twisted and spun in his empty pupils, eventually turning into a blank, cold white light.
pregnant?
The child being transported?
These two pieces of information were like two devastating thunderclaps, exploding almost simultaneously in his already riddled consciousness!
The impact was more intense, more complex, and more... cruel than when I first heard the news of my brother's sacrifice!
"My little one? My little one, can you hear me? Are you listening?" the mother called anxiously from the other end of the phone, her voice tinged with a playful scolding.
"Are you crazy with joy? Mom is too! This afternoon, Miaomiao wasn't feeling well, so I went with her to the hospital. And when they found out... oh my, my heart was pounding with mixed emotions of joy and panic! This is the first child of the third generation of our Gu family! I'm going to be a grandma!! Hahaha—"
Every word his mother spoke was like a red-hot nail, driven deep into Gu Chengyuan's eardrums and into his heart.
My younger brother's flesh and blood.
The third generation of the Gu family.
The first child.
These words, full of hope and the meaning of continuity, sounded like the cruelest irony, the heaviest shackles, and the sharpest blade to Gu Chengyuan at this moment!
My younger brother died, and his remains were never found.
His younger brother's wife became pregnant with his posthumous child.
The news came just over ten hours after he learned of his brother's death, and just a few days after he sat there all day, mustering the courage to reveal the bloody truth to his family. He was only a few numbers away from pressing.
A tremendous sense of absurdity, along with an even more overwhelming surge of grief, self-blame, and a new, almost panic-inducing sense of responsibility, overwhelmed him instantly like a tsunami!
He felt a violent dizziness, and his vision began to blur and sway. He had to stretch out his other, trembling hand and hold onto the cold table to barely steady his swaying body.
"mom……"
When Gu Chengyuan spoke again, every syllable was filled with a tremor that even he himself was unaware of:
"Really? Are you sure...it was...the carrier?"
"Oh dear! What are you saying, child!"
The mother laughed and scolded on the other end of the phone, completely immersed in immense joy, and didn't even notice the abnormal, near-collapse in her son's voice.
"Of course it's from the carrier! The timing matches up! It's just that your brother came back from his vacation last time... Oh well, anyway, it's definitely there! It's absolutely true!"
"Where is Miaomiao? How is she?" Gu Chengyuan forced himself to concentrate his remaining rationality and squeezed out the question through gritted teeth.
Lin Miaomiao, the younger sister-in-law… that gentle and shy girl, was unaware that her husband had already… She was pregnant with a child who would never see its father again, filled with joy and anticipation…
"Miaomiao is doing great! She's just starting out and has a little morning sickness, but she's in great spirits!"
"It's just... I'm starting to miss Cheng Yun a bit. I secretly wiped away a few tears. It's my fault, I couldn't hide it from her. She noticed I've been restless these past few days and guessed that things might be tense at the front..."
"But now everything's alright! With this good news, all worries can be swept away!" The mother's voice was full of relief and anticipation for the future.
“My dear son, do you think you could… find a way to send a message to Chengyun? Even just a sentence, to let him know he’s going to be a father! He’ll be overjoyed! That kid has always loved children…”
The mother continued to chatter on, planning how to supplement Miaomiao's nutrition and imagining the scene after the child was born, her tone as light as if there had never been any gloom outside the window.
Gu Chengyuan could no longer hear what was said after that.
"Let him know he's going to be a dad..."
These words, like the final hammer blow, shattered the fragile balance he had been struggling to maintain.
He could almost see his younger brother's ecstatic expression if he knew the news; his smile would be even brighter and more real than in his dreams.
However, the more vivid this imagined scene becomes, the darker and colder the reality before our eyes appears.
He'll never know...
And she, who had just been struggling with how to tell him of his death, now had to bear the burden of the joyous news of this new life's arrival, as well as the even crueler truth of "father's absence" behind it.
Tell your mother? Now?
In her moment of ecstasy, how could she so cruelly extinguish the newly ignited flame of hope with the news of her brother's death?
He can't do it...
At least for now, he couldn't utter a single word to his mother's bright and cheerful voice on the phone.
Immense grief and an even deeper sense of guilt gripped Gu Chengyuan's throat and his heart like two cold hands.
He felt short of breath and his vision blurred.
He used to think that the passing of loved ones was just how it was, after all, everyone dies eventually, but now he realizes how terribly wrong he was...
"My dear child? Why aren't you saying anything? Is... the situation at the front really that dire?"
The mother finally sensed something was wrong, and her joyful voice was tinged with hesitation and worry.
“…No, no.” Gu Chengyuan squeezed out a few words with all his might, his voice terribly hoarse, yet he tried his best to make it sound “normal.”
"It's just...too sudden. I...am very happy."
...
Upon hearing this, there was a sudden silence on the other end of the phone. After a long while, just as Gu Chengyuan was feeling somewhat uneasy, his mother seemed to breathe a sigh of relief:
"As long as you're happy! As long as you're happy!"
"Don't worry about things at home, Mom will definitely take good care of Miaomiao!"
"Okay, then I won't bother you anymore, you go ahead and get back to work!"
After saying that, before Gu Chengyuan could react, his mother, Wen Wan, hung up the phone impatiently...
beep - beep - beep -
Gu Chengyuan was left alone, staring blankly at the busy signal on the phone...
He remained frozen in the position of answering the phone, standing stiffly in the dimly lit office, for a long, long time...
He then very slowly placed the receiver back on the base.
A soft "click" sounded particularly clear in the silence.
He slowly and weakly slumped back into the chair, his back hitting the back of the chair hard.
Outside the window, the lights of the night market were still dimly lit.
And in this office, a symbol of supreme power, he was all alone...
The night grew deeper.
But what he has to bear is far more than he imagined...