Chapter 9

By the time school let out, Ye Chengji was already waiting outside the brat’s school gate.

The area beside her was crowded with parents craning their necks in anticipation.

The elementary school students pouring out after class resembled a flock of chicks released from their pen for some fresh air, chattering noisily as they rushed outside in search of their waiting parents.

Yet Ye Chengji still did not see the brat.

And she had even made a special effort to arrive early for once.

Just as she began wondering whether the brat had slipped past her unnoticed among the crowd, Ye Chengji finally spotted the tiny figure among the thinning stream of students.

“Zhu Letao!”

The brat had been walking slowly with her head lowered, apparently never expecting anyone to come and pick her up. When she suddenly heard the familiar voice, she raised her head toward its source in disbelief.

“What are you standing there for? Hurry over. I came to take you home. You even walk at a snail’s pace, yet you’re terrifyingly fast whenever there’s food involved.”

Ye Chengji wore a wide-brimmed straw hat to block the sun and had a blade of grass clenched between her teeth, though no one knew [bailiantales.com]where she had pulled it from. After waiting so long, her brows were tightly furrowed. She looked angry and somewhat frightening.

However, Zhu Letao had already seen what Ye Chengji looked like when she was truly furious. She knew this expression merely meant she was impatient, so she was not afraid and quickly ran over on her short little legs.

The instant she saw that familiar figure, the corners of her lips unconsciously lifted. Although she habitually pressed them flat again in the next moment, her gleaming black eyes—so different from their usual darkness—revealed everything.

“Ye Chengji!”

“You’re younger than me, so you need to respect me. You can’t call me directly by my name. You have to call me Sister, understand, Little Taozi?”

Ye Chengji usually heard her full name only when she had gotten into a fight or caused trouble and her homeroom teacher called her out for criticism. Hearing it unexpectedly made all the hair on her back stand on end.

Being called by her full name by the brat made her feel especially uncomfortable all over.

Ye Chengji unhappily clenched her back teeth.

She had already shown Zhu Letao how powerful and reliable she was that morning, so why did it still feel as though she had failed to establish her dignity as the head of the household?

Zhu Letao pattered over and immediately grabbed the hem of Ye Chengji’s shirt.

She held it tightly.

The formerly smooth fabric was about to become wrinkled like dried pickled vegetables again.

Ye Chengji also stuffed a blade of grass into the brat’s mouth. The root of this grass was sweet and crisp when chewed, and because it grew everywhere, children often treated it as a natural snack.

The brat seemed to possess an indiscriminate desire to claim anything placed in her mouth. At first, she frowned and chewed without knowing what it was. Only after tasting the sweetness did her brows relax. She stared at Ye Chengji with wide eyes.

“It’s sweet!”

“Of course it’s sweet. Why else would I give it to you?”

She dared chew it without even knowing what it was.

As expected, she was a foolish child.

Ye Chengji glanced at the brat gripping her so firmly. When Zhu Letao looked up, the sun still hanging high above made her narrow her eyes.

Ye Chengji simply removed the straw hat she had woven herself and pressed it onto Zhu Letao’s head.

Then she lifted the nearly weightless brat into the air and placed her astride her ​read the original at bailiantales.com​shoulders, using Zhu Letao as her own sunshade.

Zhu Letao stared blankly as the ground grew increasingly distant.

A round head appeared directly in front of her, yet her field of vision gradually broadened. She could see much farther than before, and even the cloudless, deep-blue sky seemed closer.

She unconsciously reached toward it.

Her fingers touched a handful of cool wind, which flowed gently and lingeringly through the spaces between them before drifting toward some unknown distance.

“Are you sitting securely?”

“…Mm.”

Zhu Letao noticed that her heart was beating a little quickly.

Perhaps she was slightly afraid of heights.

She withdrew her outstretched hand and curiously touched the new object on her head. It was very light and smooth overall, though its edges were slightly prickly. With the direct sunlight no longer striking her face, she felt somewhat cooler.

“Let’s go home!”

Ye Chengji’s voice sounded from very close by, which Zhu Letao found strangely fascinating.

“Mm.”

She nodded more forcefully than usual. Taking advantage of the fact that Ye Chengji could not see her, she clutched a handful of the sweet grass roots Ye Chengji had given her and let the corners of her lips rise extremely high.

As Ye Chengji walked below, she watched Zhu Letao’s happily swinging feet from the corner of her eye. The contrast between those movements and the brat’s deliberately indifferent tone made her secretly laugh.

Little kid.

Still, she had to control herself and not laugh aloud. Otherwise, the embarrassed brat might do something unpredictable.

She hoped the road home could be a little longer.

For once, the two of them shared exactly the same thought.

However, the moment they returned home, the buoyant happiness that had nearly made them float along the entire journey vanished without a trace.

It was as though they had been dragged out of a fantastical summer adventure and forced back into reality. The summer that had just moments ago pulsed with vivid color and life instantly became the same unbearable season of suffocating heat inside a cramped room.

Once they reached the bottom of the building, Ye Chengji lowered the brat to the ground and took her hand before climbing the stairs.

The apartment was a smoky mess.

The dining table in the living room had become a mahjong table. The crisp clacking of the tiles mixed with several different voices, forming a chaotic ensemble conducted by someone utterly incompetent and leaving anyone who heard it restless and irritated.

The family’s only precious electric fan had, for once, been released from Zhang Lan’s bedroom. It worked diligently in the living room, turning from side to side and blowing cool air while fulfilling its mission with a continuous buzzing cry.

Zhang Lan and Zhu Zhengjun had brought their card-playing friends from outside into the apartment.

Ye Chengji looked at the pile of sunflower-seed shells covering the floor and drew a deep breath in an attempt to calm herself, only to inhale a lungful of secondhand smoke and burst into violent coughing.

The noise at the entrance finally seemed to attract the attention of the people playing mahjong inside.

One of them apparently retained a little conscience. She smiled apologetically at the girls and called out to the two adults, who had noticed nothing.

“Hey, your children are back. Should we wrap things up after this round?”

Zhang Lan and Zhu Zhengjun finally tore their eyes away from those magically compelling little tiles and looked toward unauthorized copythe two children holding hands by the door.

Zhu Zhengjun had lost several rounds and was already filled with rage. After being interrupted, he looked over with extreme impatience. The bloodshot veins in his eyes made him appear especially savage and frightening.

Zhang Lan did not have the habit of becoming completely consumed by gambling, but she clearly had no desire to leave either. She casually picked up several bills from the table and tossed them toward the girls, offering a few perfunctory words of reassurance.

“We adults are busy, so you two go eat outside. Xiao Ji, take good care of your little sister. You’re the older sister, so you’ll be responsible if anything happens to her… Hey, I made another kong!”

Zhang Lan shouted excitedly.

The money drifted lightly onto the dusty, rubbish-strewn floor.

Zhu Letao stepped forward to pick it up, but Ye Chengji pulled her back.

She raised her head toward Ye Chengji, confusion appearing in her black eyes. Still, she did not insist and obediently remained where she was.

After hearing Zhang Lan’s response, the woman who had called out to them said nothing further and returned her attention to the ever-changing game.

Compared with two unfamiliar children who had just returned from school, the adults cared far more about what was happening on the mahjong table.

Ye Chengji walked over and picked the bills up from the filthy floor.

She forcefully shook off the dust and the single sunflower-seed shell stuck to them, then expressionlessly took Zhu Letao’s hand and left.

After stepping outside, she kicked the door shut.

The slam shook the entire hallway, knocking a layer of dust from the doorframe in a soft cascade.

It resembled a bizarre snowfall in summer.

A burst of cursing came from behind the door.

Only then did Ye Chengji’s brows relax. She smiled, happiness returning to her face as though the clouds had parted to reveal clear skies, and led the brat downstairs by the hand.

“Come on. Let’s go eat.”

Zhu Letao had no particular thoughts about what had just happened inside.

To her, it was simply the same daily routine as before. She held no expectations whatsoever toward the man she was supposedly meant to call “Father.”

Strictly speaking, there was one thing she expected from him.

She hoped he would die soon.

As for everything else…

As long as she could eat until she was full, that was already good enough.

Compared with before, her life was now much better. Every day, she could eat her fill, have plenty of candy, sleep in a bed, and have Ye Chengji play with her…

Her grip on Ye Chengji’s hand tightened even further.

“Eat quickly. Once you’re finished, I’ll take you somewhere fun.”

Ye Chengji spoke while eating noodles and watching the brat struggle with a pork rib.

Zhang Lan had probably won money today. The smallest bills lying in front of her earlier had been ten yuan, so naturally, the amount she tossed to them was not insignificant.

When Ye Chengji calculated it, they had actually come out ahead today.

She looked down and saw the brat dazedly nodding without even asking where they were going, merely responding with a foolish “Mm.”

She could not help laughing.

The last traces of irritation and disappointment in her heart disappeared completely.

She had once held a faint hope that Zhang Lan might become slightly more responsible after getting a new man.

Unexpectedly, Zhang Lan had instead picked up the man’s terrible gambling habit first.

“What is this place?”

Zhu Letao stared blankly at the many strangely shaped machines before her. They emitted multicolored lights she had never seen before and produced deafening sounds.

Unable to help herself, she tugged on the shirt of Ye Chengji, who was exchanging money for game tokens at the counter, and quietly asked the question in her usual voice.

Only after the words left her throat did she realize that her voice had been completely drowned out by the machines. She could barely hear herself.

Zhu Letao instinctively covered her ears.

However, the tug on her shirt attracted Ye Chengji’s attention.

Ye Chengji looked down and finally realized that the noise was probably overwhelming for a child visiting an arcade for the first time. She frowned in mild regret.

But just as she considered whether they should leave, Zhu Letao seemed to adapt remarkably quickly.

She lowered her hands from her ears and began curiously observing the unoccupied machines.

Holding a small basket of metal tokens, Ye Chengji crouched beside the brat’s ear and raised her voice.

“This is called an arcade. You put one of these tokens into a machine, and then you can play its game.”

After explaining, she handed Zhu Letao several tokens and intended to take her to a few games that were easy for first-time children to learn.

Before she could continue toward the machine she had chosen, however, the weight hanging from the hem of her shirt abruptly stopped moving.

Ye Chengji turned around.

The brat stood motionless in front of a machine made of transparent glass.

She stared fixedly at the dolls inside, each posed differently yet equally adorable, and could no longer [bailiantales.com]bring herself to walk away.

“This is a claw machine. Anything you manage to grab and bring out becomes yours. Do you want to play this?”

“I want it!”

Apart from her screams when she was angry, this was the first time Ye Chengji had heard the brat speak so loudly.

Zhu Letao also nodded vigorously, as though afraid Ye Chengji would take her away if she answered too slowly.

Ye Chengji simply crouched down as well.

Taking advantage of the rare opportunity presented by Zhu Letao staring in fascination and forgetting to resist, Ye Chengji’s mischievous instincts erupted.

She vigorously ruffled the brat’s soft hair, rubbing until it resembled a messy bird’s nest.

Once she had thoroughly satisfied herself and raised her eyes, she discovered with amusement that the brat had not noticed at all.

Both Zhu Letao’s hands and her face remained pressed tightly against the glass as she stared dazedly at the dolls inside, nearly drooling.

“Then try it once first.”

After briefly explaining how the machine worked, Ye Chengji saw how eager she was and added a warning in advance to temper her expectations.

“I’m telling you now, though. This is a little difficult.”

Zhu Letao merely nodded perfunctorily at Ye Chengji’s warning, then confidently inserted two tokens into the slot.