Chapter 2: My Mom is Twenty

I sat on the chairs in the hallway for over three hours. My back ached, and I sat until dawn broke, when the hallway lights automatically turned off and sunlight streamed in through the windows. A quarter past six, the door to apartment 502 was pushed open from the inside, and I jumped up faster than I’d ever been in my life.

The nurse pushed open the door. She looked at me with a puzzled expression and said, “Your mother… wait, who is that girl in the ward? Where are your family members?”

I peeked through the crack in the door.

The world changed completely in that instant.

A young woman sat on the hospital bed. Her thick, black hair fell to her shoulders, a stark contrast to the dry, grayish-white hair she had the night before. Her skin was fair and firm, her features so defined they seemed to have just been molded. She had an oval face, thin, pale lips, a bare face, and long, curled eyelashes.

She’s beautiful. Not the kind of beautiful that comes from influencer filters, but a kind of… hard to describe, like a vegetable vendor at the entrance of a market suddenly standing up, taking off her apron, and hiding a goddess underneath.

wrong.

She is that vegetable-selling auntie.

My mother sat on the hospital bed, wearing a loose hospital gown, clutching the corner of the blanket with both hands, staring blankly at the back of her hands. Her hands were fair and tender, with slender knuckles. A month ago, her fingers were full of wrinkles and age spots, but now they were as smooth as peeled eggs.

Then my gaze involuntarily swept downwards.

The hospital gown was loose, but it couldn’t hide the weight of what was inside. The fabric stretched out in two exaggerated curves at her chest, rising and falling slightly with her breathing. The collar wasn’t fastened properly, it was askew to one side, revealing a section of her collarbone and a large area of ​​fair chest skin, and below that, the shadow of her cleavage was faintly visible, seemingly endless.

Hold.

I abruptly pulled my gaze back, my heart skipping a beat. That’s not what I meant. It was purely the visual shock. My mother was a gaunt, middle-aged woman yesterday, and today sitting here is… a young woman in her twenties with an E-cup or larger.

She’s my mom. She’s my mom.

”Bao’er?”

The voice has changed too. No, it’s not changed, it’s the same. The voice is young and clear, but the tone of voice is exactly like my mother’s, with the intro of a middle-aged woman’s nagging, and the corner of her mouth twists into a prelude to “I’m telling you, why are you being so disobedient again?”

She looked at me blankly: “Baby, what’s wrong with Mom? Mom’s hands… why has Mom’s hair turned black?”

The nurse tugged at my sleeve from behind and whispered, “What exactly happened to the patient?”

I took a deep breath and walked into the ward. In half a second, I mentally crafted a story.

”Mom, do you remember the folk healer I told you about last week?”

She froze. Last week? What kind of folk healer? Her face screamed, “What nonsense are you talking about?”

I plopped down on the plastic stool by the bed and continued making up my story without batting an eye: “It’s that old man from the mountains, with his family’s secret recipe, who’s doing clinical trials at our hospital. I signed you up, you signed the papers a couple of days ago, don’t you remember? The drug has some unusual side effects, it can… reverse aging.”

silence.

My mother stared at me, her expression shifting from bewilderment to suspicion, and then from suspicion to “Is this child delirious because of a fever?”

”Rejuvenation?” she repeated, raising her voice by half an octave. “Do you think your mother is watching a TV drama? Are you even speaking human language, Shen Qi?”

They called me by my full name. This is bad. It’s a sign they’re about to get angry.

”Mom, don’t panic,” I leaned forward and lowered my voice, “Look at yourself, your hands, your face. This isn’t a dream. Touch your skin, you really have become younger. You’re cured, completely cured.”

She looked down at her hands. Turning them over and over. She touched the back of her left hand with the fingers of her right hand, and then touched her face.

Then she suddenly threw off the covers and tried to get out of bed.

I quickly reached out and grabbed her arm. The feel of my fingers on it startled me; her skin was smooth and firm, completely unlike the loose, flabby feel of before. Warm body heat emanated from her forearm; her body was noticeably heavier than before, no longer just skin and bones, but had flesh on her bones, and… she had everything she needed.

She was barefoot on the floor, her hospital trousers too long, the hems dragging on the floor. After a few steps, her legs were still a little weak, so I helped her to the sink. She held onto the edge of the sink and looked up at herself in the mirror.

A twenty-year-old face was reflected in the mirror.

My mother stared at her face in the mirror, stunned for about ten seconds. Then she slowly turned to look at me, her eyes holding something I had never seen before. It wasn’t surprise, nor fear, but a bewildered sense of disorientation, like someone who had lived in their own home for decades suddenly discovering that their address had changed.

”This…is this Mom?”

She leaned closer to the mirror and poked her face with her finger. Then she tugged at her hair and touched her neck. Her movement of bending over so much that the collar of her hospital gown sagged, revealing a large, white, bulging expanse underneath, which made me quickly turn my head away and stare at the corner of the wall.

She’s my mom. She’s my mom. I need to etch this sentence into my heart many times.

”Mom, the neckline,” I said in a hoarse voice.

She didn’t hear me. She was still looking at herself in the mirror.

”What on earth happened…” she murmured, her voice trembling, “How did my face become like this… Mom is forty years old, how come she looks like a little girl…”

She grabbed the collar of her hospital gown with her right hand and pulled it up, but with her breasts that size inside, it was pointless; the fabric was stretched taut, revealing her entire outline. She was completely unaware of this problem, her attention entirely focused on her face in the mirror.

I turned around, pretending to look out the window. The July sun had already risen, and its rays shone through the glass onto my back, feeling warm.

”Mom, I told you about the side effects of the medicine.” I turned my back to her, trying my best to make my tone sound nonchalant. “It’s like I’ve been rejuvenated, my body is back to twenty years old, and I’m completely cured. It’s just that I can’t say you’re my mom when I go out anymore, because it won’t look like it to outsiders. I’ve already talked to the doctor, and from now on, you’ll be my distant cousin who came from the countryside to stay with me.”

A silence fell behind them.

Then came a long sigh, her voice filled with the suppressed sorrow unique to middle-aged women: “Mom has lived for forty years, and in the end, I still have to pretend to be a little girl…”

I almost burst out laughing. I held it in.

”Shen Qi.”

”Um.”

”Turn around.”

I turned around. She was standing in front of the sink, her hospital gown hanging crookedly on her body. Her twenty-year-old face wore the expression of a forty-year-old woman: her lips were downturned, her brows were furrowed, and her eyes held a complex emotion that seemed to say, “Mom doesn’t quite understand, but Mom knows you’re lying to me, but Mom doesn’t want to pursue this for now.”

”Are you really cured?”

”That’s great.”

She sighed again. She walked over and reached out to touch my face. The touch of her fingers was different from before; they were soft and smooth, but the pressure and direction were exactly the same. She touched my forehead to my chin and finally patted my cheek.

”Look at your dark circles, you haven’t slept all night again, have you?”

My nose stung with tears. I swallowed hard.

”Um.”