A 30-square-metre rented room looked a little messy with all kinds of wine bottles piled up in a chaotic manner on the floor.
In the kitchen, on the dirty stove, a shiny iron pot was stewing with delicious chicken soup.
The fragrance filled the room.
It was about time.
Gu Chen absent-mindedly lifted the lid.
The next second, he was badly scalded by the steam that rushed out.
'Ssshh.'
He clenched his fingers, his face showing some pain.
In fact, what really made him suffer was not the tingling of his fingers.
It was the thought of his frail daughter Tang Tang in the hospital and his wife Ji Pianran, who had run away from home sixteen years ago.
He shook his head and let out a bitter laugh.
'Ji Pianran, you really are heartless,'
Back then, Ji Pianran left without saying goodbye, and has been gone for sixteen years.
He left behind himself and his two-year-old daughter, Tangtang.
He took this as revenge and began to drink heavily, leaving Tangtang with her mother and curling up alone in a thirty-square-metre rented room in the city.
Every day, he lived in a drunken stupor.
When he ran out of money, he went out to do odd jobs to get some money to continue buying alcohol.
He lived like a walking corpse.
Until two days ago, the school called and said that his daughter suddenly fainted in class.
He hurriedly ran there and took his daughter to the hospital for a check-up. The doctor immediately concluded that the child had severe anorexia.
As the examination progressed, it was discovered that she not only had severe anorexia, but also, most importantly, had severe depression.
Anorexia is just a complication of depression.
Gu Chen sighed deeply, his face full of pain and helplessness.
Over the years, because of the way that Sugar's face looked so much like Ji Pianran's,
every time he saw her, he felt inexplicably sad. That was also the reason why he always subconsciously avoided meeting his daughter.
He had thought that the child had grown up and that she could go about her own life.
He just didn't expect...
He reached out and picked up the stainless steel ladle hanging on the wall, carefully ladling the steaming chicken soup into the thermos before heading out the door and heading towards the hospital.
In the ward, the sixteen-year-old girl was wearing a hospital gown.
A white quilt covered her body.
If her head wasn't exposed, you really couldn't tell there was someone under the quilt.
She was... so thin.
Gu Chen pulled the corners of his mouth up, trying hard to put on a smile to make himself look kind.
'Tantan, come here, Dad made you some chicken soup to help you get better.'
The girl didn't seem to be in good spirits.
However, when she saw her father, she still managed to force a sweet smile.
'Dad, I'm sorry for worrying you.'
Her voice sounded a little haggard.
Gu Chen's heart felt a little sour, and his hand holding the thermos felt heavy.
The person who should be saying sorry was obviously himself.
If he had known that his daughter was sick and had shown her some concern earlier, things might not have turned out like this.
He placed the lunch box on the bedside table in the hospital and pulled open the cabinet drawer, taking out a small bowl.
He carefully ladled the soup into a small bowl, brought it to his daughter's lips, and blew on it before handing it to her.
'Tantan, be careful, it's hot,' he said.
The little girl nodded and swallowed a small mouthful obediently.
In fact, she could no longer taste the original flavour of the food, and even if it was delicious, it tasted like chewing wax.
However, she still forced herself to swallow.
'How is it? Is it delicious?' Gu Chen asked with concern.
The girl nodded and forced a smile, 'It's delicious, thank you, Daddy.'
Her smile was very sweet.
But the twinkling light in her eyes faded little by little.
Eyes don't lie.
She wasn't happy.
Gu Chen couldn't care less.
'What's wrong, is Daddy's soup not delicious, or... is Tangtang not happy?'
The girl looked as if she had been hit on a sore spot.
She shook her head and gently nibbled her slightly pale lips, 'It's nothing.'
After a moment, she started talking to herself again.
'I miss my mother. She'll probably never come back.'
She really missed her mother.
She was only two years old, too young to understand anything.
She kept talking to herself.
'I haven't seen her for so many years, and I'm obviously not attached to her anymore, but why do I miss her even more?'
She didn't know that a special kind of feeling not only doesn't fade with time, but actually grows stronger with each passing day.
This is probably the magic of blood ties.
Gu Chen pursed his lips. He couldn't explain it, and he didn't want to.
He could only sit there silently and watch her.
His eyes were full of worry.
'In fact, all the other kids have their parents pick them up, and when it rains, they use an umbrella.'
'That day, Lin Nannan gave me a lunchbox. She smiled at me and said, 'Tantan, try it. It tastes like my mum's cooking. It's delicious.
'At the time, I thought to myself, I've had that too.'
Before she could finish, the girl's voice began to tremble.
Then she suddenly turned her head towards the side of the bed and began to vomit violently.
The heart monitor on the table was beating frantically.
Gu Chen felt a sudden tingling in his scalp. He clenched his fists and felt a tremendous sense of fear and tension for the first time in his life.
This feeling was even more heart-wrenching and terrifying than Ji Pianran's departure.
'Doctor, doctor!!!'
he trembled.
Unsurprisingly, his daughter was rushed to the ICU, while Gu Chen sat on the cold bench, his face as white as paper.
He sat on the cold bench, staring fixedly at the glass on the door.
Looking back, he realised that his life had been a real failure.
Gu Chen's marriage to Ji Pianran had been arranged.
There were actually two types of arranged marriages. One was a business alliance between wealthy families, which was done for the sake of achieving greater benefits.
The other was in small, backward villages, where parents paid to get their sons married in order to have heirs.
Gu Chen was the latter.
His village was poor and backward.
He was lucky to have a daughter-in-law, let alone talk about free love.
But Gu Chen yearned for free love, so after the wedding, he basically avoided Ji Pianran whenever he could.
It wasn't until one drunken night that they had Tantan.
And because of that drunken night, there was a subtle change in the two of them.
Unfortunately, the good times didn't last long. Soon, Gu Chen was called by his friends to go to the city to work.
The big city was really different from the small village, where everyone was free to fall in love.
It was really different in the big city from the small village. Everyone was free to fall in love. Watching people older than himself recklessly talk about the excitement of pursuing love in front of him,
Gu Chen felt extremely complicated.
He had an arranged marriage.
He clearly didn't have any feelings for her, but they had a child together anyway.
Life was full of twists and turns.
He really felt aggrieved.
It was this sense of grievance that made him lose all the little good feelings he had just started to have for Ji Pianran.
He stopped going back for half a year.
Every time Ji Pianran called him, he deliberately didn't answer.
Even though he knew that she had walked for miles to the public phone in the town before calling him.
But he just didn't have the courage to answer.
What was there to say? There was nothing to talk about.
His heart was too complicated.
He didn't even know if he loved Ji Pianran or not.
Time passed like this, year after year, until the first day of the third year, the first day of the Chinese New Year.
There were firecrackers everywhere, and every household was bustling with activity.
And without a word, Ji Pian left two-year-old Tang Tang behind and disappeared without a trace.
That day, she disappeared without a trace.
He panicked, went crazy.
It was also on that day that he suddenly realised that he actually liked her.
It seemed that he had mistaken his anger towards the world for his anger towards her.
In the year that followed, he searched for her everywhere, but never heard from her again.
He had planned to take his two-year-old daughter, Tang Tang, with him to the city to work, but as the little girl grew older and her chubby face grew wider, he realised that she was basically a little version of Ji Pianran.
The corners of her eyes, the way she frowned, the way she smiled, even the way she walked – it was all so similar.
It was really too similar.
So similar that every time he looked at her, his heart felt like it was being torn apart.
He simply couldn't bring himself to live with her.
Later, Gu Chen went to the city where he had originally worked.
He sent some living expenses to his mother every month.
He only went back during the Chinese New Year.
In this way, ten years passed.
Just when he thought that his daughter had grown up and understood things, and could finally start her own life,
a phone call from the doctor destroyed his long-held self-righteousness.
'Gu Tangtang's family.'
The door to the ICU opened.
The doctor was wearing a white coat and rubber gloves, and his expression was grave.
Gu Chen's thoughts returned, and a heart that had been hanging in the balance for a long time once again rose to his throat. He stood up hastily, his voice trembling slightly, 'I'm here!'
'Doctor, how is my daughter?'