Hua Manman calmly retorted, "When I tried to talk to you properly back then, how did you treat me?"
Hua Yusen was caught completely off guard.
His expression became very uncomfortable.
"Didn’t I already apologize? I was wrong in the past. I promise I’ll never lay a hand on you or your mother again. Can’t you just..."
Hua Manman cut him off mercilessly.
"No!"
Hua Yusen’s temper flared up again. "I haven’t even finished speaking. How can you just say no?"
Hua Manman said, "No matter what you’re going to say, my answer will always be no."
Hua Yusen gripped the paper bag in his hand, his expression turning ugly again.
"What on earth do I have to do for you to forgive me?"
Hua Manman stared at him, answering his question with one of her own.
"Are you thinking about hitting me again right now?"
Hua Yusen clenched his jaw, a vein bulging on his forehead. His expression was one of strained restraint.
"I don’t want to hurt you. I just can’t control myself. Manman, can you please stop making Dad angry? As long as you don’t make me angry, I won’t hit you again."
Hua Manman offered a sincere suggestion.
"As an adult, you can’t even control your own emotions. That can only mean you have a psychological problem. I suggest you go see a psychiatrist."
Hua Yusen looked as if he’d been humiliated, his expression twisting with rage. "Are you saying I’m sick in the head?"
Seeing that he was incapable of understanding reason, Hua Manman couldn’t be bothered to waste any more words on him.
"If you want to think of it that way, there’s nothing I can do."
After dropping that classic scumbag line, Hua Manman prepared to walk away.
Hua Yusen grabbed her arm. "I’m not finished talking! Who said you could leave?!"
Forced to a halt, Hua Manman turned to look at him and enunciated each word clearly.
"Let go of me."
Perhaps even she didn’t realize it, but in that moment, she looked remarkably similar to Li Ji when he was angry—both had a way of making one’s hair stand on end.
Hua Yusen was startled and subconsciously let go. But he quickly snapped back to his senses and cursed, his shock turning to furious shame.
"You damn brat! You just had to do this the hard way!"
He raised his hand and swung it swiftly at Hua Manman’s forehead.
Hua Manman didn’t react in time. She took a heavy blow to her head and staggered forward a step, nearly falling over.
She quickly grabbed a nearby tree to steady herself.
Hua Yusen reached out again, this time to grab her hair.
Hua Manman ripped off her backpack and swung it hard into Hua Yusen’s face.
The backpack was heavy, loaded with several books.
It landed squarely on the bridge of Hua Yusen’s nose. He felt as if his nose had been broken. Blood streamed from his nostrils, and his face contorted in pain as a torrent of curses escaped his lips.
Hua Manman lifted her leg and kicked Hua Yusen hard in the knee!
There was a sickening sound of bone dislocating from the joint.
Hua Yusen hissed in pain and stumbled to his knees, his hand landing right on the paper bag.
The cream cake inside was crushed, and frosting oozed out of the paper bag.
His other hand was clutching his nose.
Blood streamed through the gaps between his fingers, dripping onto the ground. DRIP. DRIP.
He tried to get up, but his vision swam with black spots, and his limbs felt powerless.
Hua Manman rubbed her forehead.
That blow had been a heavy one; her forehead was still throbbing with a dull ache.
She bent down to pick up her backpack, dusted it off, and turned to leave without a shred of pity.
She hadn’t gone far when her phone suddenly rang.
Hua Manman pulled her phone out of her pocket.
It was Song Yixian again. Her voice sounded extremely anxious.
"Where are you? Whatever you do, don’t get into a fight with Hua Yusen! The police just called me. They said Hua Yusen fainted once in the detention center. They sent him for a check-up and found a tumor in his brain."
Hua Manman froze.
She looked back and saw Hua Yusen collapsed on the ground, completely still.
...
「An hour later.」
At the City Hospital, Hua Manman sat quietly on a chair outside the emergency room, waiting.
CLICK-CLACK-CLICK!
The sound of high heels on the floor.
Hua Manman looked toward the sound and saw Song Yixian, dressed in a business suit, running toward her.
"Manman! How is Hua Yusen?"
Hua Manman turned her head toward the emergency room next to them. The electronic sign above the door read: "TREATMENT IN PROGRESS."
Song Yixian looked over as well, her heart filled with worry.
She had no feelings left for Hua Yusen.
But a life was a life, after all.
And more importantly, he was Manman’s biological father.
’If something really happened to him because Manman hit him, how could Manman live with herself in the future?’
Song Yixian said, blaming herself.
"It’s my fault for not explaining things clearly. If I’d told you sooner that he was sick, you wouldn’t have fought with him."
Hua Manman said, "It has nothing to do with you."
’She was the one who had hung up on Song Yixian; she couldn’t blame anyone else.’
Song Yixian noticed a bruise on her forehead and asked with concern.
"How did you get hurt?"
Hua Manman replied, "He hit me."
She didn’t say his name, but Song Yixian knew instantly who "he" was.
Song Yixian was furious, cursing through clenched teeth.
"He hit you again! That scum! That degenerate! No wonder he has a tumor—it’s karma! He deserves it!"
After her tirade, she ran downstairs to buy a box of bruise cream and personally applied it for her daughter.
After two hours of emergency treatment, Hua Yusen’s life was no longer in danger.
He was transferred to an observation ward for further monitoring.
Learning that Hua Yusen wasn’t going to die for now, Song Yixian breathed a sigh of relief.
She said to her daughter, "It’s getting late. Let me take you home."
Hua Manman stared through the glass window at Hua Yusen lying on the bed. It was a long moment before she responded.
"Okay."
By the time they got home, it was late into the night.
Hua Manman hadn’t eaten dinner and should have been hungry.
But she had no appetite.
She took a quick shower, lay down on her bed, and stared quietly at the ceiling, her mind drifting to things from long ago.
Back then, Hua Yusen hadn’t gone bankrupt, nor had he developed a habit of drinking and violence.
Her father had been busy every day, but whenever he had free time, he would take his wife and daughter out.
He would carefully explain the history of the music at concerts, deliberately hide inside a large mascot costume to tease Manman at the amusement park, and, on starry nights, patiently teach her how to use a telescope...
It wasn’t that they never had happy times.
It was just that those happy, beautiful memories had been utterly shattered by Hua Yusen’s repeated domestic abuse.
Images of their happy family of three flickered through Hua Manman’s mind, alternating with the ferocious, twisted expression on Hua Yusen’s face when he was drunk.
Her thoughts were too chaotic, like a tangled ball of yarn that was impossible to unravel.