“After the second wife brought us here, my brother and sister were in shock. Suddenly moving from a mansion to a brick house was a gap that was hard to accept. They cried about wanting to go back, but the second wife didn’t offer any comforting lies. She just told them that we couldn’t go back to that home; if they wanted to return, they’d have to fight for it with their own hands.”
“Isn’t that a bit… cruel?” She shuddered.
“What’s cruel is the reality itself, not how it’s expressed.”
“That makes sense.”
“Then, the second wife told me she didn’t have enough money to support all of us. She asked me to work, helping neighbors mow grass and plant vegetables. Sometimes I’d walk far to help roof a house or fix a water tower. When Zhenhai was fifteen, he joined me.”
“No wonder you’re so physically fit. When you first became successful, some business people said your physique suggested you must have trained, but no one had seen you at any sports club.”
“Of course not. How could we afford club memberships back then? We worked and studied at the same time. I was driven by revenge. I gritted my teeth, balancing work and studies, and even when studying away from home, I was always preparing to enter the business world.”
“Why work so hard?” She remembered he had once refused his father’s white envelope. “You didn’t keep refusing everyone’s kindness, did you?” She frowned.
“At first, the second wife didn’t allow us to accept charity…”
She exhaled with a hint of gunpowder. “You should know that Old Di wasn’t offering charity, he just couldn’t bear to see his students suffering…”
“I know, I know.” He quickly tried to reassure her.
Usually casual with Old Di, she would immediately defend her own people if anyone seemed to slight him. He squeezed her hand and chuckled softly, feeling lucky to be part of her family.
I will translate the text into English:
“I laugh at the way your eyes sparkled when you talked about Second Grandmother, just like the way you first looked at me face to face.”
“What kind of look?”
“Like a cat seeing a mouse, a wolf dog seeing a meat chop, Sun Wukong seeing a peach…”
