Chapter 2
It’s hard to describe how I felt when I learned Dad was the hero of a novel.
But suddenly a lot of things made sense.
Dad wasn’t just my dad. He was a male lead.
Besides Mom, he had two wives and seven special lady friends.
Besides me, he had five sons and eight daughters.
He’d been reborn, and he had all sorts of impossible powers: photographic memory, X-ray vision, telekinesis…
At last I knew why I could never win a bet against him.
He had superpowers and he cheated.
It was more information than I could process all at once.
The old man at the bookstall was still trying to sell me his unsold novels.
In a daze, I pulled out the black card Dad had just given me and asked whether he took cards.
I have no idea where he conjured the card reader from.
Anyway, I ended up dragging a sackful of novels home. Oh, and there was a free gift: a novel reader that supposedly never broke.
Before I’d even recovered from learning Dad was a fictional hero, I got home and received a whole new shock.
Mom was rather scatterbrained.
So when I saw that our front door wasn’t properly shut, I didn’t think much of it. I pushed it open and went straight in.
Only to find two people locked in an intimate embrace in the kitchen.
“Who do you like better, him or me?”
“It’s been so many years, and you’re still just as irresistible.”
A string of affectionate murmurs followed.
I froze.
At that very moment, the black reader the old man had insisted on giving me blared—
“A new novel has finished downloading. Enjoy your read!”
“A new novel has finished downloading. Enjoy your read!”
“A new novel has finished downloading. Enjoy your read!”
It was so loud, so gloriously assertive, that everyone on the floor could hear it.
Mom and the unfamiliar man heard it too.
He jerked in alarm, covered his face with both hands, and hunted all over the floor for his jacket.
Mom was calmer. Her skirt was all crumpled; she straightened it, blushing, and began to explain.
“Ningning, let me explain.”
“Mom, you don’t have to. I understand…”
I waved a hand, walked solemnly over to the man, and said:
“Dad!”
He’d only just put his jacket on. At that, it fell off again.
Shock, excitement, grief, and joy chased one another across his face. Finally, with reddening eyes, he looked from me to Mom.
“…She’s our daughter?”
“Dad!”
My eyes reddened too, and I called him again.
No wonder I looked nothing like my dad.
No wonder I’d always felt he didn’t love me.
No wonder I hadn’t inherited a single protagonist gene.
This was my real dad!
Wiping away my tears, I hurled myself toward my new father.