I made a dime from selling tangerines and you call me heartless?

My name is Chen Xi.

She is the daughter of Chen Lao Hu.

Since I was a child, I could feel that people around me, whether relatives or neighbors, were afraid of me.

They all smiled at me on the surface, but there was fear in their eyes.

I know they are afraid of me.

Or rather, I was afraid of my father.

Because my father is Chen Lao Hu.

He is a well-known gangster in the whole South City, and has dozens of small gangsters under him.

My mother is very beautiful.

Also very gentle.

She always liked to hold me in her arms and sit on the swing in the community, humming nursery rhymes for me. I thought my life would always be like this.

Happy and joyful.

But that night, my father came back covered in blood and lay on the sofa, looking very miserable.

Mom screamed and broke the glass.

"Chen Hu!"

"Look at what you look like now, ah."

"Can you please stop being involved in society? What will happen to me and my daughter if you continue like this?"

"I'm doing this for this family!"

I hid in the room and listened to their quarrel. This was also the first time I saw them quarrel.

After arguing for a while, my mother said she wanted a divorce and hugged me and cried.

Her tears were so hot that they hurt my heart.

Dad is also roaring,

"Leave if you want."

"It's hard to find a toad with three legs, but can't you find a woman with two legs?"

In this way, although they did not actually divorce, their relationship seemed to have come to an end.

Not long after, my mother was diagnosed with a terminal illness.

That day, the sky fell.

My mother lay numb and stiff on the hospital bed, with tubes inserted all over her body.

My father smoked all night long, then went to sleep after smoking, and then lay on the sofa and cried.

He was rarely at home before and was always outside.

But ever since his mother came back from the hospital, he has been staying at home and rarely goes out.

I count the time until school is over every day.

When I got home, I saw my parents sitting in the yard of the community, talking in low voices, with happy faces.

Also waved at me happily.

That was my happiest time.

My mother would touch my head and tell me stories with a happy face.

Her voice was very soft, as if she was afraid of waking something.

"Xixi, be good to yourself in the future."

I nodded.

At that time, I didn't understand parting, I didn't know anything, I just nodded.
"Mom, I will be fine, and our family will be fine."

It was raining heavily on the day my mother left.

The father knelt in front of the hospital bed and cried like a child.

After that, my father changed again.

He began to send a lot of stuffed toys home, but then became the same as before and rarely came back.

But I don't want any of those toys.

I want my mother.

I want him to come back and play with me as often as before.

Every time I came back, my father would often stare at me in a daze for a long time, and his expression would become very complicated.

I know he is looking for his mother's shadow in me.

I began to hate myself in the mirror.

So much like mom.

But I like myself in the mirror
Because I am so much like my mother.

Every time I look in the mirror, I feel like I am looking into the eyes of my mother.

My father’s younger brothers would occasionally come to our house to help me deliver some things or ask questions.

They call me "Miss Xi".

There is a complexity in his eyes.

I don't like this title very much, because the teacher said that Longguo has been liberated and there will be no more young ladies. Young lady was the title used by landlords in the feudal era.

I'm not some landlord's wife.

At school, my classmates often avoided me, saying that I was the "daughter of gangsters."

I learned to fight.

I will beat up anyone who says anything bad about me. I am not afraid of anything.

Every time we had a fight, my father would touch my head and laugh.
"As expected of me, Chen Hu's daughter."

"But, Xixi, we are girls, we can't fight. We are going to go to college in the future."

He is so contradictory.

On the one hand, he was thinking that I could use my fists to protect myself so that I wouldn't be bullied outside, and on the other hand, he was thinking that I should take a completely different path from him.

So much so that I don’t know how to choose.

My grades aren't particularly good.

Every time I took an exam, I just barely passed the undergraduate line. If there were no major problems, I would probably only be able to go to an ordinary university, which was far from the goal my father set for me.

Dad is very anxious.

I couldn’t solve many of the problems, and neither could he. He could only take a knife and go out on the streets to chop people.

He began to look for his younger brothers to help me find the answer.

But dad...

If your younger brothers can do these things, why don't they go to school instead of following you in society?
until one day.

I met him.

Jiang Che.

Jiang Che’s appearance was like a ray of light, illuminating my gloomy study life.

He easily solved math problems that I couldn't solve no matter how hard I tried, and he could even explain them in a simple way for me to understand.

I watched his slender fingers writing and drawing on the draft paper, and I felt inexplicably flustered.

His voice was soft, with a reassuring power.

But his eyes were always indifferent, as if he was hiding something.

Until he left with his father.

Then I realized that he was in trouble and needed my father's help to solve it.

Is he also active in society?

I'm a little disappointed.

It turns out that studying is just like this. After going to college, it is just like this.

Later, my father helped him settle some things, and he agreed to my father's condition - to tutor me every week.

I go to his fruit shop every week.

The store is always filled with the fragrance of fruits, which makes me feel comfortable.

This feeling is very different from that in a bar, where the air is filled with the smell of cigarettes and alcohol.

He also has a girlfriend.

She comes occasionally. She is a pretty policewoman with curved eyes when she smiles.

Every time she came, I would subconsciously lower my head, afraid that she would see something.

I didn't dare let her know whose daughter I was.

I'm afraid he will look down on me.

But the truth was still revealed.

That day, my father was hacked to death, and I was kidnapped on my way home.

The man tied me up and took me to an abandoned building. The air was filled with mold and dust.

My wrists were so painful from the rough hemp rope, and with a rag stuffed in my mouth, I couldn't even call for help.

I thought their target was Dad, but they said,
"Wait for Jiang Che to come."

Jiang Che?

How could he come?
He is just an ordinary fruit shop owner and has nothing to do with these things.

But he came anyway.

I heard footsteps coming downstairs, light but steady.

My heart was beating wildly. I was both hoping that he would come and afraid that he would come.

The moment Jiang Che went upstairs, I saw him standing at the door, against the light, with a slender figure.

He had no knife or gun in his hand, nothing.

"Let her go."

His voice was still light, but it carried an unmistakable coldness.

"Jiang Che."

"I didn't expect you to dare to come and seek death."

...(End of chapter)