6 NIGHTMARE OF THE PAST (2)

The next morning was another chance to do good deeds in life, correct mistakes, and make new legacies.

Sunshine overflowed from the windowsill, and bits of its light danced alongside dust that spread it conically from the top of the window towards the ground, and all around the house.

The Chen family gathered in the dining table for breakfast. It was around half past six in the morning. The twins were already bathed and prepped up for school. They looked adorable in their school uniforms. They were seven, and at their first grade.

"Morning!" Kang Sola greeted cheerfully while cradling her aching head in one hand. Her smile and joviality were friends of the sunlight and the bright blue sky outside.

"Good morning, Aunty!" The twins greeted back in unison. They resumed eating their sumptuous breakfast immediately after.

"Your hangover doesn't seem to bother you." Xue Guangxi pointed out.

"Oh, morning, Guangxi! You're still here, huh? Don't you have your own family to share breakfast with?"

Mother Chen shushed her tactless mouth.

Xue Guangxi just laughed at it. Kang Sola knew everything about him just like he knew everything about her. "You are my family so I'm going to share this breakfast with all of you."

He stood up, went behind Mother Chen who was busy making sandwiches for the twins' lunch, then loosely wrapped his long arms around her neck, and leaned his head on hers lovingly. "I love you, Mother." He kissed her wrinkled cheek lightly.

"Oh, what a sweet boy! Come, sit down and eat your breakfast." Glee radiated from her face and welcomed rejuvenation on it. "How charming. I love you too, son."

"Boy?" Xue Guangxi murmured. 'Is a twenty-five-year-old grown man still considered a boy?' He found it odd, but her warm response had nevertheless put a sunny smile on his face.

"She's not your mother. As much as I enjoy the sight of you, son, treating her like this, you have your mother and father worriedly waiting for news of your safe arrival since yesterday and of your visit in your own home." The party-pooper in the name of Chen Lingfang butted in.

"In this house, she's my mother, right, Mother? And you, Sir, you're my father in this household. Perhaps, you're just jealous?" He retrieved his arms around Jiang Biyu only to entangle it around Chen Lingfang's neck, the Chen patriarch. "I love you, dear Father." He even pecked on his cheek.

Father Chen rubbed off his mark against his cheek with his hand. "Disgusting."

The twins squealed and laughed with their angelic squeaks.

Despite his gruff actions, deep inside, he appreciated Xue Guangxi's outward expression of his sentiments. Xue Guangxi beats Kang Sola in this department.

Kang Sola curled her lips upward, too. 'I'm also not their daughter, but they took me in because I don't have my own set of parents, unlike Guangxi. But I'm grateful to have them. So grateful.'

"I'll go visit the Xue Mansion later in the week." Xue Guangxi returned to his seat and turned serious. Honestly, he preferred this second set of parents to the original ones.

He looked at Kang Sola and remembered last night's incident. 'Perhaps she did not even know that she cried in her sleep.'

***

[Flashback]

Seven years ago, with a considerable distance between them, eighteen-year-old Xue Guangxi and Kang Sola grieved in silence along the deserted corridor.

After what seemed to be hours, sensing that Kang Sola had somehow gotten more in good spirits compared to how he found her, Xue Guangxi decided to break the silence. "I'm sorry, Sola."

It took a few minutes before the girl responded. "Everybody is. I don't know exactly what they're sorry for."

"Well… for me… I'm sorry for packing my bags so impulsively and for leaving everything behind like a coward. If I hadn't left, probably… probably…"

"Probably what? Even if you didn't leave, nothing would have changed. So spare your doubts and self-mockery."

"Are you angry at me?"

"No."

"You sound like you are."

"Maybe. Maybe I'm angry at the world in general, and no one in particular." The girl hugged her knees tighter.

"I'm sorry for letting out all my negativity on you a few months back. I'm sorry. So if it would help you cope, you can pour out all your pent up anger on me. Get back on me that way. Can we be friends again?"

"Xue Guangxi. At a time like this, you still prioritize your own desires over anyone else's, over anything else. You are so selfish. You have a knack of making everything about you." The girl started crying just like that.

Sobs and tears came running faster and more intense than waterfalls.

"That's it. Cry your sorrow and despair. Cry your heart out." He moved closer, and patted her on her back. That was the first time she cried after learning about the deaths, about learning her eldest brother's participation in her second brother's death. She did not only feel abandoned; she also felt betrayed.

In the end, she lost both brothers.

Both of them cried their hearts out until the tears gave up on them.

Chen Lingfang and Jiang Biyu decided to take Kang Sola in, together with the infant twins. Before the deaths, Kang Sola lived with Xue Jinxu, Chen Linyun, and Xue Guangxi. With the three of them gone, she was left alone in the Chen home. Jiang Biyu decided to move in first. After all, whenever she visited her adoptive son, Chen Linyun, from Canada before, she used to stay in that house. They figured that the infants should be brought home and raised in that house, where their parents' traces were still left intact.

Eventually, Jiang Biyu and Chen Lingfang had resolved their issues, and the old couple, who were divorced for three decades, remarried to each other.

Eventually, Kang Sola learned to call them 'Mother' and 'Father'.

Eventually, she found her new family – the greatest gift her second brother, Chen Linyun had ever left her. It was more than inheritance or any material thing.

It was the gift of family.

***

"I wish you can adopt me too." Xue Guangxi threw a side-comment while wiping some peanut butter on his bread.

"Why, that's a horrible thing to say, child, when your mother and father are still around and healthy."

"You're not being a good example to the kids." Father Chen reprimanded, reminding him that the twin boy and girl are having breakfast with them, and are taking in everything they hear and observe like sponges.

"Sorry. I just had wishful thinking so suddenly." He laughed his way out of the rut like how he used to do in almost any situation.

Father and Mother Chen exhaled sharply almost simultaneously.