She stayed in the ward until about 4pm when Bao Er’s brother came. He was around thirty years old with a medium body size, plain-looking and dark skin. He looked honest, and rightfully so in real life. The siblings were very different by the way they look as well as the way they think.
Her elder brother was an honest and steady person, but he treated Bao Er differently.
There was a thermal bottle in his hand, probably containing chicken soup or something that could replenish the body. Of course, since her father only recently recovered from the major illness, he’ll need to start nourishing himself from now in order to have a healthy body and to eliminate the root cause of illness.
Once he saw Bao Er, her brother’s concern for their father immediately turned into anger towards her, showing signs of seeing red.
Actually Bao Er guessed that he would surely explode in two more minutes.
In fact, he did.
“Where did you go these few days? I didn’t even see you during such a major incident like dad’s surgery. Are you so busy that you don’t even have the time to care for your family?” He stared directly at her with plain-looking eyes, but the anger inside was clear and visible. The way he scolded Bao Er sounded like they were not siblings, but enemies with massive hatred for each other.
Yeah. Such a strange family. This must be the comment by outsiders if they saw a family like them. But Bao Er was already used to it. She was used to how her brother saw her negatively and in disgust. She was used to her parents’ coldness towards her.
Some things were just better to get used to.
“Yeah, it’s true, I’m busy with my job.” Bao Er still used one sentence to make him shut his mouth. Of course he wouldn’t just back down like this, but their parents signaled him with their eyes, so he still shut his mouth in the end. He poured out the chicken soup from the thermal bottle into the bowl, and let their mother feed it to their father.
The concern in his voice when Bao Er’s brother asked their father about his condition was real. He was always a filial son, no matter if it was towards his father or mother.
She looked at the scene where there was no place for her to step in. Her eyelids drooped downwards. The caring and loving scene looked dazzling and sarcastic.
Bao Er looked at her father. His initially calm face finally showed some happiness. People who didn’t know better would think that he favored sons over daughters. She then said: “I’ll go out to buy some things, I’ll be back later.” Her father only waved his hand without saying anything.
After exiting the ward, Bao Er slowly climbed down the stairs. She wasn’t planning to buy stuff, she just couldn’t stand the atmosphere in the room, the anxiousness of being isolated to one side although they were actually blood-related.
You could say you didn’t care about some things on the surface, but she still cared about it a lot in her heart, like her, like family.
In her entire twenty-one years of life, she never experienced that.
Everyone in her family — her parents, her elder brother and sister, all treated her the same way. Dislike, disdain, cold and distant. Growing up in this kind of family, Bao Er could still deal with it with a calm heart and grew up as if it was not a big deal.
Her family was so cold to her that they didn’t even know that she only had one more year to go until graduation when she was studying in university. They knew that Bao Er’s monthly salary was pretty sizable, and that was about it.
This time, her father’s illness came suddenly. There had always been issues with her father’s health. When their father was diagnosed with uremia, her family members were in dismay, but when the hospital notified that there was a kidney that was a match with her father’s, they saw the ray of hope again. The only obstacle between them was the expensive medical fees.
Bao Er’s brother was just a normal worker. He might have thirty to fifty thousand savings, but it was impossible for him to fork out two hundred thousand dollars to solve this crisis. So when she received her mother’s desperate phone call at the hospital, she agreed to Tan Jingmo’s request without any hesitation.
Since it was a matter of life or death.
Chapter 10. I’ve eaten
After she walked around outside, Bao Er ate some food near the hospital and bought another two sets of food for her mother and brother.
When she returned, her brother was peeling apples while sitting next to her mother, with a faint smile on his lips. His initially plain and average face looked more vivid.
Her father and mother also had the same expression. The whole family gathered together in happiness, adding a lot of liveliness in the ward.
“Mum, I bought you and brother some food!” Because their father just had his surgery a day ago, so he couldn’t eat this at the moment. He could only drink some soup or watery stuff to maintain the nourishment needed by his body.
Her mother said ‘okay’ lightly. Her voice was so small that she almost couldn’t hear it, but Bao Er didn’t mind. Her brother didn’t even give her a glance as he grabbed the container of food and started eating.
Bao Er stood at one side as she inhaled the pungent smell of disinfectant, and watched them take their meals.
Halfway through their meals, her father turned to Bao Er who was also his own daughter, “How about you? Why aren’t you eating? You bought only two sets?”
It was a little too late to ask this question, but in the end he still thought of her, right?
Bao Er nodded, then shook her head. “I’ve taken my meals outside, so I only bought two sets.”
Her father just said ‘oh’, and didn’t ask any further questions. He was always like that, he’d only asked this time because he coincidentally noticed it.
Bao Er stayed in the hospital until the second day. Before going back to T city, she left them a card and told her brother the password. There were fifty thousand inside, since they needed money for nourishment during her father’s recovery stage later on. He gave Bao Er a complicated look, then took it without saying a word.
Actually Tan Jingmo gave her all this money. On the same day when Bao Er accepted the deal, he gave her a card containing five hundred thousand, and also the house where Bao Er was living in right now.
This was the most money Bao Er had ever seen in her entire life. She felt like she was a good-for-nothing.
Back at T city, Bao Er calmed her heart down from what happened at H city, and continued living her life.
Bao Er would do what she had promised him. They’d only just started now, and half a year was still a long time to go. So she felt that she needed to do something for him during this time when she was still his lover.
Like how he treated her so generously, giving her money and also a house. She needed to do something to repay him.
If she sold the house, Bao Er would definitely become a millionaire now. These were all given to her by him, so she felt that she had to give him something back.
Actually Bao Er was unsure if she should go home the day before yesterday, because she wasn’t sure if he would come over that night. But Bao Er stubbornly believed that Tan Jingmo wouldn’t come over around this time. She really had no choice but to go back to see them because of her brother and mother’s consistent nagging.
Since they were still her family, although they might not think that way.
The house looked like no one had been around when she returned. Bao Er was silently glad that she picked just the right time. Like how after an emperor spent his night with a concubine, it would take time before he thought about her again. She was just like a concubine with average looks, so the emperor naturally wouldn’t focus on her for too long. Since she looked too plain.
She didn’t know when he bought this house, because everything looked new inside like it was recently built. Its location was very good too, in the middle of H city. It was very convenient to go anywhere if she stayed here, the only thing bad about it was that the floor was too high up. Bao Er wasn’t used to it.
In H city where every piece of land was gold, Bao Er didn’t know if she could even purchase such a house with an area of around one hundred square feet with three million dollars. But Tan Jingmo could give her this house just like that. It truly surprised her.
Then how wealthy was he on the surface?