Chapter 4: Supporting a Useless Brother? Not Happening!
While Li Amei went to the bathroom, Lin Zhifeng sneaked back into the bedroom, locked the door, and crawled under the bed to pry open a floor tile that had long since come loose.
Underneath, neatly arranged, were 1,460 yuan in cash. During the sweltering summer, Xie Zhaodi had only been willing to spend 40 yuan from her wages.
Twenty yuan had gone toward buying medicine for heatstroke, and the other twenty had been quietly spent on four ice pops she shared with Xie Laidi.
In the original owner’s memory, the images of summer and ice pops were hazy and beautiful.
The two sisters had sat in a newly built park, their hands sticky with sugary syrup that attracted a swarm of bees. As they ran away shielding their ice pops, they looked at each other and burst into laughter.
“Are ice pops really that delicious?” Lin Zhifeng was very curious and planned to try one herself.
To be safe, she transferred all the money into the system. Anything that belonged to the Xie sisters and caught someone’s eye would inevitably be taken without permission sooner or later—no hiding spot was truly safe.
As she crawled out from under the bed, the sound of the toilet flushing came from the bathroom. She quickly unlocked the door and walked out as if nothing had happened.
“You lazy girl, slacking off again!” Li Amei shot her a vicious glare and barked, “Hurry up and take your dad his food. Don’t dawdle on the way—come back early and wash the pots and dishes.”
Lin Zhifeng didn’t even bother to glance at her. By the time she returned to the kitchen, Xie Laidi had already sealed the thermal lunchbox and neatly prepared the porridge and dishes left for Li Amei and Xie Guibao.
The two sisters held hands as they went downstairs. Once they stepped out of the apartment building, Lin Zhifeng muttered in confusion, “Why doesn’t she check on her precious son?”
Xie Laidi was startled by her sister’s bold tone but found it funny. There was a guilty kind of thrill in secretly speaking badly about their grandmother behind her back.
She pulled her hand out of Lin Zhifeng’s and signed in sign language: “Did you forget? The community’s giving out aid today.”
Lin Zhifeng paused—she really had forgotten about that.
At the end of every odd-numbered month, the community handed out cash and daily necessities to struggling families. Sometimes it was cooking oil, other times rice. The cash was distributed based on the number of elderly, disabled, or ill family members—200 yuan per person.
The oldest in the Xie family, Li Amei, was only fifty-five, still strong and healthy, so she wasn’t eligible. The criteria for “ill” or “disabled” were strict—only families with terminally ill patients qualified.
The only one in the Xie family who met the criteria was Xie Laidi. But every time aid was distributed, she would be sent away with some excuse or another.
This welfare program had only been running for two years. Including this month, Xie Laidi should have received 2,600 yuan by now. Clearly, she hadn’t seen even a penny of it—and still had to take on part-time jobs to help out at home.
“They’ll cough it up sooner or later,” Lin Zhifeng muttered under her breath, pulling Xie Laidi toward the Hekang Pharmacy at the street corner.
When Xie Laidi realized where they were going, she quickly signed for them to go to the cheaper clinic instead. Chain pharmacies always charged one or five yuan more than clinics—for her, even a mosquito’s leg was still meat. She’d always been protective of her sister’s money.
Lin Zhifeng reached out and playfully patted her head, smiling with a suspiciously mischievous look. “Hehe, sometimes spending a little more can lead to unexpected benefits.”
Xie Laidi widened her already big, round eyes, her little head full of confusion. But she was used to listening to her sister, and let herself be led along without protest.
The Hekang Pharmacy had bright, clear windows. By the traditional medicine counter, two middle-aged women were chatting idly. One of them, a curly-haired woman with a rosy face, was gossiping with her coworker about a neighborhood couple’s argument.
“Aunt Bao!” As soon as Lin Zhifeng entered the store, she made a beeline for the curly-haired woman, her eyes lighting up as if she were seeing a long-lost relative.
When Aunt Bao turned around and saw the two girls from the Xie family, her eyes lit up with even more enthusiasm than Lin Zhifeng’s.
“Zhaodi, Laidi! Want some water? Auntie will pour you some.”
Aunt Bao’s warmth wasn’t directed at the people themselves—it was aimed at the juicy gossip trailing behind them.
The Xie family didn’t have much interaction with their neighbors, and they hardly ever came into the pharmacy. Aunt Bao had long been curious about them, but had never managed to get any real scoop.
Now that the Xie sisters had delivered themselves right to her doorstep as fresh gossip material, how could she not be enthusiastic?
Aunt Bao poured two cups of hot water and, from across the counter, grabbed Lin Zhifeng’s hand. She frowned and put on a serious face, pretending to scold her: “You need to eat more meat, child! Don’t go following others trying to lose weight, got it?”
Then she glanced at Xie Laidi—and her eyes widened.
Oh dear, that was one big red handprint on the girl’s cheek. Judging by the shape of the palm and the force behind it, there was no doubt—it had to be Li Amei’s doing!
“Laidi, what happened? How did your little face end up like this?!”
Aunt Bao’s shrill cry drew the attention of her coworker and several customers nearby.
“What a heavy hand!” she shouted dramatically, rummaging through a drawer to pull out a half-used tube of ointment. Dipping a cotton swab into it, she gently dabbed a thin layer onto Xie Laidi’s cheek.
“Come back after dinner—I’ll put another layer on for you. No need to buy the cream—it’s not like you’ll use up the whole thing anyway.”
People like Aunt Bao were hard to classify. You could say she was annoying, but she was kind and warm. But if you tried to say she was a good person, her sharp tongue and tendency to talk behind people’s backs made her hard to like.
Still, at this moment, Lin Zhifeng found her exactly the kind of person she needed.
“Thank you, Aunt Bao. I’ll take my sister to the hospital to bring lunch to our dad. If we’re late again, we’ll get another beating.” She reached up and touched her ponytail, revealing a large bruise on the inside of her arm.
In truth, when she had entered this body, the injuries had fully healed—but the marks on the skin were still visible. The sight of them made Aunt Bao and her coworker frown deeply. They hadn’t expected anyone to treat children this harshly in this day and age.
“I thought I saw Wang Tingmei rushing out this morning. What happened to your dad?”
Wang Tingmei was Zhaodi and Laidi’s mother. She had only found out that Xie Yaozu was hospitalized this morning—otherwise, she would’ve gone to the hospital to stay overnight.
“Grandma said he got his bones broken and has a concussion too.”
“That serious? Did you call the police?”
They weren’t speaking quietly. Everyone in the pharmacy had their ears perked up—this was a small place, and people all knew each other. It was natural to want to hear more.
“No, we didn’t. I don’t know who did it.” Lin Zhifeng gave a simple, honest smile. “We’ll get going now, Aunt Bao—we really can’t afford to be late.” She took her sister’s hand and said goodbye.
There were two main reasons the Xie family didn’t socialize with their neighbors: one, Li Amei and Wang Tingmei weren’t the sociable type; and two, they didn’t want their family’s scandals getting out.
After all, while favoring boys over girls was still common, very few took it to the level of outright abuse like this.
To outsiders, the Xie sisters just seemed like well-behaved, sensible girls who often took on part-time jobs to help support the family.
But what outsiders didn’t know was that the girls never got to keep a single cent they earned. They also didn’t know that the sisters lived with constant hunger—one meal today, none the next—and were regularly beaten. Now, they even faced the terrifying prospect of being sold off.
Xie Yaozu was planning to secretly sell one of them. But there was no way Lin Zhifeng was going to let that happen.
Today, she’d just dropped a little hint to Aunt Bao. Refusing to call the police after such a severe beating would naturally stir suspicion. Once the gossip started to spread and gain traction, she’d use Aunt Bao to slowly leak out the real bombshells.
According to her calculations, August 25th was Xie Zhaodi’s eighteenth birthday. That would be the exact time Xie Yaozu would try to send her away.
That meant she had less than a month to stop it.
