Chapter 1: Driven Out on a Rainy Night
My second older brother threw my suitcase down from the third floor.
The suitcase burst open when it hit the ground in the rain, scattering my belongings everywhere. The blood pressure medication I had bought for my mother, its white tablets soaked in muddy water, rolled toward the drain. The knee brace I had bought for my father was covered in mud and blown over by the wind.
“This house has nothing to do with you. Get lost.”
Chen Hui stood at the entrance of the stairwell, cursing at me without even holding an umbrella, letting the rain soak him.
He was wearing a black cashmere coat I had never seen before. His hair was neatly combed and shiny with hair gel. He looked completely out of place in this shabby apartment building in an old urban village.
I crouched down and picked up my scattered belongings one by one, putting them back into the suitcase.
My clothes were completely soaked and clung to my body. My teeth chattered from the cold, but I didn't say a word.
I clenched the photocopy of the property ownership certificate in my hand. The paper was soaked by the rain, and the ink had begun to blur slightly, but the two characters, "Chen Qiang," were still perfectly clear.
The column for co-ownership was blank.
My name wasn't there.
Every single penny used to buy this apartment had come from the eight years I spent carrying bricks at construction sites.
"Chen Hui." I raised my head and looked at him. "I paid the full price for this house."
"You paid for it?" He let out a laugh. The sound was like a razor blade scraping against glass. "You're just a brick carrier. Where would you get that kind of money? Our parents raised you all these years. What's wrong with spending a little money on your family? That's called filial piety. Understand?"
My mother walked out of the stairwell, clutching her apron in her hands. Her eyes were red. She glanced at me, then quickly lowered her head.
"Mom," I called.
She said nothing.
My father followed behind her, leaning on his walking stick. His lips moved slightly, but in the end, he only let out a sigh.
I was far too familiar with that sigh. Whenever something happened in our family, he would always sigh like that and then refuse to do anything.
"Dad, about the house—"
"Mo," he interrupted me. "Your eldest brother is getting married. The house needs to be under his name so he can get a loan more easily. We're all family anyway. What's the difference whose name it's under?"
Was there really no difference?
I swallowed and took my phone out of my pocket.
The screen was cracked, but it could still light up.
I opened my transfer records and held the phone out in front of him.
"Dad, this is the 370,000 yuan I transferred to my eldest brother on the day we bought the house. The note clearly says 'House Payment.' These are all the payments I sent home every month over the past ten years. Every single transaction is right here."
He didn't look.
He simply turned his face away.
"What do you mean by that?" Chen Hui walked over and slapped my phone out of my hand. "You're keeping records? You're keeping records against your own family? Chen Mo, do you have any conscience?"
My phone fell into a puddle, and the screen went completely black.
"I dropped out of school at fourteen and followed Old Zhou to construction sites. I earned thirty yuan a day."
I stood up, completely drenched. Rainwater dripped from my chin.
"I carried bricks, hauled cement, and climbed scaffolding. I worked from five in the morning until ten at night. I kept only 200 yuan for myself every month and sent everything else home. My eldest brother's tuition, your startup money, Dad's medical expenses, the down payment for this house. Which one of those didn't come from me risking my life to earn it?"
"Shut up!"
Chen Hui grabbed my collar and shoved me against the wall.
The back of my head slammed into the concrete wall. My vision went black for a moment.
"Mo!" my mother shouted, but she didn't come over.
Chen Qiang leaned out of the third-floor window and shouted, "Hui! Don't hit him! The neighbors are watching!"
Don't hit him?
The neighbors were watching?
I laughed.
With Chen Hui gripping my collar and pinning me against the wall, I laughed.
"Big Brother." I tilted my head up and looked at him. "Do you remember what you told me on the day we bought the house? You said, 'Little brother, we'll live in this house together. Mom and Dad will take the master bedroom, and you'll take the second bedroom.' Do you remember that?"
Chen Qiang withdrew his face from the window.
"Chen Hui." I turned my gaze back to him and stared straight into his eyes. "The year you started your business and borrowed money from me, what did you say? You said, 'Little brother, consider this a loan from you to me. Once the company starts making money, I'll pay you back double.' Do you remember?"
Chen Hui let go of my collar.
He took a step back and looked down at me with an expression that made me feel like I was nothing more than a pile of garbage.
"You're just a junior high school dropout. What do you know about investments? That money was something you gave to the family. It wasn't a loan. Do you have a written IOU?"
An IOU.
I didn't have one.
But I had a recording on my phone.
That old phone with the cracked screen was now lying in the puddle, soaking in the rainwater.
It contained a recording of my phone conversation with Chen Hui from back then. His words, "Consider it a loan from you to me. I'll pay you back double," were perfectly clear, word for word.
"I don't have an IOU." I wiped the rain from my face. "But I never planned to ask for the money back anyway."
I bent down, picked up my phone from the puddle, and shoved it into my pocket.
Then I picked up my suitcase from the muddy water. Its zipper was broken and wouldn't close.
So I dragged that battered suitcase, wide open, and turned toward the entrance of the alley.
"Chen Mo."
My mother finally spoke.
I stopped walking but didn't turn around.
"Where are you going?"
"Anywhere." I said, "After all, this house has nothing to do with me, right?"
"What kind of nonsense is that?" Her voice suddenly rose sharply. "We raised you all these years. What's wrong with you contributing a little to the family? Your eldest brother and second older brother are our biological sons. You are—"
She stopped.
The alley fell silent, with only the sound of the rain.
I am.
I am... what?
I slowly turned around.
My mother stood at the entrance of the stairwell. The rain had soaked her hair. She covered her mouth as if she had almost let something slip.
My father was pulling at her sleeve.
The light in Chen Qiang's third-floor window went out.
Chen Hui turned his face away.
"What am I?" I asked.
"Nothing." My mother lowered her hand. "Just go. We'll talk again after you've calmed down."
I stood in the rain for a very long time.
Long enough for Chen Hui to lose his patience, turn around, walk into the stairwell, and slam the entrance door shut with a loud bang.
Long enough for my father to sigh and lead my mother back inside.
Long enough for the light on the third floor to go out, leaving only the dim yellow motion-sensor lights in the hallway of the entire building.
Rainwater streamed down my face. I couldn't tell whether it was just rain or something else.
I picked up my broken suitcase and walked out of the alley, one step at a time.
The small convenience store at the entrance of the alley was still lit. The shopkeeper looked at me through the glass, then silently lowered her head.
The rain washed away my footprints in the mud, as if I had never lived here at all.
I took out my old phone, the one that had been soaked in water.
The screen was completely shattered, but just before it fell into the puddle, I had pressed the button to save the recording.
Every word Chen Hui had said while grabbing my collar, and even the pause when my mother had almost let something slip, were all recorded inside.
I opened another transfer record from three years ago.
The note read:
"Second Older Brother's Business Loan. Promised to Pay Back Double."
Scrolling further up, I found the transfer from the day we bought the house.
The note read:
"House Payment. Put Under Eldest Brother's Name. We're Family."
Scrolling further up, I found the very first payment I had sent home ten years ago, when I had just started working at the construction site.
Two hundred yuan.
The message attached contained only five words:
"Mom, I got paid."
I gripped my phone and stood in the rain.
Chen Hui was right.
I didn't have an IOU.
But I had ten years.
Ten years of transfer records.
Ten years of call recordings.
Ten years of notes and messages.
Every payment and every word had been preserved.
Ever since I was fourteen, I had known that some things couldn't be entrusted to blood ties alone.
I dialed a number.
"Old Zhou, it's me. I'll transfer the 100,000 yuan I borrowed from you back tomorrow. Also, do you know any reliable lawyers?"
There was silence on the other end of the phone for several seconds.
"Mo, have you finally figured things out?"
"I have."
I hung up and dragged my broken suitcase into an internet café by the roadside that was still open.
I rented a computer and backed up all the evidence from my phone to the cloud.
Transfer records, audio files, screenshots of conversations. Not a single piece was left out.
While doing all this, my hands kept trembling.
It wasn't because of the cold.
It was something else.
At three in the morning, I leaned back in the internet café chair and stared at the screen.
The computer desktop displayed an image I had just set as my wallpaper.
It was a photocopy of the property ownership certificate, with Chen Qiang's name circled in red.
I added a line of text to the image and set it as the title of a note on my new phone:
"Eight Years of Carrying Bricks. One House. One Name. It's Time to Settle the Score."
It was still raining outside.
I closed my eyes.
There was only one thought in my mind.
Tomorrow, I was going to investigate something.
I could roughly guess what my mother had almost said tonight.
But I wanted to see the answer with my own eyes.
Where exactly was the adoption certificate hidden?
ns216.73.216.62da2
and then Add to home screen.