The Smiling Red Panda 微笑的红熊猫

4. Mo Xiu, Mo Jingtang Is Not A Child

Every morning he wakes up from a dream he couldn't remember, sometimes with his golden tears streaming, sometimes feeling empty, sometimes just curling up into a ball.

Jingtang remembered when he was a real child, he never had a moment of discomfort, and was always lavishly spoiled and taken care of by servants, especially Liu-gong. But he didn't want the servants to care for him, he wanted his parents to greet him every morning and perhaps tuck him in every night.

He didn't know how other kids played or how other kids lived, but he always thought parental neglect was the worst punishment to give to a child.

But as far as he knew, his mother was very sickly and his father was too busy taking care of 'her' and the affairs of the imperial court, so he didn't complain. Despite that, the inner child in him couldn't help but whine like a child.

When his mother died he thought he suffered the worst thing in the world, he had barely spent time with his mother and 'she' was always sick, how could death take 'her' away from him so quickly?

After 'her' death, his father became crazed and he didn't know what was wrong or what was going on until it was too late. He didn't even know why there'd be a rebellion against his father.

He had always thought the world of his father, he was mighty and perfect, the ideal Emperor as far as a child like him cared. It was his father and his father was amazing, what can you tell him? That his father was truly just a crazed lunatic who unnecessarily slaughtered the people just because they crossed him and he was a tyrant, that this world never needed emperors?

Or that his mother was a man, his father's own Shizun, who he soiled and tortured? A dignified being who he brought ruin to and dragged mercilessly in the mud?

That the servants he thought dearly of only feared him and distanced their hearts from him while he freely gave them his, or that the one taking care of him who was his father's cousin only cares about him because he's also that cousin's Shizun's son?

Mo Xiu wondered every day what he'd done wrong to deserve such a predicament.

There was a time he made friends with a young miss in a town they once stayed in while on the run. She was kind and compassionate and promised him the world when they talked, so they talked. But when she found out he was the tyrant Taxian-jun's son, she turned him away quicker than changing a sock.

He remembered her words to this day.

"What misfortune? You grew up free from worry while the outside lived in fear that your father would glance at them. You're neglected? You should be thankful, cause whoever that mother of yours is, is just as crazy as your damned father."

He didn't hold her resentment against her and respectfully accepted she would never talk to him again, much less be his friend.

But she was right, what misfortune? It hadn't even started yet.

The time his uncle died, something in his head snapped. No one's left, no one will stay with me anymore.

He resented his father for killing his uncle, the last person who cared about him and took care of him for around ten years after his father's 'death'. Then he noticed that his father was, to put it mildly, acting strange. But since Mo Ran was already crazy, Jingtang didn't think much of it.

Now those three years after his uncle's death, what happened?

Oddly enough, he didn't remember aside from various failed attempts at taking his own life.

What was it that he didn't remember? His head was already splitting with a headache, it was like there were torn pages in his memory, he's sure someone erased it at some point.