Chapter 43: 43 Family Portrait and Protagonist (Combined)

43 Family Portrait and Protagonist (Combined)

Persuasion is definitely necessary. Although Anna's condition has stabilized, she only just left the hospital, so it wouldn't be good if she cried herself sick.

After patting the small head of his younger brother—who was a bit dim when it came to being "smart," yet understood everything when called "stupid"—Li Ang put down the newspaper in his hand, rose, left the secondary bedroom, and walked toward Anna's room.

This old house located in Veteran's Alley was not the original home of the four siblings; it was an old dwelling allocated by the military after they forcibly withheld a portion of the pension. It was nearly five times as old as Li Ang.

The house was overall old and dilapidated, with mediocre lighting and not even a bathroom. Aside from a small living room connected to the kitchen, there was only one master bedroom and one secondary bedroom.

The slightly smaller secondary bedroom had always been occupied by Li Ang, while the so-called Anna's room was actually the master bedroom she shared with the two younger siblings.

"Creak."

Accompanied by the stiff, hoarse groan of the old door hinge, Li Ang pushed the door open and entered the master bedroom. The first thing he saw was his younger sister sobbing on the bedding.

Just like the secondary bedroom Li Ang occupied, this small master bedroom also contained only one single bed. It was barely enough when William and Melanie were younger, but as the two troublemakers grew a bit, it became somewhat cramped.

Consequently, Li Ang had scavenged some wooden boards and bricks from outside to add a section to the side of the original old bed, padding it with mattresses and their parents' old clothes, hoping his younger siblings could sleep more comfortably. However, due to the materials, the added part was slightly unstable, and the bed board easily wobbled.

Anna was currently lying on this part of the bed. With every muffled sob, the newly added half of the bed wobbled twice, causing her bottom to sway along with the sobs, twisting and turning. It looked truly comical, making Li Ang burst into a chuckle.

"Brother! You're still laughing!"

Hearing Li Ang's muffled laughter, Anna, lying on the bed, became even angrier. In a rare display of temper, she kicked her two fair, tender feet into the air in frustration, then couldn't help but complain:

"It's all because you spoil them! Whenever they caused trouble before, you always stopped me from punishing them! Now they've started stuffing horse manure into people's mouths! And you can still laugh!"

"Uh..."

Too embarrassed to explain what he was actually laughing at, Li Ang had to shift his gaze, surveying the room's furnishings while changing the subject:

"I just think that just spanking them might not be enough. They need to know why they are being punished; otherwise, don't let them think that getting beaten means they didn't do anything wrong.

If you don't believe me, look at William. He's already summarized the experience of how many spankings he'll get for whatever trouble he causes, which proves we still need to reason with them properly."

"But they only listen to your reasoning after they've been beaten first!"

Anna, who was always gentle in front of Li Ang and almost never expressed an opinion, was extremely assertive only when it came to educating her younger siblings.

After wiping her tears with the back of her hand and stopping her sobs, she turned around, pouting and arguing unconvinced:

"You spend little time taking care of them, so you have no idea how infuriating they can be!

It's not that Melanie doesn't understand right from wrong; she just thinks she can get away with it by being slick! William is even more worrying. Although he doesn't actively cause trouble, his ideas are always very strange, just like... just like..."

After struggling for a long time to find the vocabulary to describe her younger brother's peculiar way of thinking, the frail girl angrily hammered the bed board and concluded directly:

"Anyway, they must be disciplined! If we don't discipline them now, it will be too late when they grow up!"

"Yes, yes, discipline! We must discipline them! Next time, I definitely won't stop you!"

After echoing her sentiments, Li Ang walked over and sat on the edge of the bed. While reaching out to gently stroke his sister's back, he said softly to comfort her:

"But you might as well think about the positive side.

Although they are indeed a bit mischievous, they never actively bully people. The previous incidents weren't entirely their fault either... Hmm... let me think."

After recalling the few incidents he remembered, Li Ang spoke with a slightly complicated expression:

"This time they caused trouble because someone said you wouldn't come back; last time it was because they got heated during a game and another kid called William a wild child; the time before that was to stop that fat kid named Jack from bullying others;

And the time before that, I went to the docks to work as a loader and was driven away because I was too weak, and people in the alley were gossiping; before that, it seems it was because your coughing at night was too loud, disturbing the neighbors' rest, and you were called a consumptive ghost..."

The more they recalled why the two little ones caused trouble, the more uncomfortable Li Ang and Anna felt.

They hadn't felt it much before, but looking at it now, although the two little ones were very mischievous, almost every incident had a cause. So, rather than saying they were "mischievous," it would be better to say they were also trying to maintain this fragile little home in their own way.

If he, as the older brother (sister), had been a bit more capable back then and shielded them from more of life's malice, perhaps the two little ones wouldn't have had to be so "mischievous," and could have happily been two lively, innocent, ordinary children...

"Let's not think about these things for now."

Seeing the tears welling up in his sister's eyes and realizing that the more he tried to comfort her, the worse the situation became, Li Ang hurriedly changed the subject. He reached out to pick up a yellowed old photo album from the shelf at the head of the bed, wrapped his arm around Anna's thin shoulders, and comforted her:

"I have a public position at the Police Bureau now. After I become a permanent employee at the end of the year, I can even get William and the others into school for free, so they won't have to fight with the kids in the alley anymore. So let the past be the past! Our family will definitely get better and better in the future...

By the way, the last time we looked at the photo album together was over two years ago when I had a high fever. Since it's not too late today, if you don't feel uncomfortable, why don't you accompany me to flip through it again?"

"Hmm..."

Leaning her body along Li Ang's force and resting gently on his shoulder, Anna, with slightly red eyes, took the photo album. She touched the damaged cardboard cover with nostalgia, then opened it and began to flip through it gently.

"This is mother when she was young."

Opening the first page of the album, Anna pointed to a faded group photo. In it, a woman in military uniform with eyebrows and eyes somewhat similar to Li Ang's, her face brimming with spirited heroism, was captured. Anna explained softly:

"Mother told me... told us when we were little that this was a photo taken when she was admitted to the Mechanic Academy and assigned to the Artillery Adjustment Class. And this is father..."

Anna's soft fingertips moved up, pointing to a tall, handsome black-haired man in the corner of the back row, smiling very gently.

"Father and mother were originally classmates. After graduation, they were drafted into the same unit, so they gradually became familiar, and then there was... you, and the next year there was me..."

As Anna flipped through the album lightly and slowly, watching the unfamiliar man and woman go from knowing each other to falling in love, and finally wearing formal attire and a wedding dress, embracing passionately with happy tears in a small church, Li Ang's mood also improved.

Unlike the cold and cruel reality, the happy moments frozen in the photo album appeared so warm. Even though they had faded severely due to time, it did not affect the brilliance and eye-catching nature of those smiles in the slightest.

By the way... was Anna such a lively child when she was little?

The enviable happiness in the album continued. Looking at the blonde little girl on the photo smiling incomparably brightly, Li Ang couldn't help but reach out and gently touch little Anna's bright blonde hair.

In his memory, Anna, aside from nodding at him with a soft smile, was only left with the choking coughs when she covered her lips during illness and the brows that were tightly furrowed from time to time. Li Ang had never seen his younger sister smile so happily... What exactly took away her smile?

Looking at the photo album that had already been flipped through more than halfway, even though the two little ones hadn't appeared yet, a self-evident answer suddenly surged into his heart. A chilling, lingering coldness climbed up, quietly gripping Li Ang's heart.

"That... I suddenly remembered I have some work left to do!"

Because he clearly knew what a cruel ending the beautiful family in the photo album would eventually face, Li Ang's body couldn't help but stiffen slightly. While regretting his stupid idea of suggesting they look at the photo album, he said to Anna with deep apologies:

"How about we stop here for now? You're tired today, so you should rest early!"

"Hmm..."

The thin girl responded softly. Seeming not to notice Li Ang's abnormality, she closed the photo album in her hand and nodded her chin with a smile.

However, after Li Ang fled, she didn't get up. Instead, she reopened the heavy old photo album and slowly flipped to the last page.

On the already yellowed back cover of the album, in the position that should have been reserved for the most important photo, a torn old photo was pasted.

The person who tore the photo seemed to have used great force and even rubbed the fragments hard, causing many cracks in the photo to curl up. Even though it seemed to have been carefully treated, it still couldn't be completely flattened, and even the face of the person in the portrait was not very complete.

In this strange photo, the couple who had appeared many times in the front of the album, but had already been dead for a full six years, were still smiling happily at the camera, standing embracing under a sign with the cursive words "Family Portrait."

However, in front of them, it was not the four siblings of two boys and two girls, but only a child of about eight or nine years old. The child was holding the father's hand on one side and the mother's hand on the other, showing an incomparably happy smile to the camera.

Reaching out her finger to touch the child's face in the photo, Anna pressed down the curled part of the crack, revealing the same bright blonde hair as her mother. Looking at the smiling face of the girl that felt very unfamiliar even to herself, Anna couldn't help but bite her lip hard.

Immediately after, as if she had made up her mind, she used her fingernails to scrape off the pasted torn photo piece by piece. Then, she found a matchbox and a small bucket in the room and threw all the fragments into the iron bucket.

After turning her head away with eyes full of reluctance, Anna struck a match with a "cha" sound, lit a ball of cotton wool, and threw it into the bucket, burning the last photo of her parents and herself directly into black ash at the bottom of the bucket!

Hmm... It seems I forgot to do something yesterday.

Not knowing what happened after he left last night, as a corporate slave without holidays, Li Ang climbed out of his small bed just as the sky was beginning to brighten.

After taking out the scrap paper used as a memo and looking at it, he found with some helplessness that because he was worried about making Anna recall sad things yesterday, he had slipped away halfway through looking at the photos, leaving the matter of confirming his birthday with her completely behind.

Now... she and the two little ones probably haven't woken up yet, right? Then I'll ask when I come back tonight!

Looking at the master bedroom that was still dark, Li Ang shook his head and gave up the idea of asking now. Instead, he held a stack of old newspapers, pushed the door open lightly, left the house, and walked on the way to work under the stars and moon.

Hmm? Where's the coffee stall?

When he walked to a position similar to the previous few days, Li Ang discovered with some surprise that although the current temperature was very suitable for the coffee stall to open, that profiteer who shared the same name as Charle Department Store actually didn't come to set up the stall today.

After wandering around the nearby two streets and not seeing Old Charle's shadow, Li Ang finally gave up on the promised half-price coffee. With a drooping face, he walked to another small stall across the street and ordered the cheapest coffee.

It must be said that although Old Charle's coffee stall was greedy for money and gave things very stingily, the "consumption experience" was indeed first-class. Other coffee stalls really couldn't compare. Although this small stall gave a very generous amount, it really didn't have the flavor of Old Charle's stall.

Sighing with great regret and finishing the coffee that was a bit hot to the mouth in a few gulps, just as Li Ang was about to get up and leave, he caught a glimpse of a somewhat familiar face at the neighboring table.

That person... seems to be a regular customer of Old Charle too?

After identifying that face and confirming he hadn't recognized the wrong person, Li Ang hesitated briefly, then walked over quickly.

"Hello, excuse me."

After pointing across the street, before Li Ang could even open his mouth to ask his question, the regular customer raised his eyebrows in realization and actually spoke first:

"Oh! Isn't this the son-in-law chosen by Old Charle?"

???

What? I only drank his coffee a few times, and I paid for all of them, how did I become his son-in-law?

Looking at Li Ang, who was bewildered by his address, the regular customer, who was about fifty years old, laughed twice, briefly explained the origin of this title, and then asked with a smile:

"You're looking for me to talk, wanting to ask why Old Charle didn't set up his stall today, right? I actually know this!"

After gesturing for Li Ang to sit down too, the fifty-year-old regular customer continued:

"I ran into him last night. It seems his wife went into business with someone, and as a result, she accidentally fell into a trap set by others, and it seems she lost a lot of money, which made her so angry that she fainted on the spot.

Although his wife was lucky and was saved by a kind young man passing by, and nothing serious happened, it's estimated she'll need to recuperate for over half a month.

Old Charle told me that he has to take care of his wife and, by the way, seek justice from those people, so he definitely won't be able to set up the stall for the next few days."

"..."

Doing business... fell into a trap... lost a lot of money... so angry she fainted on the spot... and was saved by a kind young man passing by... Why does this sound a bit familiar?

After hearing about the encounter of the other "Mrs. Charle," Li Ang couldn't help but scratch the back of his head somewhat awkwardly, feeling that the coincidences in this world were truly a bit too outrageous.

To be reasonable, if his own act of stealing data from the Water Company could also be considered a kind of "passing by," then the encounters of these two Mrs. Charle's were really not off by even a bit.

As for whether it's possible that these two Mrs. Charle's are the same person, and whether this Old Charle buying coffee on the street could be the Charle from Charle Department Store...

How could that be possible!

After thinking about the possibility of such a bizarre coincidence, Li Ang couldn't help but curl the corner of his mouth and mock himself fiercely in his heart.

Meeting a middle-aged man selling coffee at a street stall, and it happens to be one of the top three richest people in the capital, and then when performing an field mission yesterday, happened to save the life of the rich man's wife, and then this morning heard others say that the rich man seems to have the intention of choosing him as his son-in-law to inherit his department stores that are all over the capital...

Stop talking nonsense, do you really think you're the protagonist! ===== CHAPTER 44 =====