“Ah Chen, what did you mean on WeChat yesterday when you said you only have two hundred yuan left?”
Inside the living room of the apartment building where the Chu family lived.
Chu Lian couldn’t sit still. She looked at Shu Lingchen, who was silently keeping his head down while fixing a chair, and asked probingly, “Doesn’t that insurance fund your mom bought you bring in fifty thousand in monthly returns? Where’s the money?”
Shu Lingchen stopped hammering nails, looked up, and said rather self-consciously, “The fund tanked. Last month’s returns were only two hundred yuan.”
“What?!”
Smash! The sound of breaking glass echoed through the room.
Ignoring the shattered glass all over the floor, Mother Chu walked over, her face a mask of absolute disbelief. “Xiao Chen, what did you just say…?”
Shu Lingchen scratched his head and repeated his words. He then pulled out his phone and opened up the fund’s statement. Chu Lian and Mother Chu couldn’t wait and practically lunged forward to look.
Sure enough, under the column for this month’s returns, it read: 【200.25】
“…”
The world instantly came crashing down on the Chu mother and daughter.
Chu Lian bit her lip.
No wonder Shu Lingchen had only transferred two hundred yuan to her at the dessert shop—he literally had no money left!
Losing the apartment at Royal View Gardens had already threatened to destroy her persona as a wealthy heiress. Now that even the fifty thousand yuan a month was gone, how was she supposed to maintain her luxurious lifestyle from now on?!
Chu Lian suddenly felt faint. She questioned Shu Lingchen with a sense of frantic urgency, “Weren’t the funds always perfectly stable before? How could they suddenly drop so drastically? Can they bounce back later?”
“I don’t know either, but odds are, it’s going to be very hard for them to go back up.” Recalling Shu Shu’s words, Shu Lingchen shook his head. Noticing that Chu Lian looked terrible, he assumed she was worrying about him, so he said lightheartedly, “It’s fine, Chuchu. Even though the fund is gone, I can still afford to eat for now.”
His mom had topped up his school meal card, and he had a place to live now.
Looking at it that way, whether the fund crashed or not didn’t really affect his life.
“…”
Seeing Shu Lingchen’s completely carefree, brainless attitude, an indescribable look of disgust flashed across the depths of Chu Lian’s eyes.
What a presumptive, clueless idiot!
Yet, none of it showed on her face. Instead, she put on a deeply troubled expression and said, “But Ah Chen, what about my mom’s specialized medication? She only has enough left for half a week. Without it, she’s going to suffer again. Is there really nothing else we can do about the fund?”
The moment Chu Lian finished speaking, Mother Chu paused for a second before immediately raising a hand to clutch her chest. She began to sigh and groan, putting on a perfectly weak and miserable act.
When Shu Lingchen returned to Unit 1600 in Royal View Gardens and swiped his way inside, he heard a DJ remix of “Borrowing Another Five Hundred Years from Heaven” blasting from the surround-sound system that cost over 800,000 yuan.
In the kitchen.
Shu Shu was wearing an apron, using the spatula in her hand as a microphone. She sang along fiercely to the beat: “I really! Want to! Live for! Another five hundred years!”
She was incredibly into it.
It was as if she were standing on stage at a packed stadium concert.
As she sang, she even interacted with the ingredients on the cutting board.
“Hey, little garlic cloves! Great to see you!!”
“Carrots, join in!”
“Beef slices, wave your hands in the air!”
Shu Lingchen was not a stranger to this scene at all.
This could basically be understood as some kind of mandatory ritual his mom had whenever she cooked.
…
During dinner, Shu Lingchen looked at Shu Shu sitting across from him, looking hesitant.
“Spit it out.”
Shu Shu held her bowl, not even looking up.
“…Mom, can you lend me some money?”
Shu Shu’s chewing slowed to a halt. Here it comes. The Chu family must have found out about the fund crash!
She asked casually, “What do you need to borrow money for?”
“I mentioned it to you before. When we were kids, Auntie Chu carried me to the hospital in the pouring rain, which left her with a chronic illness. She needs specialized medication to manage it, and it’s incredibly expensive. But now that my fund has tanked…”
Shu Shu had looked through Shu Lingchen’s transaction history. Aside from what he transferred to Chu Lian, a huge chunk of his 50,000-yuan monthly allowance went toward Mother Chu’s “specialized medication.”
A single batch cost over five thousand yuan.
And this had been going on for seven or eight years, straight up to the present.
Shu Shu recalled Mother Chu, whom she had seen last weekend—full of life, looking nowhere near sick. She lifted her eyelids to look at her idiot son and asked nonchalantly, “What specialized medication? What’s it called, and what does it treat?”
“It’s an imported, prescription Western medicine for chest pain.”
“Oh. Do you transfer the money directly to Mother Chu?”
Wondering why Shu Shu was asking this, Shu Lingchen shook his head. “No, I always go buy Auntie Chu’s medicine myself and bring it over to her.”
“Is that so?” Shu Shu raised an eyebrow. Interesting. She nodded. “Fine, I’ll give you the money for the medicine. No need to borrow it.”
Shu Lingchen knew that Shu Shu didn’t like Chu Lian or her mother, so he had been a bit nervous about whether she would agree. Hearing this, a joyful expression broke out across his face. “Really? Thanks, Mom!”
Shu Shu smiled. “Don’t mention it. Come to think of it, Mother Chu caught that illness from the rain because she was taking care of you. It’s only right that I, as your actual mother, show some gratitude. I’ll go with you to buy the medicine tomorrow. From now on, I can cover the cost of her medication.”
Hearing this, Shu Lingchen was absolutely thrilled. He quickly whipped out his phone to text Chu Lian the great news, letting her know that Auntie Chu’s specialized medication was completely taken care of from now on!
Shu Shu glanced at the happily grinning young dummy across from her.
She wanted to see for herself what exactly this “specialized medication” was.
The next day after school.
Shu Shu and Shu Lingchen got into a taxi.
Normally, prescription medication required a trip to the hospital, but Shu Lingchen didn’t give the driver a hospital address.
Instead, the car eventually pulled up in front of a pharmacy.
Shu Shu scanned the place. It was a medium-sized storefront, just a typical chain pharmacy.
Shu Lingchen walked inside with practiced familiarity. A woman in a white lab coat at the checkout counter clearly recognized him. The moment she saw him, a smile spread across her face. “Xiao Chen is here! Come to pick up your Auntie Chu’s medicine?”
“Yes.” Shu Lingchen nodded.
“I packaged it up for you ahead of time, just waiting for you to drop by.” The woman, whose nametag identified her as a sales clerk, turned around to open a cabinet. She pulled out a neatly bagged package, set it on the counter, and said to Shu Lingchen, “It’s the usual one-month supply, taken morning and night. Go ahead and scan the code.”
Shu Lingchen looked over at Shu Shu.
Shu Shu stepped forward, her eyes landing on the bag of medicine. She reached out and opened it up. Inside were seven or eight white pill bottles about half the size of a palm. Shu Shu picked one up at random; the instructions pasted on the bottle were written entirely in tiny English text.
She cast her eyes down to skim it. It was a string of complex, professional pharmacological names. It certainly looked the part of an “imported drug.”
Except not a single ingredient listed had any effect on treating chest pain.
Seeing this, the woman in the lab coat knitted her brows. “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m Shu Lingchen’s classmate,” Shu Shu lied without missing a beat. “His phone is broken, so he asked me to help him pay for the medicine.”
Shu Lingchen, standing beside her: “…?” Since when was his phone broken?
Seeing that Shu Shu looked like a student and was wearing the exact same school uniform as Shu Lingchen, the woman believed her. She pointed to the payment QR code. “Oh, I see. In that case, go ahead and scan this.”
Shu Shu made no move to get her phone. Instead, she straight up twisted open one of the pill bottles.
The bottle wasn’t even sealed. The white pills inside were completely exposed. Shu Shu brought the opening close to her nose and took a light sniff.
“What do you think you’re doing?!”
Seeing her actions, the woman suddenly screamed with an incredibly intense reaction, startling even Shu Lingchen.