In the dim, lifeless room, a single red ember winked in and out.
A weary man had one leg thrown over the other, sprawled shamelessly on the sofa, head tipped back, a cigarette clamped between his teeth. Smoke braided the air, and the red ember glowed from the fog’s depths.
“Don’t smoke.”
The door eased open, and a little girl hugged a long‑eared rabbit doll, standing in the doorway like a pale moth in a shaft of light.
The man slid her a glance. The light pooled behind her and washed his gaze; her face was a blur against the glow. He ignored her.
“Don’t smoke!”
She stepped forward, voice lifted like a pebble striking glass.
Only then did the man meet her eyes, cold and clear as winter stars in a long night.
“Before you talk to your elders, add an honorific—”
He drew long and deep. The ember gnawed the cigarette like ants chewing bark. Ash snowed onto the sofa. Skimming her tight, angry face, he chuckled. “Your father never taught you?”
“I—” her eyes ran soft as water, her face set hard as ice. “I don’t have a father.”
...
...
Though some edges blur, Bai Shaohan still remembers the first time she met her uncle—Bai Ye.
It wasn’t pleasant, but later Grandpa swung a feather duster like a storm and chased that tired, infuriating man around the house, which took the sting out.
She wasn’t so angry anymore, yet her impression of him never climbed far out of the mud.
People are like that. The score you give someone sets early; afterward it wobbles around that number, and without a seismic shift, it rarely breaks through.
“I don’t like you, Uncle.” She’d said that last time they parted, bristling like a cat with its back up.
He only laughed, lazy and careless, a grin heavy with fatigue, then climbed into his car.
This time, if not for that incident, boxed in and out of options, she wouldn’t have come here. Not to him.
But people need a foil.
Bai Ye, her uncle—lazy, slovenly, allergic to trouble—however bad he was, he beat that man—her—so‑called—father.
Even if her father was polite, friendly, mild, with a respectable career, better than his younger brother—so Grandpa said.
Side by side, she still felt her tired, lazy uncle was better. Many things aren’t solved by lists like that. Many things are set on the first breath—at birth.
That’s emotion tattooed into the blood.
Click.
The door swung open.
Rustle—the dust sifted down like a gray drizzle, not gentle at all.
...
Wordless, the girl brushed grit from her hair.
Her gaze fell on a room that looked like a storeroom.
Boxes of every size filled the space; there was barely a square foot to stand. Even the bed and counter weren’t spared, both buried under scattered odds and ends.
If not for the bed, you’d never guess someone could live here.
Thud.
Her backpack hit the floor.
She rolled up her sleeves; a neat frown pinched between her brows.
She let out a barely audible sigh.
“Sure enough—still really don’t like you.”
...
...
Shaohan doesn’t like herself.
Even without past memories, judging by today, Ye Weibai could feel it.
But—
“That isn’t a bad thing,” Ye Weibai thought. “Or—call it a good thing.”
He picked up the Bible he’d found in the coffee‑table drawer and flipped at random.
“Hah. Fitting.” He smiled and murmured, “For whoever has, will be given more, and they will have an abundance; whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.”
Boiled down: the strong get stronger; the weak get weaker.
Those who chase the stars draw nearer to them; those who drop their gaze and sink never rise again.
The world calls it the Matthew effect.
Fitting, because that line explains what Ye Weibai is about to do to the girl.
He won’t explain the method yet. It’s aggressive. But he doesn’t think he has time for plans that trickle gentle as water.
Because—Misfortune.
A faint tang of Misfortune clung to Shaohan, not thick but real.
Ye Weibai smelled it the moment he saw her—the same hair‑raising scent Philia once wore. Different only in density—Shaohan’s wasn’t as heavy, but it was growing.
Every minute, every second, it crept up grain by grain.
Slow, yet unwavering, without a ceiling. It spelled a fate sliding toward the abyss.
Leave that certain matter alone, and one day it’ll surpass the Misfortune that swamped Philia.
In Philia’s World, how many deaths did Ye Weibai walk through to reach the only solution?
A sliver of life born from a thousand collisions of chance.
Do it again? He wouldn’t dare claim he could find that only solution twice.
“So, we have to move faster.” He listened to the thump of heavy things upstairs. “It may hurt a bit. But people can only save themselves.”
...
...
In the bathroom.
She stared at the water heater.
Shaohan drifted, lost in thought.
She forced herself past hunger and fatigue. Cold rain still gnawed her bones. After she wrestled the room into order, she nearly collapsed on the floor—two hours later.
Lips pressed tight, she panted, each breath a scrape.
Her arms, overused, were close to useless now.
Heaven knows what those boxes held, and why they weighed like anchors.
Mostly books and notebooks, it seemed. But for a child, the sum piled into something brutal.
Even with that grind, she didn’t let out a sound. She didn’t even consider asking Ye Weibai downstairs to lend a hand.
Was it independence? Pride? Or some unknown gear turning? Hard to say yet.
No doubt, Shaohan is a stubborn child—very stubborn.
Warm honey light pooled over her small, bare, snow‑pale body.
She had stripped down, only to realize she didn’t know how to use the heater.
It wasn’t like the gas heater back home. No button, just a display. She jabbed it for ages—nothing.
No matter what she tried, she opened the valve, and only cold water came.
It hit her skin and made the rain‑sunk chill bite deeper.
After several tries, one fist short of punching the display, Shaohan chose to give up.
But her body was filthy—sweat and dust, sticky and sour. Not washing? Really?
Or just use cold water and be done? The weather wasn’t that cold. Rinse fast, it’ll be fine, right?
But—
She stood barefoot on the tiles, mind in a tug‑of‑war.
And even now, shivering head to toe, she still never thought to call out a single line—
“Uncle, I need help.”
From a small thing, you can read the whole. Maybe in her dictionary, the words “Help me” were never printed.
