I Won’t Be Your Best Friend - Chapter 3

Lin Dang had made a new friend. Her name was Huo Wan.

Although she did not show any particular surprise on her face, she was actually very happy inside.

Because Huo Wan was a pretty and lively girl. Did people not always yearn for the things they themselves lacked?

Lin Dang felt that Huo Wan might be the part of her personality she was missing.

For example, many things Lin Dang did not dare to do, things she thought were not good, Huo Wan did with incomparable ease.

Take the matter of napping at noon, for instance.

If Dad knew she had not obediently taken her nap at school and had instead secretly chatted with another child for the whole noon break, he would definitely scold her.

The first day of parting from her new friend.

Kindergarten let out very early in the afternoon. Every time this hour came, parents arriving to pick up their children would gradually appear at the gate one after another.

Lin Dang’s eyesight was very good. Lying against the window of the classroom on the second floor, looking through the glass from far away, she saw her mother walk in through the kindergarten gate.

Children of five or six years old still depended on their parents after all.

The word “Mom” was, to Lin Dang at this stage, the warmest and most intimate word.

“Xiao Wan, I have to go. My mom came to pick me up!” Her voice carried faint excitement and happiness.

Lin Dang zipped from beside the window all the way back to her seat, then began packing up her stationery and notebooks, stuffing them into her little schoolbag.

That way, when her mother came upstairs in a bit, she would not have to wait for her to pack.

She had been separated from Ms. Zhao Xiangmei for the entire day, and now she could finally stick to her mother again. Naturally, Lin Dang was overjoyed.

“Ah… you’re going home already?”

Huo Wan also moved back to her own seat from beside the window, looking at the unconcealed happiness on her new friend’s face.

Could she not go home?

Actually, there were also children who boarded at the kindergarten, but those children were all there because their families were too busy and had no time to take care of them.

But Huo Wan and Lin Dang clearly did not belong to that category.

Her small hands gripped the edge of the desk in a conflicted way, her face full of unwillingness.

The two of them were not seated right next to each other, but there was only one aisle between them.

Huo Wan did not know why, when normally she always looked forward to school ending and going home, today she did not want school to end so early at all.

Probably because kindergarten was no longer only full of childish little brats?

“Dangdang…”

Friendship between children was just this pure and progressed this quickly. In only half a day, the two of them already had affectionate nicknames for each other.

Lin Dang zipped her schoolbag shut and lifted her head to look at her.

Actually, Huo Wan was half a year younger than her, so logically speaking, the other girl ought to call her Sister. Although the other party refused to do so even if she died, Lin Dang felt that as the “older” one, she still had to act like an older sister.

She reached out and patted Huo Wan on the head.

Then she said seriously and solemnly,

“Tomorrow, I’ll bring the Grimm’s Fairy Tales my mom bought me and tell you stories.”

“That way, you won’t skip your nap!”

….

Ms. Zhao Xiangmei soon appeared at the entrance of the lower class classroom on the second floor. When Lin Dang saw her mother’s figure, she slung on her little schoolbag and happily pounced into her mother’s arms.

Even as she left, she did not forget to wave goodbye to Huo Wan.

At that time, Ms. Zhao Xiangmei was still a powerful career woman who could command the business world. Together with her husband, she supported the Lin Group, and her career was in a period of rapid rise.

Her clothing and appearance were meticulous.

Yet no matter how busy she was, she still insisted on personally educating and taking care of the two children at home.

“Did you make a new friend at kindergarten today?”

Ms. Zhao Xiangmei held her daughter’s hand and led her all the way out of the kindergarten.

Only, while walking, she turned her head and casually glanced back, just in time to see Huo Wan watching them from the second-floor window.

When interacting with her family, Ms. Zhao Xiangmei would deliberately restrain the sharpness about her, so as not to frighten the children.

Children’s senses were very keen. They could tell which people were easy to get along with and which people were not.

After all, once she walked out of the company’s doors, she was no longer a leader. She was Lin Hai’s wife, and Lin Ran and Lin Dang’s mother.

By then, they had already reached the car.

Ms. Zhao Xiangmei opened the car door. Lin Dang was extremely self-aware, stepping up with her little legs into the front passenger seat. Then she took off her little schoolbag and tossed it onto the back seat.

By the time her mother opened the door and got into the car, she was already properly fastening her own seat belt in a very convincing manner.

“She’s my new friend… but she isn’t very well behaved.”

So she was currently thinking about how she could make Huo Wan become obedient together with her, and not be so naughty.

At this time, little Lin Dang basically had no secrets from her mother.

Every day, whatever interesting things happened at kindergarten, she would repeat them to her mother after school.

Including a little boy giving her food.

Or Huo Wan’s “generous” chocolate incident from yesterday.

“How badly behaved is she?”

Ms. Zhao Xiangmei was a little surprised and very curious to know exactly what degree of “not well behaved” her daughter at this age understood.

“She doesn’t nap at noon.”

Lin Dang turned her face to the side, lifted her head, and looked at her mother.

“She doesn’t eat properly either. Does that make her a bad kid?”

Little Lin Dang did not really understand what “good” and “bad” truly meant.

Because what her family told her was that not eating properly or napping would make her unable to grow tall. To her, not listening to one’s parents was probably “bad.”

“Mm… your dad told you that, didn’t he?”

Ms. Zhao Xiangmei felt a little headache coming on. She did not like Lin Hai’s way of educating children at all. He was always instilling fixed ways of thinking into them.

She hoped her children could be different from others and learn how to judge matters for themselves.

“If you think she’s good, then she’s a good child.”

Ms. Zhao Xiangmei did not want to guide the child’s thinking too much on this question.

She wanted to give Lin Dang room to think for herself.

The scenery outside the window flew rapidly backward as the car drove steadily in the direction of home.

As soon as Lin Dang returned home, she immediately threw her little schoolbag onto the sofa and shouted loudly to her grandmother, who was watching television on the living room sofa.

“Grandma, I’m back!”

Then she ran all the way into her room without even having time to close the door.

“You reckless little ghost girl, is your butt on fire or what? Be careful not to fall!”

Grandma adjusted her reading glasses and could not help saying this as she watched her eldest granddaughter rushing about in such a hurry. The first half was insincere disdain, while the second half was concern.

Lin Dang rummaged through boxes and cabinets, searching for the copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales that she had no idea where she had thrown.

“I remember it was here…”

With great effort, she dragged several large boxes out from under the desk. They were all filled with her old toys and storybooks.

She dumped them all onto the carpet.

As she searched and searched, at some point, a milk doll crawled over beside her.

The baby casually grabbed a toy from the floor, lifted her hand, and was about to stuff it into her mouth. She opened her tiny mouth, and the teeth inside had not even grown in fully yet.

Lin Dang was so frightened that she quickly reached out and snatched it away!

“You dare eat anything. Be careful or you’ll eat yourself into an idiot!”

Little Lin Dang looked at this younger sister, born from the same mother but several years younger than herself, with incomparable disdain.

The two of them sat on the carpet, staring at each other with wide eyes.

“You’re going to go bald…”

Little Lin Dang reached out and stroked her little sister’s sparsely haired head. Originally, there had been a little hat on her head, but now no one knew where she had wriggled it off to.

She was already one year old, and there were still only a few strands of hair on top of her head.

Little Lin Ran stared at her sister with a pair of round, bright eyes, completely unable to understand why her sister was making such a personal attack on her.

At this time, she was just a little over one year old. She could barely walk a few steps, but her main way of moving was still crawling.

“Sis… sis… wu wu &! ?…”

She recognized the person in front of her and could also babble “Sister.” Opening her mouth, she spoke some words no one could understand, as if responding to what Lin Dang had said to her.

Only, that strange pronunciation still made little Lin Dang dislike it terribly.

“Shut up already. It sounds awful!”

Lin Dang reached out and covered her little sister’s mouth in one move, forbidding her from making those strange syllables.

She did not want this younger sister!

Out of three hundred and sixty-five days in a year, there were three hundred and sixty days when Lin Dang wanted to stuff Lin Ran back into their mother’s belly.

Not merely because of the name issue.

When Lin Ran had just been born, she was wrinkly and had made Lin Dang cry from ugliness.

Right there on the spot, Lin Dang had cried while hugging the doctor uncle’s leg and asked him, “Doctor Uncle, can you stuff this ugly thing back into my mom’s belly?”

It made the surrounding adults not know whether to laugh or cry. Older sister and younger sister cried together, staging a sisters’ duet right there in the hospital ward.

Yet in the next instant, Ms. Zhao Xiangmei’s voice came from the doorway.

“Lin Dang! You’re bullying your sister again!”

Her voice carried a little helplessness and anger. They had both come out of her belly, so why were they like enemies?

Lin Dang: !!?

Caught red-handed on the spot, she hurriedly released the hand covering Lin Ran’s mouth. Yet unexpectedly, by now her hand was already covered in a sticky mess, and when she pulled away, strings of drool followed.

This was… way too disgusting!

Lin Ran did not know anything about drool or not drool. She only looked at her sister’s horrified expression and found it very amusing.

Just now, when the other girl had covered her mouth, she had thought this was a game too… so she began giggling.

Only, to Lin Dang’s ears, that laughter sounded very grating.

“Mom! Look, Lin Ran drooled all over my hand!”

Lin Dang began turning the tables, the wicked one filing a complaint first. Tearfully, she complained to Ms. Zhao Xiangmei about her younger sister’s evil deeds.

But how could Ms. Zhao Xiangmei possibly believe her nonsense? She glared at her in annoyance. Lin Dang was good in every way: very obedient, clever, and already very considerate despite her young age.

The only thing was that she did not get along with her own little sister.

“That serves you right. You don’t act like an older sister at all!”

Ms. Zhao Xiangmei slowly walked into the room and reached out to pick up Lin Ran from the carpet.

Lin Ran took the opportunity to lean against her mother’s shoulder, still laughing happily as she looked down from above at Lin Dang, who was sitting on the floor with a hand covered in drool.

“Sis… sis…”

Lin Dang: ??

Shut up!