Fang Zhuo thought back over her relationship with Fang Yiming across more than ten years — always cold and distant at its surface, laced with a complexity that could never quite be put into words.

Every time she was certain she was done with him, that she would never have any further dealings with him and would no longer feel any tremor at his name — his name would appear, and bring with it the very worst emotions, reducing her to instant confusion. Always like this. It had always been like this.

As though a cord ran from the deepest chamber of her heart and trailed loose on the ground — and all Fang Yiming had to do was walk past and step on it. One casual tug was enough to cause damage ten, a hundred times greater than anything anyone else could inflict. Enough to shatter her world completely.

Why?

She had already given up on him. So why did she still harbor that tiny sliver of expectation toward Fang Yiming?

When she thought about it now, it almost seemed amusing — blood ties were truly a strange thing. Their strangeness lay not in the bond of blood itself, nor in any mystical sense of connection, but in the way social norms and collective beliefs had been accumulating and embedding themselves, day after day, year after year.

The reason Fang Zhuo could never remain entirely unmoved by this man’s coldness was because she had once longed so sincerely for him to love her — longed to receive something that most people in the world are simply given.

It had taken her over a decade to understand that what people called blood ties was simply a social convention, and an emotional anchor one chose for oneself. She understood it, yet could not find peace with it. Fang Yiming, on the other hand, seemed to have grasped this instinctively from the beginning.

He did not consider Fang Zhuo part of his obligations. He had no desire to direct his feelings toward her. And so to Fang Yiming, she was nothing more than a name slightly more familiar than a stranger’s.

On the bus to Fang Yiming’s workplace, her mind was filled entirely with cold, unyielding thoughts.

She stood expressionless in the rear section of the bus, gripping the overhead strap tightly.

The shadows of trees and the flow of traffic swept past the window, one after another. The rocking of the vehicle also upended the jar of seasonings inside her.

Fang Zhuo recalled the few brief occasions she had glimpsed Fang Yiming when she was small.

There had been so few of them that she remembered each one clearly.

Fang Yiming would occasionally come back to the countryside to visit the old woman — only a handful of times. On each visit, Fang Zhuo would hide behind the door and steal glances at him.

When she was young and didn’t know any better, she had harbored a great deal of admiration for him, as well as a kind of awe for the polished life he seemed to lead.

A few times when Fang Yiming saw her, he would tease her with a wave of his hand and offer her sweets.

Thinking back on it now, Fang Zhuo suspected his attitude toward her had been no different from the way one might play with a cat or a dog. Fang Yiming had probably also decided that a child as unkempt as she was didn’t deserve his affection — he would glance over and then walk away.

If Ye Yuncheng was someone with a great openness of spirit — someone who could face a life of hardship and poverty and still brush it off with a joke, still take another person’s hand and say, “Look, the world keeps getting better” — then Fang Yiming was his complete opposite.

His eyes, and his life, were written through with worldliness.

Worldliness may not be a fault in itself. It simply happened that his worldliness had cut Fang Zhuo.

She kept turning the memories over, and each fragment became a sharp blade scoring across her heart.

She felt like an hourglass. The sand inside was trickling away, grain by grain. When the last grain finally fell, she would no longer have to grieve over this person.

But every inch of that flowing sand was flesh and blood that this person had given to her at the moment of her birth.

The day someone asked her about it in the future, she would be able to say calmly: “What does he have to do with me?”

…But how could she not care?

She was in such pain right now.

The bus stopped at its station. The doors opened, and the wind and the noise of the outside world became real again. Fang Zhuo let go of the overhead strap. The palm and knuckles of her hand were marked with a vivid red imprint. She stepped off through the rear door, expression blank, and walked in long, decisive strides toward Fang Yiming’s workplace.

Fang Yiming was in his office sorting through documents when the front desk notified him. He paused, glanced at his computer, and then set down his work and went downstairs.

Fang Zhuo was standing in the main lobby, facing the direction he came from, unblinking, staring directly at him.

The look in her eyes carried a coldness that was almost alarming. Fang Yiming started slightly. For a moment he almost didn’t recognize her.

He stopped about a meter away and asked: “What’s happened?”

Fang Zhuo’s breathing was heavy, but her voice, when it came, was quiet. “Ye Yuncheng is ill. He’s waiting to go into surgery.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Fang Yiming’s brow furrowed slightly. His lips moved, and he finally said only, in a restrained tone: “I knew he wasn’t capable of looking after you properly.”

Fang Zhuo said coldly: “Give me twenty thousand yuan.”

Fang Yiming was displeased by her manner. But on reflection, he thought: given what she was going through right now, her distress was understandable. He shouldn’t hold it against her.

He had previously prepared a red envelope for Fang Zhuo, which she had refused. And Ye Yuncheng had, after all, looked after Fang Zhuo for so long. The sum was not enormous, but the need was urgent. He thought it over briefly and decided to give it to her.

There was a bank right next to his office building. Fang Yiming walked out through the main doors, drew out his card, and slid it into the ATM.

Twenty thousand yuan required multiple withdrawals. Fang Yiming selected the maximum single-transaction amount, stacked the notes on the platform, and pressed to continue.

While the machine was counting, Fang Yiming composed his thoughts.

Objective. Measured. Caring. Something that Fang Zhuo might actually be willing to hear.

He felt that, as an elder, it was his responsibility to offer some guidance — and perhaps this was also an opportunity for the two of them to begin repairing their relationship as father and daughter.

The soft whirring of the bill counter fell silent. Fang Yiming took the money, tucked his card back into his wallet, and said in a mild tone: “I’ll give you ten thousand first. If I remember correctly, your uncle is registered as a low-income household, so the medical costs shouldn’t actually be that high. You don’t need to put all the money into…”

“No need to pay it back?” Fang Zhuo cut him off. The corners of her mouth pulled downward. Her expression hovered between tears and a bitter smile. “Fang Yiming, have you no shame?”

Fang Yiming was taken aback. “What did you call me?”

“This money is yours to pay back to him. Did you think I didn’t know?” Fang Zhuo said, word by deliberate word. “Ye Yuncheng has been sending money to your account every year. He kept it up for years. When added together, it comes to more than twenty thousand yuan. Is this the ten thousand you’re now graciously bestowing upon him?”

Fang Zhuo pulled out the ledger and tried to open it to the right page, but the pages were stuck together. She tried several times without finding the correct one. And the scattered entries on its pages made her vision blur.

She thought of too many things at once, and they all came surging up in the face of Fang Yiming’s air of self-satisfaction and superiority. Finally reaching the limits of what she could bear, she slammed the ledger hard onto the ground and shouted at the top of her voice: “How could you accept his money?! Did you even need it?!”

Fang Yiming stared at her steadily, then crouched down and picked up the ledger.

“You could pay for your son to attend a training program that costs thousands a month. You could buy your son clothes worth thousands. This amount is nothing to you. But do you have any idea — our entire year of expenses comes to just a few thousand yuan? You said the old woman didn’t need much money — that was an outright lie, and you knew it!”

People around them were starting to look. Fang Yiming didn’t know what to do. He wanted to make her stop.

Fang Zhuo’s tears broke through. The string that had been pulled taut to its very limit snapped with a sharp, resonant crack — and everything she had held back came pouring out in a flood. She gave him no chance to interrupt.

“My grandmother and me! We were poor. We needed every last yuan. Never mind a few hundred yuan — every day after school I climbed the mountain to gather grass to feed the rabbits. During holidays I helped other families spread fertilizer, cut fabric, clean their homes — just to scrape together a little money to live on.”

“You used to laugh at me for being dirty, for not washing my clothes — Fang Yiming, you have no conscience at all! The water I used to wash my clothes, I carried it up from the river myself. Do you know why? To save on the water bill. You never knew about the nights I walked several kilometers along mountain roads in the dark. What kind of life were you living, while I was living like that?”

Fang Yiming opened his mouth to explain. He had some vague recollection that something like this had happened, yet the details were gone. He looked at Fang Zhuo’s face, streaked with tears, and felt the scrutinizing stares of the people around them. Something bitter and complicated stirred in him.

There had once been someone — someone who had stood just like this and made the same accusations against him. And not long after, she had disappeared from his life entirely.

Fang Yiming felt the air growing heavier and harder to breathe.

Fang Zhuo cried: “Do you know what I resented most? That people without parents could live better than me — they could receive money from the state. But Fang Yiming — what did you give me?! Nothing! Nothing at all! How could you throw away your identity so easily?! How could you?!”

She screamed the words: “How could you?! That’s why I’m asking — how could you?!”

In the end, all she could ask was that one question: why.

“I’m not asking you to help me! But we have already tried so hard just to live — can you please stop making things harder for us?!”

Fang Zhuo sucked in a ragged breath. She raised her hand and wiped her face in one hard sweep, smearing away every trace of tears. Then, at last, she said in a quiet, level voice: “Give me back the money.”

Fang Yiming had a thousand things he wanted to say, a thousand explanations forming in his throat. But none of them could quite make it out. He said only, in a low voice: “I… did not take your uncle’s money.”

“Give me back the money!” Fang Zhuo said through gritted teeth. “It’s what you owe me.”

Fang Yiming, hollow with shock, extended the money toward her. Fang Zhuo snatched it from his hand. Then she reclaimed the ledger from him as well.

By the time the spring sunlight had soaked him through with cold sweat, Fang Zhuo had long since disappeared from his sight.