"Damn it, my neck feels like it's about to snap..." Lin Fan shook his heavy head, his nape stiff as a board.
The pale fluorescent lights of the evening self-study classroom stretched the tired figures of the high school seniors into long shadows, and the air was thick with the suffocating blend of mimeographed test papers and body odor.
When the end-of-class bell finally rang like a lifeline, all he wanted was to rush back to his rented room, fire up his old clunker of a computer, play a few rounds of games, and temporarily wipe away the pressure of college entrance exams and his bewilderment about the future.
Night had fallen, and a cold, fine drizzle drifted down, stinging his face.
The dim, yellowish streetlights in the alley where his rental was located barely managed to beat back the thick darkness, casting a lonely, slender shadow of Lin Fan.
Just as he reached the dilapidated apartment building and reached into his pocket for the keys, a bolt of pink lightning lunged from the shadows of the corner!
"Thud!"
Lin Fan felt a sudden tightening around his thigh, as if he had been grabbed by a tight bundle.
"Daddy! Mengmeng finally found you!"
The soft, clear voice of a child exploded in his ear like a high-explosive grenade!
He froze on the spot, his brain crashing, completely forgetting how to breathe.
Stiffly looking down, he saw an exquisite, doll-like little girl clinging desperately to his thigh.
She was dressed in an elaborate pink princess dress that looked wildly out of place in this run-down alley, with her hair tied in cute twin tails. A pair of big, watery eyes stared up at him brightly, looking so pretty she didn't seem real—more like a... figurine?
Whose little ancestor had managed to get lost here?
"Little one," Lin Fan said, his throat as dry as sandpaper, "did... did you mistake me for someone else? I am really not your daddy. Look closely, your big brother here is only eighteen and still in high school!"
He bent down, trying to pry those small hands apart.
Yet this little creature looked delicate and pink, but her strength was surprisingly formidable, clamping onto him like a pair of iron pliers.
Not only did she refuse to let go, but her little mouth puckered, and her impossibly pretty eyes instantly filled with moisture. Her eye rims turned red at a visible speed, and crystal-clear tears welled up and rolled down, hanging on her long eyelashes like two swaying curtains of crystal beads, looking as though the end of the world had arrived.
"Wuwu... You are Daddy! Mengmeng wouldn't get it wrong! Daddy's thighs... Mengmeng remembers!"
She cried with such deep grievance, her little baby voice laced with sobs yet exceptionally clear. "Daddy, why don't you want Mengmeng anymore? Mengmeng looked for you for so long, so long... Wuwu..."
In the quiet, drizzly alley, this crying sounded precisely like an air-raid siren.
"My goodness, what's all this crying about?"
"Xiao Lin, what on earth are you up to? Why are you making someone else's little girl cry?"
"Tsk tsk, whose child is this? She looks like she stepped right out of a painting... Xiao Lin, you... you couldn't possibly..."
Crying really was the best flare to draw a crowd.
Aunt Zhang from next door, returning from the late shift with an unfinished lunchbox, Uncle Li coming out of the opposite stairwell to dump the trash, and a few neighbors who loved nothing more than a good spectacle instantly closed in.
The dim streetlights stretched their shadows long, and several pairs of eyes scanned back and forth between him and the "little bomb" on his leg like X-rays. Their expressions were thoroughly complicated—curious, suspicious, and, more than anything, carrying that unmistakable "young man, we understand" vibe.
Lin Fan felt his cheeks go up in flames, burning even hotter than the concrete pavement at noon in midsummer.
He could actually hear the sound of his blood rushing to his head.
This was ten thousand times more embarrassing than being caught reading a novel during evening study by the head of discipline!
It was a full-scale, live-streamed social execution!
"No! It's really not! Auntie Wang, Uncle Li, uncles and aunts everyone!"
Sweat beading on his forehead from panic, he waved his hands incoherently. "I swear! I really don't know her! Do I look like someone who could be a father? I don't even have a girlfriend! This has got to be some new kind of scam, or someone lost their kid and got the wrong person!"
He tried to explain, emphasizing that he was still a miserable high school senior buried under endless exam papers, unable to even see his own future—where would he get the ability to conjure up a daughter this big?
The timeline didn't add up either!
Unfortunately, his defense seemed exceptionally pale and feeble in the face of the little girl's tear-stained face and her deceptive, angelic appearance.
The neighbors clearly preferred to believe the pitiful little creature whose crying could melt anyone's heart.
A teenage boy and a little girl so pretty she didn't seem of this world crying out for her daddy—this plotline... fit the public's appetite for gossip far too well.
"Xiao Lin, it's not that Auntie is lecturing you," Auntie Wang stepped closer, lowering her voice in a tone of earnest advice, "young people make mistakes, that's inevitable, but now that the child has shown up at your doorstep, you can't just shirk responsibility. Look at this child, between her brows and yours... there really is a bit of a..."
Lin Fan almost choked on his own breath.
Like? Like a ghost! He wished he could whip out his ID card and household registration booklet right now to prove his innocence!
He looked in despair at the small accessory clinging to his leg; she was still sobbing softly, but the force with which she held his leg hadn't diminished in the slightest. She even rubbed her cheek against his trouser leg, leaving two damp tear stains.
There was no way he could wash himself clean of this even if he jumped into the Yellow River.
Lin Fan wanted to cry without tears, feeling that tonight's rain was exceptionally cold and bone-chilling.
Just as Lin Fan was being roasted nearly to the point of spontaneous combustion by the gazes of the onlookers, the little girl hugging his leg choked back a sob and suddenly dropped a bombshell: "Daddy, last night you even secretly hid three hundred bucks of pocket money under the mattress, saying you were saving it to buy the new 'Star Domain God of War' skin! Mengmeng saw it all!"
This statement hit Lin Fan like a bolt of lightning, roasting him inside and out!
He shuddered all over, staring at the little girl in disbelief.
The matter of hiding money to buy a game skin last night was something he had decided on a whim, inside his own little room—it was absolute, absolute knowledge shared by no one else!
This little one... how could she possibly know?!
Looking at the growing crowd of pointing neighbors, and then back at the little girl in his arms who was crying so bitterly she looked ready to pass out the next second, Lin Fan felt his scalp tingle.
If this kept up, his "glorious achievement of getting someone pregnant in high school and abandoning his wife and child" would probably spread across the entire neighborhood by tomorrow.
"Alright, alright! Stop crying!"
He grit his teeth, bending down with a mix of pacification and force. "Let's go inside. It's raining and cold outside, Uncle... no, I, I'll help you find your mom, okay? Let's go inside first and talk!"
Disregarding the meaningful glances of his neighbors, Lin Fan coaxed and carried Lin Mengmeng, practically fleeing in panic into his cramped rental room of barely ten square meters.
"Thud!"
The door closed, finally shutting out the discussions and gazes outside that were sharp enough to kill.
Inside, empty instant noodle cups resembling bombed-out bunkers were scattered around the edge of the table, a few cheap gaming posters were pasted on the wall, and a faint, lingering scent of instant noodles hung in the air.
All of this formed a stark, almost absurd visual contrast with the little girl standing before him in her pink princess dress, who looked as though she had just stepped out of a fairytale.
Lin Fan leaned against the door panel, his heart still pounding wildly, his breathing unsteady.
He looked at the little girl in front of him who claimed to be his daughter and had accurately blurted out the secret of his hidden stash of private money, feeling monstrous waves churn in his heart.
A prank? Who could possibly know things in could detail? Could it be... real?
How could that be possible! He was only eighteen years old!
Just what background did this exquisite little creature have?