Mu Jinyu listened to Gu Xiyan's outpouring and didn't show a mocking smile, but instead, his eyes grew complicated.
With sadness, reminiscence, resentment, and melancholy…
It was indeed complex.
He sat on the steps and reached into the plastic bag by his feet to pull out a can of beer, with a "tsk" he opened the tab and then took a sip.
After exhaling the smell of alcohol, Mu Jinyu smiled nonchalantly and said, "What's this? My past was much more miserable than yours."
"Do you want to hear about it?!" Mu Jinyu turned his head to look at Gu Xiyan.
Gu Xiyan sat on the steps, her elbows on her knees, her palms supporting her cheeks, and her head tilted as she looked at Mu Jinyu drunkenly. When she heard his question, she nodded lightly.
Mu Jinyu smiled, his gaze lost in memories, and then he took another drink of his beer. After gathering his thoughts, he began:
"When I was about five years old, I think? I've forgotten how old I exactly was back then, my family was extremely poor. Finally, one day, my mother, unable to bear the family's poverty and my father's endless outpouring of love, chose to leave me and my father…"
Sitting to the side, Gu Xiyan was initially looking at Mu Jinyu through drunken eyes, but hearing his story, she shivered and her eyes cleared up quite a bit. The way she looked at Mu Jinyu grew complex as well.
She hadn't expected him to have had such a childhood.
Mu Jinyu took another sip of beer, then rubbed his temples, smiling numbly and nonchalantly, "That day, I watched my mother get into a car that seemed very luxurious, then she said goodbye to me. I was just a child then, not realizing her goodbye meant we would never see each other again. I asked her, 'Mom, where are you going, when will you come back?'"
At this point, Mu Jinyu's breathing suddenly grew heavier, and his eyes, after several sips of beer, reddened with more bloodshot veins. His hand unconsciously clenched tighter as he smiled faintly, "My mom said she was going on a long trip and would come back to get me when it snowed in Rong City, and we could have a snowball fight…"
"Rong City?!" Gu Xiyan, hearing this, was startled at first, then realized the implication and her gaze toward Mu Jinyu became much more pitying.
Rong City is a flourishing metropolis in Bamin Province, located downstream along the Min River and the coastal region. One could say the city hardly ever sees snow in a hundred years, and even if there have been a few occurrences of snowfall in several hundred years, it's just a sprinkling and not enough to have a snowball fight.
Therefore, the answer Mu Jinyu's mother gave naturally meant she was never going to come back for him…
Mu Jinyu drained the can of beer in one go and squeezed the can in his hand a bit too hard, crushing it into a lump. He continued with a laugh:
"After speaking with my mother, she coaxed me to go back home. Assured by her promise, I obediently went home and then waited every day for it to snow in Rong City so that my mom could come back and cook something tasty for me. But I waited many days and it never snowed, so I went to ask my father, who by then had aged quite a bit, 'Dad, when will it snow in Rong City? When will mom come back to see me?'"
"Every time I asked my father this question, he always had a complicated expression and then he would say soon, very soon, she will come back to see me soon…"
At this point, Mu Jinyu suddenly sneered, then discarded the crumpled soda can in her hand and continued with a smile,
"A year later, my mother still hadn't come back, and I gradually understood that she might never return. It was during this time that my father, who was already in poor health, suffered a massive blow from my mother's departure. One day, while drinking, he suddenly vomited blood and we sent him to the hospital for a check-up. That's when we discovered he had stomach cancer."
As Mu Jinyu spoke, her expression remained calm and unfazed, as if she had already accepted this fact, and she smiled, "It must have been because he ate irregularly, sometimes going a whole day without food when busy, on top of his drinking and smoking that led to the cancer."
Gu Xiyan stayed silent, unsure how to comfort Mu Jinyu.
Mu Jinyu wasn't looking for her pity or comfort; she had just held these things in her heart for too long and occasionally wanted to vent.
Shaking her head with a wry smile, Mu Jinyu seemed to mock her own old man's pointless struggles and continued,
"My father was a local doctor, the kind who devoted himself to public health, benefiting the villagers. Many in our village received his help. After seeing patients who couldn't pay the consultation fee, he would just laugh it off and still prescribe medicine for them. He let them owe the fees, telling them to pay him back when they could afford it..."
Saying this, Mu Jinyu's expression suddenly twisted into a fierce grimace, but her tone remained light-hearted as she chuckled, "But most people wouldn't come back to repay their debts after getting treated. So though my father was the best doctor in the village, he couldn't earn much money. He even often ended up paying out of his own pocket for others, which is why my mother couldn't stand his excessive generosity and left him."
Mu Jinyu rubbed her slightly reddened cheeks, then picked up a can of beer, popped the tab, and began to drink.
She downed it in one go.
After tossing the empty can aside, Mu Jinyu laughed, "We didn't have much in the way of savings to begin with, so naturally, when my father got stomach cancer, our family's funds were quickly depleted. At that point, he remembered the villagers who owed him money for consultations and prescriptions and went to ask for repayment..."
At that, Mu Jinyu's eyes turned ice-cold, filled with rage, and her hands unconsciously clenched tightly, whitening her knuckles.
"My father didn't actually know how much money they owed him, but it was definitely upwards of a couple hundred thousand yuan. Yet when he went to collect his debts, even upon learning he had stomach cancer, they evaded payback at every turn. When they had no other choice, they begrudgingly gave a hundred or two hundred yuan, as if offering alms..."
"Gone was any pretense of kindness or warmth when they accidentally met on the street!"
Upon hearing this, Gu Xiyan's mouth hung open in shock, unable to fathom the tragic end to her father's good deeds.
Mu Jinyu's breathing grew heavier, and her eyes reddened, "And some of them, the costs of the medicine my father gave exceeded several thousand yuan. In the end, they only gave tens of yuan, then shooed my father and me away like chasing away flies."
"How could they possibly do that?!" Gu Xiyan finally couldn't hold back and spoke up. Then, with trembling hands, she grasped Mu Jinyu's hand, finding it was very cold.
Just like her own heart at this moment.
The rage in Mu Jinyu's eyes faded, and she smiled numbly, "Everyone had grown accustomed to my father's unpaid contributions. When they learned that they actually had to repay him, of course, they would turn hostile and deny him. Hahaha... it serves my dad right, huh? He didn't see that all those he helped were just a pack of ingrates! Ha ha..."