Wang So is no stranger to fever.

The first great fever he had experienced was that night—the night his mother cut into his face and
setting his fate in stone. His brother had been the one to call for the doctor. Not his father, busy
consummating the new marriage, let alone his mother. It was Wang Moo who held his hand through
the night. It was Wang Moo who listened to him whimper and whisper, calling futilely into the night
for his mother. Mother, mother, mother. Was it not a mother’s deed to care for her son? Was it not a
mother’s deed to keep her son close to her chest, night till morn, when he was ill?

But his mother never came. Not that night, nor in any of the next.

Yet

The blade she had used had not been clean; it was ridden with jealousy and ill intent, and perhaps
some other substance that incited the body to react violently. his brother