Chapter 2

Originally, as a hook in the novel's early chapters, Su Fuling was meant to survive at least until the male lead had made his fortune and risen to glory. But as the author wrote further along, he felt that the male lead showing off in front of his ex-girlfriend would tarnish the 'great male lead' image. So with a flick of the pen, he killed her off ahead of schedule. Her father had died in an accident while making a house call; now the author arranged the same kind of accident for her.

According to the System, she had been written off as cannon fodder.

Su Fuling, this ex-girlfriend, had exited the story early — but the author still needed to deliver on the 'face-slapping' subplot he had set up earlier. So even after her death, the villagers would have to say a few regretful words on behalf of this woman who was already gone: things like 'if only she hadn't abandoned so-and-so, she wouldn't have come to such an end' — a tidy little bow for the readers.

When Su Fuling learned the shape of this story, she felt nothing but wronged. Speechless, even.

They had simply broken up like normal people. They weren't suited for each other, so they parted ways. Was it really worth nursing a grudge just to come back and rub someone's face in it?

And what exactly was so appealing about humiliating an ex-girlfriend?

She turned it over in her mind — her ex hadn't seemed like that sort of lowlife. Had she misjudged him all along? Well, even if she had, she didn't particularly care. Even if he came back flush with success to flaunt it, she wouldn't care, wouldn't regret a thing. If anything, she'd feel she'd been absolutely right to break it off.

But this wretched author, just to protect the 'great male lead' image, had simply written her out of existence. Was her life really worth so little? Was her life not a life?

Either way, Su Fuling refused — absolutely refused — to accept such a careless arrangement of fate.

She wanted to live.

But according to the System, her fate had already been sealed. Knowing the plot in advance wasn't enough to change it. To change her destiny, she would need the System's help. Only that external force could alter the fate of a piece of cannon fodder.

So Su Fuling had no choice but to cooperate with this System — earn merit, and save her own life.

The boat finally docked. The passengers on deck surged off without waiting. The auntie who had been seasick beside her spotted someone she knew and, after a quick farewell to Su Fuling, hurried away.

'A-Ling?'

A voice called out from the Wharf, then was swallowed up by a chorus of other shouts.

Su Fuling heard it faintly, craned her neck and searched the crowd, and at last spotted a middle-aged man in a suit pushing through the throng toward her — a broad, square face, skin a shade darker than most. He looked familiar. He was the spitting image of her grandfather in his youth, and she had seen the photographs sent home besides. 'Little Uncle!'

'It really is A-Ling!' Su Jueming beamed at the niece standing before him. Strictly speaking, this was the first time they had ever met. When he left home all those years ago, his elder sister and her husband hadn't even married yet. A niece was nowhere on the horizon — and now here she was, a young woman of nineteen already. How quickly time passes...

Back then, Su Jueming had followed his shifu to Hong City to broaden his horizons, only for his shifu to arrive and simply never leave.

He had been young then, and hadn't dared make the journey home alone, so he stayed on in Hong City.

Later, travel between the two places grew increasingly difficult, and he never found the chance to go back.

A couple of years ago he had finally written a letter home and reestablished contact. He learned that his sister had married Liu Rending — the senior apprentice-brother their family had once taken in — and that they had a daughter together. Then came the news that Liu Rending had died in the line of duty.

Last year another letter arrived from home. The old man, feeling his days were numbered, had specifically asked Su Jueming to look after his niece, Su Fuling.

Thinking of all this, Su Jueming wiped away a tear.

Su Fuling hadn't expected her uncle — who had been all smiles just a moment ago — to suddenly start crying. 'Little Uncle...'

'Little Uncle is fine. It's just — seeing you, I thought of your mother. You look so much like her.' Su Jueming laughed, a warm, open sound. 'Except the nose and mouth. Those are all your mother's eyes and brows. The complexion is your father's — your father had fair skin.'

Su Fuling curved her brows and smiled. 'My eyes and brows take after Mama, my nose and mouth after Papa. Everyone always said I took the best of both of them.'

'That's right, that's right — my niece is beautiful. More beautiful than any film star.' Su Jueming laughed heartily.

Though Little Uncle Su Jueming was more direct than the people back home — not a shred of reticence — Su Fuling adapted without trouble.

She had never been the coy type. Any compliment, she could receive in full. She only put on a modest little smile for the sake of her elder's feelings.

'Little Uncle, I've come to cause you trouble this time.'

Su Jueming waved it off. 'Don't say that. I'm your blood uncle. If you stand on ceremony with me, you're treating me like a stranger. Besides, all these years it was your parents who looked after Grandfather in his old age. Taking care of you is the least I can do. What a pity your mother wouldn't come — otherwise we'd really be a family reunited.' Grandfather was gone, his brother-in-law was gone, and yet his sister refused to come to Hong City, choosing instead to stay and work at the frontier. Su Jueming suspected she harbored some resentment toward him in her heart, and so wouldn't come to see him.

Just thinking about it made him want to cry again. 'I was wrong back then... I shouldn't have run off like that.'

He spoke and dabbed at his eyes at the same time. Not going back in person this time — that was partly work, yes, but also because he genuinely didn't have the courage to go back. He had no face to show there. He had left for the sake of his future and never looked back; he hadn't even been able to return when the old man passed. What would be the point of going back now? He was afraid of facing the neighbors' reproach — being called unfilial, being told he was no true son of the Su family.

Su Fuling hurried to comfort him. 'Grandfather and Mama both understood. You were only a teenager when you left home.'

Su Jueming waved it off. He knew perfectly well he had been a scoundrel.

Because back then he had looked down on his father for scratching out a living in the countryside, and had set his heart on studying under the famous doctors of the big cities. He had insisted on leaving to find a master — and that was how he came to be separated from his family for over twenty years.

Su Fuling didn't press further. Some regrets aren't smoothed over by a word of comfort. They take time.

Fortunately, Su Jueming, being a man of middle age, pulled himself together after wiping his face, picked up Su Fuling's luggage, and said, 'Come on. Let's go home and rest first. It's been a long journey.'

Su Fuling nodded.

Su Jueming had hired a car to meet her.

The driver was Li Siping, a neighbor from the same building where Su Jueming lived.

Li Siping was around forty, and drove a taxi for a living. He had come over from the Mainland himself, and always felt a particular warmth toward people from back home. When he saw Su Fuling, he turned to Su Jueming in surprise. 'A-Ming, so this is your niece? Goodness, she's as pretty as a film star. Doesn't look a thing like you.'

Su Jueming's complexion ran on the darker side, and his features were perfectly ordinary — nothing to write home about. But at this moment he stood a little straighter with pride. 'She takes after my sister and her husband.'

Su Fuling said, 'Hello, Uncle Siping.'

Li Siping chuckled warmly. 'Good, good, good. You're A-Ming's niece, so you're my niece too from now on.' Then, turning to Su Jueming with a compliment: 'You can rest easy now. Your niece is a beauty — she'll find a good family to marry into here in Hong City.'

Li Siping was thoughtful enough to say this in Cantonese, worried Su Fuling might feel embarrassed if she understood.

What he didn't know was that Su Fuling understood every word. Her hometown dialect wasn't Cantonese, but there had been sent-down youth from this region in the village once, and she had picked up the language from them.

As a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner with ambitions to travel the whole country, Su Fuling had always been diligent about learning local dialects.

Older patients were more receptive to traditional medicine than younger ones, and older people generally didn't speak Mandarin well. So as a Doctor, she had to be able to understand her patients' own languages. This had given her a working knowledge of quite a few Mainland dialects — and now that knowledge came in handy. The Hong City variety was slightly different from what she knew, but communication seemed to flow without a hitch.

Li Siping said, 'There are quite a few young men in our building, you know. A-Ming, you should ask Old Auntie Wu to put out some feelers. Coming over from the Mainland, it's better to find a good family to settle into sooner rather than later.' Some things didn't need spelling out: staying indefinitely in a relative's home wasn't a long-term arrangement, so it was better to have one's own household in Hong City. Li Siping felt he was speaking from the heart.

Su Fuling hadn't expected to run into an enthusiastic matchmaker the moment she arrived in Hong City...

Su Jueming said, 'She's still young. We'll talk about that later.'

Su Fuling breathed a quiet sigh of relief. It seemed Little Uncle had no immediate plans to push her toward marriage. Otherwise she might have had to pack up and go home after just a few days.

What she didn't know was that Little Uncle Su Jueming was already quietly thinking about her future — he simply wasn't planning to look within their own building.

In his view, marriage was a second chance to choose the shape of one's life.

If his niece had been plain and unremarkable, he would have settled for finding her a match of equal standing, someone to get through life with, and kept a watchful eye from the side. That would have been enough.

But now that he had seen how lovely she was, she had every opportunity to aim for something better.

No need for her to live crammed into a public housing block in Yau Tsim Mong with a dozen people under one roof.

A middle-class family — a young couple would at least have a room of their own. Things were difficult now, but once he, as her uncle, grew his clinic and built a reputation, once he had more patients and more connections, wouldn't the choices multiply?

The more Su Jueming thought about it, the more feasible it seemed. In his heart, he had already begun to sift and weigh.

Seeing that Su Jueming — the uncle himself — wasn't in any rush, Li Siping decided not to make himself a nuisance either, and switched back to Mandarin for the benefit of Su Fuling in the back seat. 'A-Ling, do you know what your uncle does here in Hong City? He's a proper Doctor, his own boss — a man of real ability.'

Su Fuling smiled. 'I know. The people back home are so envious of my uncle. They've always said he's capable.'

Beside her, the subject of all this praise felt a swell of pride — and then a flush of embarrassment. Never mind that he had written home boasting about how successful he was; in truth, what kind of great Doctor or big boss was he, really? He was no better than a Plaster peddler... So he said modestly, 'It's not all that impressive.'

Li Siping said, 'What do you mean, not impressive? In our whole building, only a handful of people run their own shops. You walk out the door and everyone calls you Boss Su, Doctor Su — which neighbor doesn't give you a thumbs-up? And to think, you and Sister A-Juan built everything from nothing, all on your own...'

Once he got started, he couldn't quite stop, and without meaning to he began recounting the hardships of Su Jueming's early years in business.

Su Fuling thought of her grandfather reading her uncle's letters home back then, murmuring that life away from home was hard in every way — that outsiders only saw the glory, while family knew the truth: that her uncle had gone out into the world as a young boy, and simply surviving had been a stroke of luck, and no one could know how much he had suffered over the years.

Looking at things now, it was exactly as Grandfather had said. Her uncle had not had it easy.

At least, even through Li Siping's mixture of flattery and praise, Su Fuling could hear the hardship threaded through it all. Little Uncle Su Jueming had only properly opened a clinic of his own in the last couple of years — and it was no grand practice, no thriving business. By all appearances, the clinic wasn't making much money.

Even in Hong City, her little uncle was a man who ran on feeling and loyalty. So when he treated the neighbors, he charged almost nothing — and waived the fee entirely when he could.

Su Fuling herself had often given consultations for free, so she understood the situation well.

She sighed inwardly. It seemed her arrival would only add to the pressure on this household.

She began to reckon: she needed to start earning money as soon as possible, to help with expenses. If she could eventually become independent enough to move out on her own, so much the better — she didn't want to be a burden on Little Uncle's family. Living under someone else's roof was always an inconvenience, even when that someone was as close as a blood uncle.

The car wound its way to a narrow street in Yau Tsim Mong.

Shops lined both sides, enormous advertising boards hung overhead in every direction, a dizzying riot of color and text — much of it in traditional characters.

All of it felt new to Su Fuling. The System's interstellar world was a distant abstraction; Hong City, this glittering international metropolis, was right here before her eyes, vivid and real.

Su Fuling looked around with open curiosity.

Su Jueming smiled and narrated as they went — what each shop along the street did, which of the people inside he knew.

'Once you've settled in, I'll have your aunt take you out for a proper look around. Since you'll be staying a while, you'll want to get to know the neighbors' faces.'

Li Siping lowered his voice and said to Su Jueming, 'A-Ming, your niece is moving in long-term — A-Juan agreed to that? Just make sure it doesn't blow up later. I'm telling you, a few weeks ago someone's family came to stay in our building and there was a row for days. You know how it is.' The way A-Ming was acting, he didn't seem to be in a hurry to marry the girl off. A long-term houseguest was no small matter. A-Juan couldn't go out to work because of the children, and A-Ming was already stretched thin supporting a family of five — now there'd be one more mouth.

Su Jueming said quietly, 'A-Juan agreed, of course. She has the kindest heart of anyone.'

Then he turned to remind Su Fuling, 'Your aunt is a practical woman — she doesn't go in much for social niceties. Don't misread her. These years, I owe everything to her keeping the household together so I could open the clinic.'

Su Fuling nodded.

Her aunt had spent so many years at her uncle's side — her character couldn't be bad. As for temperament, if they truly couldn't get along, she would simply move out on her own eventually.

Su Fuling felt no fear at all about this new life.

Partly because she had never been the sort to be frightened of anything. And partly because, now that she knew the careless shape her life had been given, every trivial irritation in the world seemed too small to bother with.

What could possibly matter more than being alive?