Chapter 43

Of course, someone has to go and talk some sense into them. Though Anna’s condition has stabilized, she was just discharged from the hospital not too long ago. Crying herself sick wouldn’t be good.

Leon gave his little brother’s head a pat, saying he was smart but still a bit dumb yet somehow understood everything, then put down the newspaper he was reading, stood up from the smaller bedroom, and headed towards Anna’s room.

This old house on Veteran’s Lane wasn’t originally the home of Leon and his three siblings; it was an old place allotted by the Military Department after they forcibly withheld part of their compensation. The house was almost five times older than Leon himself.

The old house was in bad shape, poorly lit, and didn’t even have a toilet. Apart from a small living room connected to the kitchen, there was only one master bedroom and one smaller secondary bedroom.

The smaller secondary bedroom had always been occupied by Leon. As for what was called Anna’s room, it was actually the master bedroom shared by her and her two younger siblings.

“Creak”

With the rusty groan of the old door hinge, Leon pushed open the door to the master bedroom and immediately saw his sister sobbing into the bedding.

Just like the secondary bedroom where Leon lived, this tiny master bedroom also only had a single bed. When William and Melanie were younger, they could barely fit on it, but as the two troublemakers grew, it became quite cramped.

So Leon scavenged some wooden planks and bricks from outside, adding an extension to the old bed and padding it with bedding and old clothes from their parents, hoping his younger siblings would sleep more comfortably. However, due to the material used, the added section wasn’t very stable, and the bed frame easily wobbled.

At that moment, Anna was lying on this unstable part of the bed. With every muffled sob, the newly added half of the bed shook, causing her bottom to wiggle along with the sound, looking rather comical, which made Leon chuckle despite himself.

“Brother! You’re laughing at me!”

Hearing Leon’s stifled laughter, Anna lying on the bed got even angrier, uncharacteristically throwing a tantrum. She kicked her white, tender feet in the air before complaining:

“It’s all because you spoiled them! Whenever they acted up before, you always stopped me from hitting them! Now they’ve started shoving horse dung into my mouth, and you’re still laughing about it!”

“Hmm…”

Embarrassed to explain what he was really laughing at, Leon quickly looked away, glancing around the room’s furnishings while changing the subject: “I just think that simply spanking them might not work. They need to understand why they’re being punished, otherwise they’ll think getting beaten means they can act out without consequences.”

“If they don’t get spanked first, they won’t listen to your reasoning!”

Anna, who was usually gentle and rarely voiced her opinions in front of Leon, was extremely assertive when it came to disciplining her younger siblings.

Wiping her tears with the back of her hand and stopping her sobs, she turned around and argued stubbornly:

“You don’t know how annoying they can be since you don’t spend much time with them!

Melanie isn’t unaware of right and wrong; she just thinks she can fool her way through things! And William is even more troublesome. He doesn’t actively cause trouble, but his ideas are always strange, like… like…”

After struggling for a while to find words to describe her younger brother’s odd thought process, the frail girl slammed her fist on the bed in frustration and summarized: “Anyway, they need discipline! If we don’t manage them now, it’ll be too late once they grow up!”

“Yeah, yeah, discipline! We definitely need to discipline them! Next time, I won’t stop you!”

After agreeing a couple of times, Leon sat down by the bed, gently stroking his sister’s back while softly comforting her:

“But you should also try to look on the bright side. Although they are indeed mischievous, they never intentionally bully others. Most of the previous incidents weren’t entirely their fault… Hmm… Let me think.”

Recalling the few situations he remembered, Leon’s expression became somewhat complicated as he spoke:

“This time they caused trouble because someone said you wouldn’t come back; last time it was during a game where a kid called William a bastard; the time before that, they stopped a fat boy named Jack from bullying others; and the time before that, it was when I went to the docks to work as a loader but got chased away for not being strong enough, and people in the alley started gossiping; and before that, it was probably when your coughing kept the neighbors awake at night, and they called you a consumptive ghost…”

The more Leon recalled why his younger siblings acted up, the more uncomfortable both he and Anna felt.

They hadn’t realized it before, but now they saw that although the two were very mischievous, each incident had its reasons. So instead of calling them “mischievous,” it was more accurate to say they were trying, in their own ways, to protect this fragile family.

If only Leon, as their older brother, had been stronger back then and could have shielded them from more of life’s harshness, perhaps the two kids wouldn’t have needed to be so “troublesome” and could have happily grown up as normal, lively children…

“Let’s not dwell on these thoughts anymore.”

Seeing the tears welling up in his sister’s eyes, Leon quickly changed the topic, picking up an old, yellowed photo album from the bedside shelf and wrapping his arm around Anna’s thin shoulders to comfort her: “I now have a public security job, and once I’m officially employed at year-end, I can enroll William and the others for free, so they won’t have to fight with the neighborhood kids anymore. So let’s leave the past behind. Our family will surely get better in the future…

By the way, the last time we looked at the photo album together was when I had a fever over two years ago. Since it’s still early today, if you’re feeling okay, why don’t we flip through it again?”

“Hmm…”

Leaning slightly against Leon following his gentle nudge and resting lightly on his shoulder, Anna took the photo album with red-rimmed eyes, fondly touching the worn hard cardboard cover before slowly opening it and flipping through the pages.

“This is Mother when she was young.”

Opening the first page of the album, pointing to a faded group photo featuring a woman dressed in military attire whose features somewhat resembled Leon’s, Anna explained softly: “When I was little, Mother told me… us… that this was her picture when she entered the Mechanic College and was assigned to the artillery adjustment class. And this is Father…”

Anna’s soft fingertip moved upward, pointing to a tall, handsome man with black hair smiling warmly in the corner of the back row.

“Father and Mother were classmates originally. After graduation, they were both recruited into the same unit, gradually becoming familiar with each other. Then they had… you, and the next year, they had me…”

As Anna gently flipped through the photo album, watching the unfamiliar man and woman progress from meeting, knowing each other, falling in love, and finally standing in formal wear and wedding dresses in a small church, exchanging loving gazes with tears of happiness, Leon’s mood also warmed.

Unlike the cold and cruel reality, the happy moments captured in the photo album were warm. Even though they were severely faded due to time, it did nothing to diminish the brilliance and charm of those smiles.

Speaking of which… Was Anna this lively as a child? Looking at the radiant smile of the golden-haired little girl in the photo, Leon couldn’t help but reach out and gently touch the little Anna’s golden hair.

In his memory, Anna either smiled softly at him with her gentle gaze or was seen covering her mouth while coughing during her illness, and occasionally furrowing her brows. Leon had never seen his sister smile this happily… What exactly stole her smile?

As the photo album was already halfway finished, though Melanie and the others hadn’t appeared yet, the answer silently emerged in her mind.

“Hey… I suddenly remember I still have some work unfinished!”

“How about we stop here? You’re tired today. You should rest early!”

“Hmm…”

The slender girl responded softly, seemingly oblivious to Leon’s abnormal behavior, directly closing the photo album and lightly nodding with a smile.

However, after Leon hurriedly left, she didn’t get up but reopened the heavy old photo album, slowly flipping to the last page.

On the already yellowed back cover of the photo album, where the most important photos should have been placed, stuck a torn old photograph.

The person who tore the photo seemed to have done so forcefully, even roughly crumpling the fragments, causing many cracks to curl up. Despite careful handling, it was impossible to completely flatten them, and the faces in the portraits were not entirely intact.

On this peculiar photo, the couple who had appeared multiple times earlier in the album, but had been dead for six years, were still happily smiling at the camera, embracing under a sign that read “Family Portrait” in cursive script.

However, in front of them were not four siblings—two boys and two girls—but only one child around eight or nine years old. That child was holding hands with his father and mother on either side, smiling radiantly at the camera.

Reaching out her finger to touch the face of the child in the photo, pressing down the curled edges to reveal golden hair identical to her mother’s, Anna couldn’t help but bite her lips tightly upon seeing the unfamiliar smile on the girl’s face.

Without any content inside!

Then, as if making a decision, she carefully scraped off the glued photo fragments piece by piece with her fingernail, found a matchbox and a small bucket in the room, and threw all the fragments into the iron bucket.

Turning her head away with reluctant eyes, Anna struck a match, ignited a piece of cotton, and dropped it into the bucket, burning the last family portrait of her and her parents into ashes at the bottom of the bucket!

…

Uh… There was something I forgot to do yesterday.

Unaware of what happened after he left last night, Leon, a dedicated worker with no holidays, got up from his small bed as soon as dawn broke.

After checking the scrap paper he used as a memo, he regretfully realized that yesterday, fearing he might remind Anna of painful memories, he had fled midway through viewing the photos and completely forgot to ask her to confirm his birthday.

Now… Neither she nor William should be awake yet, so maybe I’ll ask her tonight when I return!

Looking at the still dark master bedroom, Leon shook his head, abandoning the idea of asking now, and instead quietly carried a stack of old newspapers, slipping out of the house and walking to work under the stars.

Hmm? Where’s the coffee stall? When he reached the usual spot, Leon was surprised to find that despite the perfect temperature for business, the greedy merchant who ran the coffee stall named after Chal Department Store wasn’t there today.

After searching the nearby streets and finding no trace of Old Chaer, Leon finally gave up hope for the promised half-price coffee, dragging his face towards another small stall across the street and ordering the cheapest coffee.

It must be said that although Old Chaer’s coffee stall was expensive and stingy with portions, the “consumer experience” was truly top-notch, unmatched by other stalls. This small stall offered plenty in quantity, but it just didn’t taste like Old Chaer’s.

Sighing regretfully, Leon gulped down the scalding coffee in a few swallows and was about to leave when he caught sight of a somewhat familiar face at the neighboring table.

That person… Is he one of Old Chaer’s regular customers?

Recognizing the face, Leon briefly hesitated before quickly approaching.

“Excuse me, may I disturb you?”

Pointing toward the street opposite, before Leon could ask his question, the familiar customer raised his eyebrows in understanding and preemptively said,

“Oh! Isn’t this the son-in-law Old Chaer picked?”

???

What? I just drank his coffee a few times, and I paid for it every time. How did I become his son-in-law?

Watching the confused Leon, the fifty-something regular laughed a couple of times, briefly explaining the origin of the title before smiling and asking,

“You’re asking me because you want to know why Old Chaer didn’t set up his stall today, right? Well, I do know!”

Motioning for Leon to sit down, the fifty-something regular continued,

“I met him last night. It seems his wife partnered with someone in business but accidentally fell into a trap set by others, losing a lot of money. She got so angry she fainted on the spot.

Fortunately, she was lucky to be saved by a kind-hearted young man passing by, avoiding any major issues. But she’ll likely need to rest for half a month.

Old Chaer told me he needs to take care of his wife and seek justice from those people. He won’t be setting up his stall for a few days.”

“…”

Business… fell into a trap… lost a large sum of money… fainted on the spot… and was saved by a kind-hearted passerby… Why does this sound so familiar? After hearing the story of another “Madam Chael,” Leon scratched the back of his head awkwardly, feeling that the coincidences in this world were indeed too absurd.

To be honest, if saving data from Water Power Corporation could also count as “passing by,” then these two Madam Chael’s experiences were almost identical.

Could these two Madam Chael’s possibly be the same person? And could the Old Chaer selling coffee on the street be the same as the Chaer from Chal Department Store…

That’s impossible! After pondering the possibility of such bizarre coincidences, Leon involuntarily smirked, mocking himself internally.

Meeting a coffee-selling uncle on the street, only to find out he’s one of the top three richest men in the Capital City, and then rescuing the rich man’s wife during an external mission yesterday, leading to hearing this morning that the wealthy man apparently intended to choose him as his son-in-law to inherit his department stores spread throughout the capital…

Less bullshit, seriously, do you think you’re the protagonist or something?

(The chapter ends here)