Chapter 1

Chapter 1

After the car accident, my dad died on the way to the hospital.

My mom didn’t make it through emergency treatment, either, but she still had time to say a few last words to me.

She told me several of her and my dad’s passwords, told me where the property deed and other valuables were kept, and her final words were, “Don’t trust anyone.”

She didn’t even have the strength to say anything sentimental. She was in so much pain. In the end, she looked at me with tear-filled eyes, and then she was gone.

I was still wearing my school uniform. I’d run over so fast that my shoelaces had come undone, and I hadn’t tied them again.

I knelt blankly beside my mom and listened as the doctor announced her death.

When grief reaches a certain extreme, you can’t even cry.

I felt like I was trapped in a dream.

At last, I took their phones, screens shattered, and numbly followed my mom’s instructions, transferring all the money from every account they had into my own.

The funeral was arranged with the help of my parents’ friends. They helped me contact a lawyer, and compensation came in from the driver who had caused the accident, as well as the insurance policies my parents had bought while they were alive.

Then the relatives all showed up, too.

My eldest uncle and his wife wore brand-new clothes, their eyes practically shining as they stared at our eighty-some-square-meter apartment.

“Xuzhou, your parents are gone now. From now on, your aunt and I will move in and take care of you,” my eldest uncle said, making arrangements in just a few sentences. “But your older cousin and younger cousin will have to come with us, too. Your room is bigger, so the two brothers can squeeze in there. How about you sleep in that room by the balcony?”

Our apartment had three bedrooms. The master bedroom had been my parents’ room, and my own bedroom wasn’t small, either. The smallest room could only fit a four-foot bed, and it didn’t even have a window.

The matter of compensation was being handled by the lawyer together with a mutual friend of my parents. The relatives didn’t know how far along the process was.

My eldest uncle said, “You’re still underage. I’ll hold on to your parents’ compensation money for you for now and give you living expenses regularly. When you graduate from university and get married, I’ll give it back to you.”

My older cousin was already in his twenties, and my eldest uncle had been worrying about finding him a wife. Last year, he had even come to my dad to borrow money.

My dad had lent him tens of thousands, but they still thought it wasn’t enough.

And the money they had borrowed before had never been repaid.

“No need, Uncle. I can take care of myself,” I said.

Their expressions changed at once. They started lecturing me earnestly, even squeezing out a few tears, saying I was my dad’s only son, that they were afraid I wouldn’t live well on my own, that my parents’ spirits in heaven would never be at ease, and so on.

I still refused.

I was seventeen, not stupid.

The two people who loved me most in this world were already gone. This apartment in an old neighborhood, close to several elementary and middle schools, was something my parents had planned for me ever since they got married. No matter what, I had to protect it.

My eldest uncle and his wife said all the right things, but there was calculation in their eyes.

When I didn’t agree, my maternal uncle and aunt soon came to my door as well. They, too, were fighting for custody of me.

Or, to put it another way, they were fighting for the right to live in this apartment and the right to control my parents’ compensation money.