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An abominable creature.
No, rather than abominable, perhaps something pitiful that should be unfettered from life as soon as possible.
After all, in a place like the Daguanyuan, bringing in an illegitimate child is the folly of dullards and those fated for short, miserable lives. Selfish fools who believe that they're 'different'. Those who think they can raise orchards instead of single trees with love, despite watching decades worth of generations imitating and learning from each other—
Only to still fail.
How could Father, so cruel and wise, commit such an act?
Mother disposed of the mistress with great haste, but Wings, Father caused such a ruckus pulling a few tricks of his own to steal away the baby. However, while Mother may be banned from approaching the child, he isn't. He also agrees with Mother that it'd be best to bring Father back to his senses as soon as possible.
She gave him a location within Daguanyuan, and now he heads over as a filial son to bring order back to their family structure.
"A-Ah, Young Master-!"
She perishes on the ground, head cracked open.
… He'll need to find some staff to clean up as soon as this incident is solved, or else the pavers will need to be replaced, lest the delay in everyday mundanity deal disastrous damage to their image.
The door isn't even locked, and he wonders now if Father doesn't care if his new child lives or dies. The soft gasp he hears is just as base and unpleasant as he figured someone from the Backstreets would sound. A wet nurse stands there, still feeding the child.
"A-Ah…"
Her voice is choked with fear, backlit by the artificial moonlight as she stands still.
He sighs. Fear makes one malleable. If he says the right words, she'll remove herself and the child without needing to shed a single drop of blood onto the exquisite blankets and painted screens. Again, too much to clean up.
"Let me guess. In exchange for being brought into Daguanyuan, my father told you to become that creature's wet nurse, and make your baby his milk brother, correct?"
Her silence says nothing, but the slight tension in her soldiers tells him everything.
"Father has killed the babe, and once the thing in your hands is weaned off, you will also be disposed of. Listen to me, and I'll allow you to meet your child on the other side expeditiously, with no pain."
"N-No," she whispers, clutching the child to her breast. "My son is still alive. I know he is, because that's what the man promised. If my child is dead, I won't allow this thing to suck me dry, and your f-father knows that."
He scoffs at her foolishness.
"So that's how you've decided to keep moving forward, despite the death of your reason for living. Delusions of a 'happy end'."
To look away and run from reality is one of the most pathetic things he's ever seen. If you dislike something, then change it. It's as simple as that, yet the masses would rather huddle away in dreams, instead of doing something to better their situation.
"This is still your brother!" she pleads, her voice strained into a raspy drawl by vocal cords pulled taut from fear. "Please, won't you hold him even once? Just once…"
"Why should I?"
"I beg the magnanimous young master to give this foolish subject one last act of pure pity."
So she's been here long enough to understand the speech patterns of the servants. In that case, she really is one of their people now. And, she is, to his annoyance, right, in that an upright master should allow some small gift to a servant before death.
He strides over, rolling his eyes at how easily she startles.
At fifteen, he's rarely seen a baby, let alone hold one, but it should be an easy enough thing to figure out. He grabs the swaddled thing and mimics her actions, creating a cradle-like shape with his arms to hold the child.
"Ah…"
Golden eyes. Just like his own.
The baby coos and looks straight at him, pulling its arms out to reach for him.
"Y-Your finger," the wet nurse whispers. "Let him… hold your hand."
He glances at her, then back at the baby. Reluctantly, he offers the baby a slim finger. Small, small fingers clench his own, the baby smiles, and he realizes something. His chest throbs, watching this innocent child that he must've once resembled.
This child is illegitimate, so he can't give it a 'respectable' name, but he can still give it a name.
"Jia Huan," he murmurs. "Your name is Jia Huan. Maybe 'Jing' would've been better, considering how bright your eyes are, but Mother would surely throw a fit if I likened you to treasure. I also cannot compromise my own standing in any way."
Pressing their foreheads together, sharing their human worth, he remembers that inside him, emotion still stirs. It's a thing with no benefits, only weaknesses in the Daguanyuan, yet…
He doesn't hate it.
It is proof of life, and he mustn't run from it, like the base masses in the Backstreets, addicted to Boluses and rambling about things they say they will do but never act upon.
"I wonder, which 'me' will you become in the future?"
If he gives Jia Huan everything he never got, then maybe he'll see another path that might've become his.
The wet nurse is killed, of course.
… Only after Jia Huan is weaned off.
Jia Huan can take small steps now. It took some convincing, but Mother eventually accepted Jia Huan as a useful pawn against Father and other rivals in the future. Not to mention, something about the child is just so charming.
Father and Mother, oddly enough, don't see it, but right now he watches over Jia Huan in their safe, enclosed garden. The curious child meanders through grass, coos at the colorful flowers and elegant topiaries, and stares at the fish in the pond.
It's all obviously supervised. He's heard that babies and very young children instinctively know how to swim, but he doesn't trust the so-called 'experts' who said that.
"Ah."
He rushes over and catches Jia Huan, right before the child can leave the grass and topple onto a cobblestone path.
"You must get stronger quickly, since Big Brother won't always be here to hold you."
"… Gē."
"Hm?"
"Gē… Ge. Gēge!"
The child grabs at his hanfu and starts excitedly babbling the same words over and over.
His first words, over and over.
'Big Brother'.
Neither 'Mother' nor 'Father'.
"Big Brother."
He scoops Jia Huan into his arms, now well-trained in how to hold children.
"Yes, that's me."
The excited giggle makes him smile, and once again he marvels at how deep inside, there is a shred of humanity… Yet nothing bad has happened because of it.
"I owe you a great debt, Jia Huan," he says, pressing their foreheads together, mimicking what now feels like centuries ago. "Thank you for letting me remember that I am human."
It's only after caring for Jia Huan that he realizes how ugly and twisted Daguanyuan- no, Hongyuan itself is. It robs people of their humanity, something he now realizes is so precious. This disgusting place only breeds monsters and insects, but he's special.
He has Jia Huan, and Jia Huan lets him know he is a rare specimen of humanity in this farce of a world.
"I love you, Jia Huan."
When Jia Huan gets bigger, he gets the boy the best tutors an illegitimate child is allowed to have. Mother and Father ignore Jia Huan (because they are not human), so right now Jia Huan lives in the section of the family compound closest to him.
"Big Brother, Big Brother!"
"Yes? I'm busy right now, you know?"
"I know, I know, but look at this bolus!"
Jia Huan snaps up and dashes over to tear the bolus out of the boy's hands.
"Big Brother?!"
It's sealed in wax, and the exterior isn't coated in any poison, to his relief.
"What did you want me to see about this bolus?"
"I mean, it's so pretty, but how do you actually eat it?"
"Hm… Let's use this letter opener here."
"Okay!"
He opens his arms, and the boy crawls into his lap, eyes wide and curious. Satisfied that the child isn't going to grab at the bolus, he pierces the wax shell and cuts it all the way 'round, like the rind of a fruit.
Inside is a bitter, herbal ball of compressed medicine, but Jia Huan stares, enamored by the ugly thing.
Perhaps the child sees beyond the exterior looks, properly perceiving the worth of medicine beyond appearances.
"The, uh… Ven-Venerrr… Veneeerah…"
"The Venerable Jia Mu."
"Yeah! Elder Grandma is supposed to be really good at making boluses, right? If I also become good at cuh-comm… compounding! Then I'll be able to get her attention, right?"
He resists the urge to crush the bolus between his fingertips.
"What? Attention from your Big Brother isn't enough?" he says half-jokingly.
"No, I love Big Brother the most! But… Grandma can grant wishes, right?"
"You have a wish you want to achieve? I can help you do that as well."
"N-No! This is a secret! Just wait for me, okay?"
He's always been weak to the child's beaming smile, so he chuckles and agrees.
Yes, he'll wait for Jia Huan to get his wish granted, then reveal what it actually was.
Somehow, Jia Huan managed to become friends with the Family's Jade. He more than approves of the connection made. It's safe by the Jade's side, there's a bodyguard from a well-regarded family, and this is a sentimental bond that can be leveraged in the future.
When he shows off some basic self-defense, Jia Huan is so impressed, and that leaves him conflicted. Does he train Jia Huan for safety's sake, or leave protection solely to the immediate family members? At least, he doesn't want Jia Huan to become like the Jade, always anxious and stifled.
The Jade is fortunate beyond belief, yet acts like any other being groveling about for survival. It's pathetic and irritation-inducing, but he endures because it makes Jia Huan happy.
More proof that he is human and real compared to the stage props of Hongyuan.
These peaceful, blood-soaked days seemed never-changing, and perhaps that was his biggest folly.
To believe in that delusion of a 'happy end'.
His soul dies that day.
H. Corp excels at making boluses, and today is their unveiling of a new Singularity.
There's no way Jia Huan, obsessed with boluses as he is, would stay away.
"Young Master! Y-Young Master, it's too dangerous! The Arbiters only just left-!"
The offending attendant is stabbed, and he sprints through the sandy new surroundings, screaming for his little brother. Hollowed out corpses are strewn about like corn husk dolls, but Jia Huan is small and quick. He would've surely been able to escape.
What small hidey holes could the child be in?
Under that piece of rubble?
He dashes forward, sides aching and throat ripped raw from running and screaming. He dashes forward, then decides to act like a proper member of the Jia Family, and not the mundanites of the Backstreets who can only flee reality.
Like a small, scared child, he begins to take steps backwards.
Until he's standing next to the hollowed out corpse of a child with golden eyes still open in a death stare.
His knees drop into the soft sand, but how he wishes it hurt like solid concrete. Only physical pain could distract him from the agony beginning to well up.
His little brother, his Jia Huan, lies there, torn open from the inside out.
"Ah… Ah? Wake up, Jia Huan? Remember, you still need to tell me what wish you were going to make to Jia Mu?"
There's no answer, and there never will be one.
His heart pretends that everything will be fine, even as his mind tells him that there's no coming back from this.
He wastes every single bolus that he brought with him, and strikes down anyone who tells him that an illegitimate child is not worthy of the treasures he is feeding Jia Huan.
The boluses roll down the child's throat and out of his abdomen onto the sand.
He clutches Jia Huan in his arms and wails. Wails in a way he never knew he was capable of.
The grief tears at his mind but numbs his body in the cruelest irony. He screams for Jia Huan, keeps pleading with the child, but nothing happens.
For the first time, he wishes he weren't human.
Yet, he can't bring himself to wish he never ever met the child.
Trapped between two yearnings, forever in a hellish paradox that he will spend the rest of his pitiful life grappling with.
Later on, in his arms, changed into different clothes, the child appears to be merely sleeping.
How scared was Jia Huan?
Was he waiting for his Big Brother as he took his anguished last breaths?
He presses their foreheads together, letting the body leech his warmth.
… He can't do this. This anguish that refuses to let him sleep and eat, that does nothing but make him weep—it will kill him.
Outside, there's a new flurry of words and activity, and he goes to shut them up when he hears what is being said.
"The Precious Jade was found safe and sound!"
"Really?! Ah, the Venerable Hierarch would've split our heads twain if anything happened to the child!"
"Also, it turns out that Daiyu girl managed to escape as well!"
"Wait… But didn't the three of them always play together? Then why did only one…?"
"Shh! Shush! We really will die if you keep talking!"
The only reason he allows them to walk away is because of the information he's just learned.
He places the corpse onto the bed and combs out his tangled hair with his fingers, before finally washing the sand from days ago off his skin and changing into new clothes of his own.
That disgusting Jade has been reduced to a dullard that can only repeat simple phrases and platitudes.
The grief that threatened to kill him is wiped away upon realizing what really happened.
He wasn't too late.
It was the Jade's fault, for deciding that the life of some servant was more worthy of survival than his brother's. That jade eye glimmers in shades of rotting greenery, and nothing like the gold of his brother's irises.
Sheer contempt floods his body, and he physically wants to retch at the sight of this hateful being.
His parents make a fuss about him changing his given name to a more 'base' title, but he doesn't care and pushes the change through anyway.
When N. Corp approaches him, he allows them the privilege to recruit him.
Jia Baoyu will be tortured to death the same way Jia Huan passed.
He will make sure the child stays awake as he reaches in and wrenches out each organ one by one, tearing the larger ones into smaller pieces if they can't be taken out in one go.
He will make the child scream the same way Jia Huan must've screamed.
It is the only punishment worthy of the crime Jia Baoyu committed.
"Jia Huan. Let's go meet the LCB," Hermann declares, alongside his new comrades.
It's time to meet the hateful being once again and make him take responsibility.
Because it's Jia Baoyu's fault his little brother died.
It's not Jia Huan's fault.