1

Maria's childhood friend Derek was a popular relationship guru. She believed love wasn't about instinct, but his strict methodology. Derek said men were like stray cats: starve them to make them cling. So when I pulled an all-nighter, she locked me out in the hallway until sunrise. He claimed security bred complacency, so she vanished on our engagement day to test if I'd break down.

Each time I sobbed, she sighed. "Derek said this is low-value emotional manipulation. I'm doing this for our future." Then Dad had a massive stroke and landed in the ICU. I borrowed from everyone, still three thousand dollars short. Maria refused to send a dime, forwarding my desperate voice notes to Derek instead.

That night, I went viral: Her boyfriend begged for money using his dying father. Romance scam? Dad's blurred critical notice fueled the mockery. Comments hailed Maria as clear-headed, calling me a shameless leech. Bloodshot, I begged her to delete it. She gave a faint, mocking laugh. "Everyone's helping me cut my losses. Reflect on why you sound like a con artist."

The urge to explain myself died. I didn't want to argue anymore. I just wanted to drag myself out of this toxic relationship, clean and whole.

…

The hospital billing counter was closing in ten minutes.

I swiped my debit card three times, but the machine kept displaying the same available balance: two thousand and forty dollars.

The nurse pushed the receipt back toward me.

"You're still short three thousand dollars for the deposit," she said coldly. "If it's not paid by midnight, it will impact his ongoing medication."

I grabbed the slip and sprinted out of the lobby.

Rain poured from the night sky. Across the street sat a small pawn shop.

"The diamond is tiny, and the band has visible wear," the jeweler said, squinting through his magnifying glass. "Best I can do is two thousand five hundred."

Maria had spent ten thousand dollars on this ring.

The day we picked it out, she held my hand and spent the entire afternoon browsing.

I had fallen in love with an eighteen-thousand-dollar band.

She squeezed my fingers tightly. "Wait until our tenth anniversary. I'll buy you a much bigger one."

On the way home, Derek sent her over a dozen voice messages.

"Never feed a man until he's full on the first try," Derek's voice had rattled through her phone speaker. "If you satisfy him right away, his demands will only grow bigger next time."

So Maria turned the car around, went back to the mall, and bought the cheaper option.

Derek even bragged about her on his livestream later that night. "As long as you make the man choose himself, his sunk-cost fallacy will force him to rationalize your decision for you."

Back then, I really did rationalize it for her.

I pushed the ring across the glass counter. "I'll take it."

My phone buzzed. Maria was finally calling.

"Where are you?" she asked.

"The pawn shop across from the hospital."

There was a brief pause on the line. "Did you just sell the ring?"

"My dad needs the money for his treatment."

"Jesse, why do you always have to take things to such extremes?"

I gripped the receipt tightly. "Maria, my father is lying in the ICU!"

"I know," she sighed. "And didn't I come over already?"

She was standing across the street, holding a thermal bag from the porridge shop near the back entrance of the hospital.

I ran over to her through the rain. She reached out and gently wiped the water from my forehead.

"Why are you wearing so little in this weather?"

Inside the bag was a warm container of black sesame porridge. Low sugar, no crushed peanuts, just the way I liked it.

Looking at that familiar packaging, my eyes burned.

Maria unscrewed the lid and handed me a spoon. "Eat a few bites first."

Just as I reached out, her phone chimed loudly.

Derek's voice filled the air through the speakerphone.

"His emotions are running high right now. Don't rush to comfort him."

"Make him record a clarification video first."

"Otherwise, he'll think that the louder he throws a tantrum, the more he gets from you."

Maria's hand froze mid-air.

She glanced at me, then slowly put the lid back on the container.

"I didn't lie," I said, my voice cracking. "You saw the notice with your own eyes."

Maria knitted her brows. "A stroke doesn't mean he's going to die instantly. Derek researched it, plenty of patients wake up the very next day."

"You came at me crying for money right off the bat. Anyone would be suspicious."

She held her phone up in front of my face. On the screen was a pre-written statement.

[Due to extreme anxiety, I exaggerated my father's medical condition. Miss Maria never refused to help me. I am deeply grateful to Mr. Derek for his timely reminder.]

"Read it out loud," Maria commanded softly. "Once you do, Derek deletes the post, and I transfer you the money."

I didn't reach for the phone.

Maria's voice turned cold. "I am willing to give you the money. But you cannot use your family's illness to cross my boundaries."

In the seven years we had been together, "boundaries" was her favorite word.

I wasn't allowed to check her phone.

I wasn't allowed to ask where she went with Derek.

I wasn't allowed to care when they had late-night heart-to-heart chats.

Yet Derek was allowed to read all our private texts.

He was allowed to reply to my messages on her behalf.

He was allowed to decide when she should hold me, and when she should give me the cold shoulder.

A bank notification popped up on my phone: the pawn shop funds had cleared.

I turned around without a word and walked back to the billing window.

Maria stood in the rain, her face growing pale and stern. "If you don't record it right now, don't ever say I didn't give you a chance!"

By the time I finished paying the deposit and made it back to the ICU doors, it was already one in the morning.

My phone kept pushing notifications of Derek's ongoing livestream highlights.

He sat in front of a ring light, a sleek new watch gleaming on his wrist.

"Special thanks to an anonymous old friend," he smiled at the camera. "Knowing I just hit ten million followers, she insisted on sending me this surprise."

The camera panned briefly over the luxury box on his desk. The price tag read three thousand dollars.

The time of purchase was seventeen minutes after I had begged Maria for help.

It wasn't that Maria didn't have three thousand dollars.

She just didn't think my father's life was worth it.

The next morning, my boss called me into his office and suspended me indefinitely.

"We received hundreds of complaint emails last night," he sighed. "Upper management doesn't want clients seeing your face right now."

Shortly after I left the building, the medical crowdfunding platform sent me a notification.

My dad's campaign page had been frozen due to mass reports. The twenty-five hundred dollars already raised was locked and could not be withdrawn.

Then the hospital called.

Strangers had been posing as relatives, calling the front desk to ask if my dad was a hired actor. Some demanded a livestream to verify his condition.

After being harassed for half an hour, the nurses were forced to unplug the landline.

When I hurried back to the ward, a funeral wreath was resting against the hallway wall.

A bright red message was written across the white ribbon:

[May the scammer father and son reunite in hell soon.]

I grabbed the wooden frame to throw it away. A splinter pierced deep into my palm, and blood dripped down my fingers.

Maria happened to step out of the elevator at that exact moment.

Seeing the blood on my hand, she pulled a Band-Aid out of her purse.

"Why are you still so clumsy?" she muttered softly. "Give me your hand."

I didn't move.

She reached out, grabbed my wrist, and skillfully wrapped the bandage around the cut.

She knew I hated onions.

She knew I was terrified of thunder.

Yet when my father was lying in the ICU, she had to ask Derek first if my dad was worth three thousand dollars.

Her phone vibrated in her palm. It was a text from Derek.

[Now that you've comforted him enough, pull away. Don't let him feel that throwing a fit earns him more attention.]

The moment Maria finished applying the Band-Aid, she let go of my wrist like I was radioactive.

I peeled the bandage off and tossed it straight into the trash can alongside the wreath.

"Do you even need his permission to feel sorry for me?" I asked.

Her face darkened. "Stop being so cynical. Derek is spending his valuable time analyzing your personality just to help us."

I looked into her eyes. "The wedding is off."

"From now on, he can guide your love life however he wants."

Maria froze for two seconds, then suddenly let out a bitter laugh.

"Threatening to break up with me to force a concession again?" she sneered. "Derek called it last night. He said once you realized crying didn't work, your next step would be bringing up a breakup."

"Jesse, every single reaction of yours is completely within his predictions."

She handed me a duffel bag filled with clothes and chargers. "You'll be pulling all-nighters here for the next few days."

I pushed the bag back toward her. "I need to go back to the apartment to get my ID and documents."

Maria stepped in front of me. "I'll have my assistant bring them over."

I looked up at her. "Or what? Do I need Derek's permission to go back to my own home now?"

She didn't answer.

Half an hour later, I used my spare key to open the door to our apartment.

My house slippers were still sitting neatly by the entrance. Right next to them was a pair of men's leather shoes.

Derek was sitting casually on the living room sofa, wearing the handmade wool slippers my dad had crafted for me last winter.

I stared at his feet. "Take those off."

Derek looked down casually. "They're just slippers, Jesse. A truly independent man doesn't project his baggage onto everyday objects."

I bent down to pull them off him.

Right then, the study door was pushed open. Maria hurried out and grabbed my arm firmly.

"That's enough!" she snapped. "Derek is just wearing them for a little bit."

Looking at the woman standing in front of me, I suddenly remembered the day we moved in four years ago. She had placed the keys gently in my palm with a radiant smile.

"This is our home from now on," she had whispered. "You can come back whenever you want."

I yanked my arm out of her grip. My lower back slammed against the desk behind me, knocking one of the drawers open a crack.

Inside lay a signed equity purchase agreement.

Maria had purchased a fifteen percent stake in Derek's new coaching company for forty thousand dollars.

The date of the signature was the exact day my father was admitted to the ICU.

Three years ago, Maria's studio suffered a massive cash flow crisis.

My father sold his only property in the old neighborhood and lent her all forty thousand dollars from the sale.

The IOU stated the loan would be repaid within two years. But she kept delaying it.

Every time my dad gently asked about it, she would hold his hands and smile.

"Dad, give me just a little more time," she would say. "Once Jesse and I get married, my money is your money anyway."

My father waited until a stroke nearly took his life, and she wouldn't even give him three thousand dollars.

Yet that forty thousand dollars had gone straight into Derek's company without a second thought.

"Why is my dad's money here?" I demanded, picking up the document.

Maria snatched it away and shut the drawer. "What do you mean, your dad's money? That loan was injected into my business, making it a company asset. My company has the right to decide how to invest its capital."

I stared at her, stunned. "Giving it to Derek is an investment? But giving three thousand dollars to save my dad is what?"

Derek leaned against the doorframe, crossing his arms. "It's pouring money into a bottomless pit, Jesse."

"Three thousand today, rehab fees tomorrow, eldercare after that," Derek continued smoothly. "If Maria doesn't set hard boundaries now, your family will bleed her dry for the rest of her life."

I pulled the drawer back open. On the memo line of the contract, a single code was written:

[Initial payment for Project LG-01.]

Maria yanked the contract out of my hands. "These are internal corporate documents. You have no right to look at them!"

"You took my dad's money to fund a project named after him?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

Her throat tightened slightly. "LG is just a project code."

Derek stepped up beside her. His new three-thousand-dollar watch caught the sunlight, flashing painfully in my eyes.

Suddenly, this apartment I had lived in for four years felt terrifyingly alien.

My clothes were hanging in the closet. My mug sat on the counter. My photos were on the wall.

Yet standing here, I felt like a complete stranger.

My father finally woke up on the afternoon of the third day.

The doctor informed me that he had developed temporary aphasia, and the entire right side of his body was paralyzed.

When I entered the room, he was struggling desperately with his left hand to grab his phone off the nightstand.

The screen was inundated with vile text messages from strangers.

[Just die already. Your death will prove your son is a scammer.]

[Raising a scumbag son like that, you can't be a good person either.]

I snatched the phone away and shut it off.

My father's lips trembled uncontrollably. The nurse quickly brought over a notepad and a pen.

He gripped the pen tightly with his clumsy left hand. Every single stroke was jagged and shaky.

After a long struggle, three barely legible words appeared on the paper:

[Is money enough?]

I squatted down beside his bed.

"It's enough," I lied softly, forcing a smile. "My company paid my salary early."

He stared into my eyes, clearly not believing me.

"It really is enough, Dad."

Tears trickled down his weathered cheeks. Unable to move his right arm, he used his awkward left hand to gently stroke my hair.

Just then, the ward door swung open.

Maria walked in carrying a boutique bakery bag.

"Uncle Hugh is awake?" she asked, her voice bright.

She expertly raised the head of the bed and placed a box of chestnut cake on the bedside table.

The moment my dad saw her, his eyes lit up.

Maria knew he loved chestnuts, but didn't like things too sweet.

Four years ago, when my father was hospitalized for high blood pressure for the first time, I was stuck out of town on a business trip.

Maria stayed by his bedside for two straight nights.

When I rushed back the next morning, she was fast asleep, leaning against the edge of his mattress.

From that day on, my father always said, "Maria is a thoughtful girl, Jesse. You can count on her."

She sat on the edge of the bed and took my father's left hand into hers.

"Uncle Hugh, I'm so sorry you had to go through this," she said softly. "The people online don't know the truth. Please don't take their harsh words to heart."

My father looked at me anxiously.

Maria followed his gaze, looking over at me before turning back to him.

"Don't worry," she reassured him warmly. "I won't leave Jesse over a little misunderstanding like this."

My father's tense shoulders visibly relaxed.

In that brief second, I felt a terrible pang of hesitation.

It was as if she were still the same Maria who had cared for him four years ago.

The very next second, however, she pulled an official document out of her briefcase.

"The public backlash is too intense right now," she explained gently to my father. "If you could just help clarify a small detail, Derek can get the trending topics taken down immediately."

Printed on the paper was a single statement:

[I, Hugh, hereby confirm that I voluntarily gifted forty thousand dollars to Miss Maria. There is no loan agreement between us.]

[My son, Jesse, recently lost emotional control and exaggerated my medical condition to demand funds.]

I grabbed the paper and ripped it in half.

"You're shoving this garbage in front of a man who just woke up from a stroke?" I shouted.

Maria frowned. "It's just clarifying the facts!"

"There is an IOU for that money!"

"That IOU can be voided!" she hissed, lowering her voice. "We are getting married soon! Why are you drawing such a harsh line between your dad's money and mine?"

"Why didn't you talk about being family when you took his money?" I spat back. "Now that it's time to pay it back, you're blaming me for keeping score?"

Maria's expression turned ugly. "Can you stop treating our relationship like a financial ledger?"

"My dad was dying, and you still had to consult Derek to see if he was worth three thousand dollars!"

Hearing the word married, my father frantically grabbed Maria's sleeve. He pointed at the torn paper, then pointed at me, his eyes wide with worry.

Maria patted his hand gently. "If you sign it, Uncle Hugh, I'll have Derek take down the posts tonight."

"The wedding will go on as planned."

"I won't abandon him."

My father stared at me intensely.

I stepped in front of the bed, blocking her view. "Get out."

Maria's face went cold. "Jesse, don't be ungrateful. Your father knows what's best for you."

"He just woke up! He can't even speak!" I yelled, tears brimming in my eyes. "He's just terrified that you'll leave me!"

My father panicked, trying to push himself up with his left arm.

The heart monitor suddenly let out a shrill, piercing alarm.

Nurses rushed into the room, shoving all of us out into the hallway.

The doctor called me over to sign consent forms for additional emergency tests.

When I returned to the floor, Maria was no longer in the corridor.

The ward was dead silent.

A red stamp pad sat open on the bedside table.

The statement I had torn up had been reprinted and laid flat on the mattress.

On the bottom right corner was a smudged, crooked red thumbprint.

When my father saw me enter, he raised his left hand in a panic.

On the notepad beside him were fresh, shaky words he had just managed to write:

[She said... if I sign... she marries you.]

I stood by the bed, completely frozen.

At eight o'clock that evening, Derek posted a teaser for an upcoming emergency livestream.

The thumbnail was a close-up photo of the thumbprinted statement.

The caption read:

[After seven years of being bled dry, she finally received a signed confession from the boyfriend's father.]

In the teaser video, Maria wore a crisp white blouse, offering the camera a tired, long-suffering smile.

"I truly cared for them as my own family," she said softly. "But some people's greed can never be satisfied."

My father's phone vibrated on the nightstand.

I rushed to silence it, but he had already seen the notification.

He stared at me, his left hand still stained with red ink.

His mouth opened, but no sound came out. He could only shake his head over and over again.

The full stream was scheduled for seven o'clock the following evening.

Derek released preview clips throughout the day.

Footage played of Maria walking through a local market with my dad, carrying his groceries.

Another clip showed my dad sitting outside her studio, wrapping homemade dumplings for her staff.

There was even a quiet video of his back as he handed his house keys to the real estate agent the day he sold his home.

These were videos taken from my personal family archives.

Now, they had been edited together into a viral package titled:

[The Complete Record of Raising a Leech Father and Son.]

I dialed Maria's number.

She picked up almost instantly. "Have you come to your senses?"

"Cancel the stream," I said, my voice shaking.

"It's too late for that."

"My dad just woke up," I begged. "He can't handle this."

Maria glanced over at Derek, who was sitting next to her. Derek shook his head firmly.

Her tone instantly hardened. "You're using your dad to guilt-trip me again, Jesse. The stream is just a simple clarification."

"That money was a loan," I said. "You tricked him into pressing his thumbprint!"

"If you have a problem with it, take it to court," she said coldly.

The call went dead.

At seven o'clock sharp, the livestream went live.

I muted my father's phone and hid it deep at the bottom of the bedside drawer, begging the nurses not to play any viral videos in the ward.

But someone posing as a family member snuck into the floor and dropped the stream link into the patient group chat.

While I was at the nurse's station picking up his prescription, my father pulled open the bottom drawer with his good arm.

He sent Maria a single voice message first.

Then, he tapped the link.

When I rushed back into the room, Maria's voice was echoing through the phone speaker.

"Uncle Hugh used to tell me that as long as I married Jesse, all his money would belong to me anyway," she was saying to the camera. "I was young back then. I really believed he loved me like a daughter."

The screen displayed the statement bearing my dad's red thumbprint.

Derek sat beside her, leaning in. "So when Mr. Maher demanded three thousand dollars using his father's medical emergency as an excuse, how did that make you feel?"

Maria lowered her eyes sorrowfully. "Disappointed. It wasn't about the three thousand dollars. It's just that enabling someone without boundaries only feeds their entitlement."

Comments flooded the screen at lightspeed.

My father sat upright in his hospital bed, his face deathly pale.

I sprinted across the room and yanked the charging cable out, blacking out the screen.

My father grabbed my forearm with incredible strength.

Broken, desperate sounds spilled from his throat.

"Lo... Loan..."

He wanted to tell the world that the forty thousand dollars was a loan.

On the screen before it died, Maria had pulled out the original IOU.

A massive red 'X' had been drawn across the document.

"Uncle Hugh personally explained that the IOU was just created for tax bookkeeping purposes," Maria announced smoothly. "So I won't be pressing charges for their past actions."

"However, effective today, I will be cutting off all financial support."

My father stared intently at the dark screen. His chest heaved violently.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

The heart monitor suddenly screamed a continuous, deadly tone.

Doctors and nurses burst through the door.

"Possible secondary brain hemorrhage!" the doctor yelled. "Get him to the operating room now!"

The bed was unlocked and wheeled out at breakneck speed.

I tried to run alongside it, but my knees gave out, and I slammed hard into the hallway wall.

Maria's livestream was still going strong on my phone.

Derek was excitedly announcing that sales for his relationship masterclass had just crossed one hundred thousand units.

Applaud roared through his studio.

I picked up my phone with trembling hands and dialed her number.

Once.

Twice.

I called seventeen times in a row.

She never picked up.

The red light above the operating room burned for three agonizing hours.

When the chief surgeon finally walked out, he looked at me and slowly shook his head.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered. "We did everything we could."

When my father was wheeled out, a white sheet covered his face.

His left hand, still faint with red ink, hung limply over the side of the gurney.

I knelt beside him, gently lifting his cold hand and placing it back beneath the sheet.

My phone vibrated relentlessly in my pocket.

Derek's stream had officially hit the number one spot on the entire platform.

On screen, Maria was answering the host's final question.

"If Jesse apologizes to you right now, will you still marry him?"

She lowered her head, neatly adjusting her cuffs.

The dark gray skirt suit she was wearing was the exact outfit I had bought her for our planned courthouse wedding.

"That depends on whether he can truly recognize his mistakes," she said calmly. "Marriage is not a charity program."

"I will not compromise my principles just because he cries pathetically."

Thunderous applause broke out in the studio.

The stream transitioned to the celebration segment.

An assistant holding a tablet hurried onto the stage. "Miss Maria, your personal phone has been ringing non-stop."

Maria glanced down.

The screen was covered with seventeen missed calls from my number.

Before she could process it, an incoming call from an unknown number flashed across the display.

Derek reached out, placing his hand over hers. "The stream isn't over yet."

The ringtone dragged on relentlessly.

In the end, Maria pressed answer.

"Hello?"

The nurse's voice echoed clearly through her lapel microphone, broadcasted live to hundreds of thousands of viewers.

"Is this Miss Maria?"

"This is the Central Hospital ICU."

"You are listed as the emergency secondary contact for Mr. Hugh Maher."

"Mr. Maher suffered a massive relapse. Despite emergency resuscitation, he passed away at ten twenty-seven tonight."