I gave my mother 1.5 million a month to take care of my wife after childbirth…

Hue shook his head, but his gesture did nothing to alleviate the situation, because the truth seemed more complicated than my mind wanted to simplify it.

“She says we have to save… that money isn’t enough… that you don’t understand how difficult everything is,” she explained slowly.

Each of his words was like a piece of a puzzle that I didn’t want to complete, because the final result scared me.

“And what about the money I give him every month?” I asked, feeling my patience begin to break.

Hue hesitated again, and that hesitation was enough to confirm that there was something more he wasn’t saying yet.

“She… uses it… but she also says there are debts… that you don’t know everything,” she whispered.

Debts. That word hit me hard, because I didn’t remember any outstanding debts, nothing that would justify that kind of situation.

My mind started racing, searching for explanations, trying to find a mistake, something I could easily correct, but nothing was clear.

At that moment I heard the front door open, followed by familiar footsteps that echoed in the hallway with an unsettling normality.

My mother was returning.

Hue tensed up immediately, as if his body reacted before his mind, and lowered his gaze, hiding his hands under the table.

I stood there, still holding the bowl, feeling that the object now weighed more than anything else in the room.

My mother appeared in the kitchen doorway, with a bag in her hand and an expression that changed as soon as she saw us together.

“Oh, you’re early,” she said, trying to sound natural, but her eyes lingered on the bowl I was holding.

The silence became dense, almost palpable, as if the air itself was waiting for what was going to happen next.

“What is this?” I asked, lifting the bowl slightly, without taking my eyes off her.

My mother frowned, as if she didn’t understand why that question was important, as if everything was perfectly normal.

“Food,” he replied coldly. “What else could it be?”

That response ignited something inside me, a mixture of disbelief and rage that I could no longer contain.

“Do you think this is food for someone who just gave birth?” My voice trembled, but not from weakness.

She placed the bag on the table with a curt movement, and her expression changed, becoming harder, more defensive.

“You’re not here every day,” he said. “You don’t know what everything costs, what you have to do to make ends meet.”

His words weren’t an apology, they were a justification, and that threw me off more than I expected.

“I’ll give you enough money,” I replied. “This doesn’t make sense.”

My mother let out a short, humorless laugh, as if I were naive for thinking that everything was so simple.

“Enough?” he repeated. “You think 1.5 million solves everything, but you have no idea about reality.”

I felt the conversation was veering off course, that she was avoiding something, circling around the issue without directly addressing it.

“Then explain it to me,” I said. “Because this isn’t normal, and I’m not going to ignore it.”

Hue remained silent, staring at the ground, as if he did not want to be part of that confrontation, as if he had already experienced it before.

My mother stared at me, and for a moment I saw something different in her eyes, something more tired, heavier than I remembered.

“There are things you don’t know,” he finally said. “Things I did so that you could be where you are now.”

Those words made me doubt, even though I didn’t want to, because they appealed to something deep, to an emotional debt that I couldn’t easily measure.

“Don’t change the subject,” I replied. “I’m talking about Hue.”