Chapter 3

Chapter 3

My father woke up on the fourth day.

He was still very weak and spoke slowly, but he finally recognized people.

My mother held him and cried. Standing beside them, I felt my feet touch solid ground for the first time.

The doctor soon called me out.

He explained that post-operative recovery, follow-up exams, lost wages, and nursing care would all cost money.

There was a long list of expenses trailing behind that.

I nodded while frantically doing the math in my head.

The more I calculated, the more I dreaded the future.

I had been on leave for too long, and my workplace was already starting to press me for a return.

My mother couldn’t handle all of this alone, and my father couldn’t be left without someone by his side.

This family was stretched to its limit, ready to snap at any moment.

It was then that Xu Yan stepped in and stabilized the most chaotic end of things for me.

She arranged for a caregiver and contacted a rehabilitation specialist.

She also had her assistant compile a spreadsheet of insurance claims, workers’ compensation filings, and the various service windows I needed to visit, then sent it to me.

I stared at those few pages of paper, speechless for a long time.

“When did you start preparing these?” I asked the assistant.

The assistant looked a bit awkward. “President Xu had me start on them in the early hours of the morning.”

Again, the early hours.

That afternoon, while I was feeding my father porridge, he suddenly asked, “Where is Xiao Xu?”

I was startled. “Who?”

“That Xiao Xu who’s been helping out.”

His voice was still very faint. “She came to see me just now. She even remembered that I don’t eat ginger.”

My movements froze.

The fact that my father didn’t eat ginger was something even I forgot when I was busy, yet Xu Yan remembered.

Two years ago, the first time she came to my house for dinner, my father had cooked a fish.

He accidentally picked up a slice of ginger and frowned as he downed half a glass of water.

At the time, Xu Yan was sitting next to me. She didn’t say anything, but she quietly picked out every bit of ginger from the edge of the plate.

My father had laughed then. “You’re a thoughtful child.”

Xu Yan had glanced at me and said, “Of course I have to remember things involving her family.”

I had held onto that sentence for two years.

It was just that the breakup later was so painful that I didn’t dare think about that kind of kindness anymore.

That night, because I had been staying up for several days in a row, my blood sugar dropped, and I nearly fainted in the hallway.

She was the one who caught me, steadying me before shoving a piece of candy into my hand.

“If you collapse too, who’s going to hold things together here?”

Her words were as unpleasant as ever.

I looked away and whispered, “Thank you.”

She seemed surprised to hear those words from me. She paused for a moment before replying coolly.

“Don’t mention it.”

At ten o’clock that night, I went downstairs to buy some water and ran into her again by the vending machine.

She wasn’t wearing her formal suit; her shirt sleeves were rolled up to her elbows, and her face showed a rare trace of exhaustion.

As soon as I approached, she frowned.

“Missed dinner again?”

“I ate.”

“Don’t let your eyes wander when you’re lying.”

I was about to snap back, but my stomach betrayed me with a sharp cramp.

She sighed, bought a carton of milk and a sandwich, and handed them to me.

“Take it.”

“I told you, I’ll pay you back.”

Xu Yan looked at me and suddenly let out a short laugh.

“Are you keeping a ledger for a sandwich I bought you now?”

“What else should I do?”

“Then keep your ledger,” she said, her tone flat. “Anyway, what you owe me has never been limited to just this.”

With that, she walked away.

I stood there, clutching the warm carton of milk.

For the first time, I really wanted to ask her: what exactly are you so angry about?

But I didn’t ask.

I was afraid that once the question was out, the old debts between us-the ones we suppressed and never mentioned-would be completely laid bare.