"You're back. Have you eaten?"
Liu Mei was sitting in the living room watching television when she saw her eldest son push open the door and walk in.
"Yeah. Where's Liu Xing?"
Hu Fan swept his gaze around the room, but surprisingly didn't see his younger brother, who usually sat cross-legged on the sofa watching TV. Puzzled, he wondered if Liu Xing had finally yielded to their mother's might and was holed up in his room, burying himself in makeup homework.
Liu Mei popped a melon seed into her mouth while glancing toward Liu Xing's bedroom door. Hu Fan instantly understood that his guess was right.
"How did you run into your dad today? You even had a meal with him. Did you treat?"
Sure enough, Liu Mei still knew her unprincipled ex-husband all too well; the moment she heard about it, she knew it was her son's money being spent.
"We just happened to run into each other outside. It was almost lunchtime, so we went to Nanmen Shuanrou together."
Hu Fan plucked a banana from the fruit bowl, leaned halfway against the sofa, and began eating it bite by bite.
"Fine. As long as you don't get mixed up in your dad's messy business, I don't care about anything else."
"I know. I won't."
Hearing her son's guarantee, Liu Mei felt much more at ease, knowing he had a sense of proportion. She then turned her head back to immerse herself in her TV drama.
Tossing the banana peel into the trash can, Hu Fan stood up and got ready to go check on Liu Xing.
He pushed the door open and took a look—sure enough, just as he had expected.
The summer homework was tossed on the desk, while he and Xiaoyu were sprawled on the carpet playing with toys.
Hearing the door open, Liu Xing had initially thought it was his mother. Frightened, he scrambled up from the floor, but when he turned his head and saw it was his older brother, the alarm was canceled, and he plopped right back down onto the floor.
"Bro, you scared the life out of me."
Liu Xing patted his traumatized little heart, giving his brother a somewhat aggrieved look. But less than a second later, he had already soothed himself.
"Get up. Mom is standing guard right outside, and you actually dare to play in your room. You've got some nerve."
Hu Fan pulled over the chair next to him and sat down. He casually picked up the summer homework from the desk, flipped it open, closed his eyes, and reached up to rub the bridge of his nose.
Thank goodness this was his younger brother and not his son; otherwise, he would have been driven to an early grave. He could only say that their mother, Liu Mei, was a woman of formidable patience. Truly impressive.
Treating it like something filthy, Hu Fan didn't even bother turning the page after taking a glance; he simply dropped the summer homework back onto the desk.
On the rug, having played for a bit, Liu Xing finally realized that he still had work left undone, and with their mother lurking outside like a tiger eyeing its prey, he wouldn't be able to slip away.
With a turn of his head, he nimbly rolled over, scuttled across the mat on his rear end, and made his way to Hu Fan's feet. Liu Xing hastily reached out both arms to hug his big brother's calf.
"Brother, you've gotta save me, or Mom is gonna beat me to death."
Mindful of their mother outside, Liu Xing's mournful howling was all physical acting with hardly any sound, yet he put on such a convincing show that it genuinely looked heart-wrenching.
"Let go."
A cold, merciless voice sounded in Liu Xing's ear, prompting him to howl even more diligently.
Hu Fan was somewhat speechless at his younger brother's shameless antics. The kid was really latching onto him for help. He could only think that he truly shouldn't have come over to watch the fun at a time like this; people who court their own doom cannot be saved.
"Cut it out. I'll read, you write."
"Ah, thanks a million, Big Brother, for saving my life! This little brother has no way to repay you, I can only—"
"Enough. Get over here, grab a pen, and write."
Hu Fan quickly cut short his theatrical performance and got up to yield the chair.
"You got it."
Delighted, Liu Xing released his grip on his brother's calves. Excitedly scrambling up straight from the carpet, he grabbed his summer homework and a pen, sat up straight and proper, and waited for his brother to feed him the answers.
"Number one: the square root of three."
...
As for why it wasn't a matter of teaching and writing step-by-step, let's just say Hu Fan had long ago suffered the brutal beating of tutoring Liu Xing through his homework; he had accepted his fate.
Back when his younger brother was in the first or second grade of elementary school, he had already exposed his nature as a poor student. At the time, Hu Fan had still believed that he, a former top scorer in the college entrance examination and an academic high-achiever, couldn't possibly fail to teach a little elementary school kid like Liu Xing.
In the end, facts proved that he indeed couldn't teach him. Simple homework tutoring would invariably end up looking like a scene of domestic violence, to the point where even their mother, Liu Mei, couldn't bear to watch and had to rush over to break up the fight.
Ever since then, Hu Fan had grown wise and would never again ask about his younger brother's studies. After all, both brothers wanted to live out their lives in peace.
Taking half an hour, with Hu Fan dictating, Liu Xing plowed through all his summer homework. Of course, the handwriting was something only he could understand.
Even Hu Fan, who knew all the answers, had no idea what the boy had actually written.
A silent sigh escaped him. When it came to studying, they could only leave it to the schoolteachers to worry; after all, those professionals had plenty of experience and surely had countless ways to handle Liu Xing.
"Alright, remember not to rat me out."
Liu Xing gave his brother a seasoned wave of his hand, looking entirely like an old hand. He was going to get beaten anyway, so why bother offending his older brother on top of that? It simply wasn't worth it.
Watching his younger brother cheerfully toss his homework aside with a smug grin, Hu Fan felt a twinge in his teeth. He dropped a casual warning and prepared to return to his room.
Besides, Liu Xing would end up getting disciplined by their mother Liu Mei anyway. If nothing else, that chicken-scratch handwriting alone was worth a beating.
Sure enough, the moment Hu Fan turned on his computer and before he had even started typing on the Jianpan, he heard Liu Mei's lion's roar and Liu Xing's desperate pleas for mercy. He hurriedly pulled the headphones out of his drawer and put them on, and the whole world instantly grew quiet.
He needed to get down to serious work. His fingers rapidly flew across the Jianpan, lines of code appearing on the computer screen and multiplying at a rapid pace. Before long, a simple framework was finished.
Dinner time.
The family was eating quite happily when Xia Donghai, sitting nearby, cast a hesitant look at Liu Mei. Then, as if bracing himself after an internal struggle, he made an announcement.
"Tomorrow, the final member of our family is arriving." He paused slightly before continuing, "It's your older sister, Xia Xue. I hope you all can get along well in the future."
After saying this, Xia Donghai looked visibly relieved. He felt a certain sense of guilt toward this daughter and was somewhat at a loss as to how to get along with her.
"Oh? Why so sudden? What does she like? I haven't even properly decorated her room yet."
Hearing this news so abruptly, Liu Mei found herself at a loss, stricken with the nervous self-consciousness typical of a stepmother facing a stepdaughter.
As for the brothers Hu Fan and Liu Xing, they felt nothing in particular; upon hearing the news, they merely nodded to indicate they understood.
Xia Donghai glanced at his calm family and felt his heart ease even more. Their family would surely be able to get along well.
"Well, I was just notified out of the blue myself. With the semester starting soon, it'll also be more convenient for the child to come over. As for what Xia Xue likes, we can talk about it after dinner.
"Besides, you've already tidied up that room nicely enough—it's neat and pretty. Don't worry too much, our girl is actually very easy to get along with."
Seeing his nervous wife, Xia Donghai could only hurry to offer comfort.
However, it was clear that it didn't have much effect.
As soon as dinner was finished, Liu Mei rushed off in a flurry to begin her grand room-decoration project, even carefully considering the color scheme of the bedsheets—she was being quite a perfectionist about it.
Hu Fan and the others refused to get involved, content to lounge comfortably on the sofa eating fruit and watching TV.