“Lin Mei, don’t rush off tonight! We’re having dinner with the handsome guys from the marketing department.” Zhang Chengcheng grabbed Lin Mei just as she was about to clock out.
Lin Mei gently shook her head, a helpless smile tugging at her lips.
“No thanks. I still have to deliver food tonight. I haven’t paid off my debts yet.”
The moment she finished speaking, she disappeared through the doorway like a gust of wind.
“She’s always like this. Money can never truly be earned endlessly,” Zhang Chengcheng muttered softly.
But Lin Mei had already gone too far to hear her.
Night fell, and Lin Mei rode her electric scooter through the city’s glowing neon lights.
By the time she delivered her final order, she glanced at her watch. The hands pointed to midnight.
Time really flies.
She let out a quiet sigh, put away her phone, and decided to end her delivery shift for the night before heading home.
Twenty minutes later, Lin Mei quietly returned to the shared apartment.
The apartment had three bedrooms and one living room. Thankfully, her two roommates were fellow night owls. Light still spilled from beneath their doors, and occasional laughter drifted out—probably still scrolling through their phones.
Otherwise, she truly would have worried about disturbing them every time she came home so late.
After quickly washing up, showering, and drying herself off, Lin Mei returned to her tiny bedroom.
Before her hair had even fully dried, she eagerly threw herself onto the bed.
Today had simply been too exhausting.
Then, as if suddenly remembering something, she fumbled for her phone on the bedside table and squinted at the balance displayed on the screen:
183,456.3 yuan.
Once this month’s salary and delivery earnings came in, she would finally have two hundred thousand saved.
The thought unconsciously lifted the corners of her mouth.
She had worked for almost six years now.
On top of that, she constantly took side jobs and lived frugally.
The savings weren’t much, but Lin Mei was content.
Without realizing it, her thoughts drifted back to the past.
When Lin Mei was still an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes, her family life had once been fairly happy.
Her father had been a poor boy from a remote mountain village in Fujian Province. He disliked studying from a young age, but he was clever and silver-tongued.
At sixteen, he followed an older cousin from the same village to Guangdong to work.
A few years later, he returned with a beautiful seventeen- or eighteen-year-old girl.
Having seen more of the world and saved up some money, Lin Mei’s father rented a storefront in the county town with the girl and started a clothing business.
He genuinely had a talent for business.
Within just a few years, the business flourished, eventually expanding into five or six branch stores.
Not long after, Lin Mei was born, and her mother became a full-time housewife.
Once he became wealthy—and considering he was fairly handsome to begin with—women naturally flocked to him.
And he never rejected any who threw themselves at him.
As the saying goes, “If you walk by the river often enough, eventually your shoes will get wet.”
One day, a lover’s husband discovered the affair.
The two men got into a violent fight.
No one expected the other man to bring a knife.
Just like that, Lin Mei’s father died beneath the blade.
When her mother learned the truth, she was utterly devastated.
She couldn’t believe that the man who had once promised to love only her forever had turned out to be so disgraceful.
Back then, she had ignored her parents’ objections, abandoned everything, and followed him to this unfamiliar city, enduring countless hardships alongside him.
And this was how he repaid her.
From that point on, she could no longer bear to face little Lin Mei.
The child’s existence constantly reminded her of her own foolishness.
So before Lin Mei even turned one year old, she was sent away to the countryside to live with Grandma Lin, who farmed for a living.
As for where her mother went afterward, nobody knew.
Perhaps she had returned to her own parents.
Before Lin Mei turned five, Grandma Lin still occasionally received a few hundred yuan in remittances.
But after that, the money vanished like a kite with a snapped string—never arriving again.
Lin Mei figured her mother had probably started a new family somewhere.
Grandma Lin relied on the few acres of farmland in the countryside to raise Lin Mei through many hardships.
Fortunately, Lin Mei worked hard and earned admission to a good university.
During college, she covered tuition through student loans, while scholarships and part-time jobs paid for her living expenses.
After graduation, Lin Mei arrived in Haishi full of passion and dreams for the future.
Luckily, she found a decent job—enough to establish herself in the bustling metropolis.
To bring Grandma Lin to the city and let her enjoy a better life as soon as possible, Lin Mei continued taking part-time jobs whenever she had free time, desperately trying to save more money.
But fate always seemed fond of cruel jokes.
Grandma Lin suddenly collapsed while working in the fields.
At the hospital, she was diagnosed with cancer.
The news exploded into Lin Mei’s life like a bomb, throwing everything into chaos.
To save her grandmother, Lin Mei ran everywhere, borrowing money from anyone she could, trying every possible treatment.
But despite giving everything she had, Grandma Lin still failed to defeat the illness.
On her deathbed, the only thing Grandma Lin couldn’t stop worrying about was Lin Mei.
Her heart ached for the girl being all alone in the world.
She made Lin Mei promise to find someone to accompany her through the rest of her life.
Five more years.
Lin Mei told herself:
Just endure five more years, and her little savings would grow into a small fortune.
At that point, she would quit her job and return to the little mountain village.
She would renovate the small house Grandma Lin had left her.
She imagined herself planting every seed with her own hands on that land, watching them grow into delicious meals upon her table.
Her breathing gradually became steady.
Lin Mei turned over in bed.
In her dream, she was already standing in her own courtyard, hoe in hand, soft earth beneath her feet.
“Need to plant more tomatoes… and cucumbers… long beans too…”
Her voice echoed softly through the quiet room, as though she were speaking to her future self.