Rule #25: When someone breaks a pattern it means the stakes have changed

"I thought…wait, I thought that you said that your parents were American but then moved to China and are living there right now." That was just one of the billion questions that were floating around in Saera's head, but only one rang the loudest.

How is this even possible?

Mrs. Xiong and Yuan were his family.

His mother and his sister.

That only made her more confused.

"I lied. Everything I said about my parents was a lie that I made up." He muttered while pushing the cart forward, walking ahead of her while leaving her behind. 

She snapped out of her daze and ran up to him, "You can't seriously just leave it at that. You just dropped a ing bomb on me and you're going to leave me hanging?"

"Wait until we get home." He grumbled while randomly grabbing things and tossing them into the cart.

Saera frowned and took out the cans of spam that he mindlessly tossed in, "You don't need to tell me if you don't want to."

"I want to…I kind of already have, there's no going back now." He mumbled under his breath. Even if he regretted it, there wasn't much for him to do to take it back.

What's done is done and there was no going back. He was going to have to tell her everything if any of this was going to make sense to her.

"Just wait till we get home." He repeated.

Saera tucked her lips into and stayed silent while finding the things they actually needed and tossed them in the cart.

This whole time she regarded Mark as an open book. He came off as the average guy who came from a simple family, did normal things as a kid, grew up uneventfully and moved out.

She didn't think he was an enigma.

That was supposed to be her role.

-----

Saera silently watched Mark set all the groceries away when they got back to the apartment.

She could tell that he was purposely acting busy to hold off on telling her whatever he was hiding but she made no attempt to badger him.

She slid off of the stool she was sitting on and Mark's eyes immediately darted to her, watching her anxiously, as if she was going to force him to talk.

But she didn't.

All she did was turn to the living and sit on the floor, facing the television.

Mark closed the fridge and stared at the back of her head for a long time, letting the silence hang, before sighing. He squeezed his eyes shut and felt his heart pound in fear before rolling his shoulders back. He walked over to the living room and stood beside her for a moment before slowly lowering himself on the ground next to her.

"Biological?" She asked softly, while staring straight ahead.

Mark's silence continued before Saera felt his hand slip into her lap. He just left his hand there, as if he was giving her permission to hold his hand, which translated more to him just silently asking her to hold it for him.

But she didn't lace their fingers together like how he subconsciously wanted.

Instead she flipped his palm up and traced the lines, including his scar, with the tip of her finger, all while keeping her gaze straight.

Mark leaned his back against the foot of the couch, "100 percent."

"How long have you known?" She mumbled under her breath.

Mark laughed dryly and tilted his head up, "My whole life."

"What?" Saera asked in confusion before turning to him, finally seeing his profile. His face was grim as he propped one knee up.

"I spent the first 13 years of my life living with my parents. 13 of the best years of my life living with parents that loved me with everything they had and were willing to move from China, to America, just to give their son a good life. They didn't speak English, they didn't know anyone in America and they barely had enough money to survive but they never gave up all because they loved me." Mark flinched when Saera's finger ran along the scar on his palm, giving him shivers.

"But you call her Mrs. Xiong." She asked.

Mark looked at the ground, "When she introduced herself to me for the first time, I was 26 years old and she said her name was Mrs. Tuan. I immediately asked for her maiden name and started calling her that."

Saera's brows creased, "If she's your mother, why doesn't she recognize you?"

"Have you ever heard of hypnotherapy?" His voice turned rasped as he let out a pitiful laugh.

Saera's eyes widened at his implication, "Your mother…?"

He nodded, "When I was 13, my mother was pregnant with Yuan so she really couldn't do that much, my dad had to watch over her because her stomach was getting bigger. Normally I walk home from school but one day I just didn't want to."

"Walk home?" Saera's voice was barely above a whisper. She was in a trance. Her fingers stopped moving over his palm and her whole body was turned to him as she absorbed every subtle emotion that passed his face.

He nodded again, weaker, "I finished soccer practice, and I was being whiny and difficult and I didn't want to walk home. I was tired and I could only care about me. I asked my dad to come pick me up and after begging him he finally gave in, but he had to bring my mom with him because he didn't want her in the house alone"

Saera couldn't find her voice, so he just kept going.

"He was driving and I was being a brat. I don't know what got into me, I just kept being obnoxious and rude and then my mom started yelling at me to stop and then I said something mean back to her. Something I don't even remember, that's how unimportant it was but that's when dad got pissed." His voice cracked as he moved his hand away from her lap and used it to rub his eyes.

"He kept driving but he turned around to look at me to tell me not to speak to my mother that way. I remember those words so ing well because those were the last words my father ever spoke to me."

Saera's hands began to shake because she knew where this story was going but then she saw the tears well up in his eyes and felt everything fall apart, "Mark."

"He didn't see the red light and he didn't see the truck coming towards us. My mom screamed and he turned but it was too late. And you know what he did? In the fraction of the second that he had left, he knew that he was going to die. The truck was right at the driver's door and in that half a second, he threw his body in front of my mom to protect her and Yuan." He pulled on his sleeve and quickly rubbed his eyes before any of the tears fell.

Saera's hand felt numb as she slowly lifted it to cup the side of his face, under his eyes with her thumb.

She felt useless.

She couldn't think of the proper actions or words to give him, but he looked so angry and hollow that she wanted to cry along with him.

"That's how I got this." He said while showing her his hand, "My dad died that day but the only thing that happened to me was a piece of glass from the windshield slice my hand open. The paramedics fixed it in 20 minutes, but my dad was gone forever."

She took his hand with both of hers and just stared at it, hoping that her gaze could heal the wounds that she couldn't see.

The ones he had inside.

"I was called the miracle child in the newspaper for a few weeks but no one knew how much I hated that word. Miracle? A miracle wouldn't have put my mother in the ICU and my father in the morgue." He laughed, "Do you know how demeaning that is?"

Saera tried to be positive, "But your mom is safe, now."

"After running some tests, the doctor's said that Yuan would survive because of what my dad did, but when my mom found out that dad had died because of me, she spiralled into a depression. She couldn't even look me in the eye and if she accidentally saw me, her face would twist into this cold, emotionless look and she'd just brush passed me." There was so much pain in his voice that it was making it hard for her to breathe.

"I knew that she was going through a hard time though. I couldn't be mad at her because she lost her husband, the love of her life, because of her son." He whispered sharply.

It was beyond her, how he managed to hold it together for that long, but it was the rest of the story deliver the last blow. If she thought he was carrying a lot of pain before, she wasn't prepared to hear the rest.

"She wouldn't eat, she wouldn't leave her room, she wouldn't even shower. She would just lay in bed all day. Then one day she started bleeding between her legs and my grandparents who were staying with us, took her to the hospital. Apparently the stress was affecting the baby and at the rate she was going, it could've induce premature labour and Yuan wouldn't be able to survive that."

"So the doctors offered hypnotherapy?" Saera balked.

Mark looked at her tiredly, "You should've seen how fast she agreed. I was in the same room with her and she didn't even look at me for my approval. She wanted to forget that the whole thing ever happened and that meant forgetting about me."

-----

"Why?" Saera asked in shock, "Why did she have to forget you?"

Mark's eyes curved up as his tears reappeared, "Apparently the treatment would make her forget the fact that me and her were in the car with my dad when he died. That way she wouldn't feel guilt ridden. The doctors even managed to find a way to adjust the timeline in her head and convince her to believe that he died 6 months earlier and that she had moved on and was happier. The problem was that every time she saw me in real life, she'd remember what I caused and remember what really happened. No amount of treatment could undo that or make her forget."

"Unless she forgot you ever existed."

Mark chuckled, "Wow, you really are psychic."

Saera ignored the pang in her chest and reached up to run her fingers through his hair. His eyes fluttered close before he carefully leaned forward to rest his head on her neck.

"If they could make her believe that I was never born, then she wouldn't have anything to trigger her memories back. Without me, she wouldn't be reminded that dad died because he was yelling at me. So the doctors offered her that idea although they advised that it would be better to just continue treatment the way it was, but guess what?"

Saera held back her sob, "She said yes?"

"She said yes." He breathed out, into her neck, "She said that she wanted to forget that I ever existed."

Saera clenched her