Before Lin Ruixi could even finish her apology, the woman’s hand hit her squarely on her face. Lin Ruixi had never been slapped in her life, and her eyes widened immediately. Tears threatened to spill from her eyes.
Lin Xinyan froze. The last thing she had expected was for the woman to hit her daughter. She pulled Lin Ruixi into her embrace and glared at the woman. “How could you slap a child?!”
“Why did she run around in the first place? You’re such a bad parent too. Look at my clothes! It’s new! Give me the thousand I spent on it now!” The woman yelled at her. Her red lips, thick foundation, and her ugly snarl made her look like an unruly shrew.
“I didn’t mean to…” Lin Ruixi cried.
“That’s it?” The woman said arrogantly.
“How much do you want?” A low voice growled.
The man strode over with a scary frown.
He was about to go over when Lin Ruixi ran into the woman, yet a passing car got in his way. In just those few seconds, the woman had slapped his daughter.
The woman turned around at the sound of his voice.
Zong Jinghao was wearing a handmade suit under his unbuttoned coat which fluttered behind him, enhancing his domineering aura.
The woman shivered instinctively, the prior arrogance nowhere to be found. “This girl ran into me.”
“I didn’t mean it,” Lin Ruixi repeated, sniffing.
Lin Xinyan hugged her daughter tight. She had never laid a finger on her own daughter, yet some stranger decided to give her a harsh slap out of nowhere.
“How much does your clothes cost?” Zong Jinghao asked, taking out his wallet from his pocket. He didn’t have enough cash, so he signed a cheque instead. “Is a hundred thousand enough?”
He looked up.
The woman swallowed. A hundred thousand? Is he kidding her?
“I want cash!” The woman insisted, forcing herself to stay calm.
He didn’t have that much cash on him at the moment, so he gave Su Zhan a call. “I don’t care what method you use, but get me a hundred thousand in cash right now.”
Su Zhan didn’t know how to react. A hundred thousand in cash? What’s going on?
“Why do you need so much money all of a sudden…”
“Get it here in ten minutes!”
Zong Jinghao hung up after that. A crowd had formed around them by then.
Quiet chattering filled the air.
“That costs a thousand at the most,” someone whispered. “My bestie has the same coat and she’s asking for a hundred thousand?”
“I know right! She’s just a little kid, and it’s not like she did it on purpose. Why is she being so unreasonable?”
“Didn’t y’all see it? She hit the kid!” Someone who was there earlier said.
“She hit a child?”
“Look at that poor kid. Her face is red!”
“How could she? She’s such a cute child!”
The woman began to panic when she realized that she had messed with the wrong people. The man standing before her seemed to be a handful.
“Fine. I don’t need your compensation.”
Zong Jinghao didn’t even bother looking up. “You don’t get to say if this is over..”
Fear crept up the woman’s throat, though she put on a brave front. “I’m not asking for you to compensate me anymore. Why can’t you just let me go?”
“What in the world is going on?” Su Zhan said, appearing at the scene with a bag in one hand and Lin Xichen in the other, two bodyguards push the crowd aside so they could get the front. He walked up to Zong Jinghao and asked, “Why do you need so much cash?”
Su Zhan gave himself a pat on the back for coming up with a plan.
There were no banks near the rest stop, so he only had one place to go for cash. The gas station.
Just as he had guessed, there was an ATM at the gas station. He took out a hundred thousand in cash from the ATM.
Zong Jinghao gestured at the woman with his chin. “Give it to her.”
Su Zhan turned around to look at the woman, taking in the soup stain on her clothes and the overturned bowl of instant noodles at her feet, and he instantly understood the situation. However, the coat she was wearing looked nowhere close to something that would cost a hundred thousand.
“How much did you spend on this?”
Before the woman could talk, someone from the crowd answered for her. “A thousand at the most My bestie had the exact same coat.”
“Why do you want a hundred thousand for something that costs a thousand…”
“Give it to her!” Zong Jinghao yelled, cutting Su Zhan off. His dark pupils grew even darker.
Su Zhan noticed that something was off. He handed the money over to the woman.
She didn’t dare to take it. “I…I…”
She was at a loss for words.
“My daughter ruined your clothes, so as her father, I have to compensate you,” Zong Jinghao said, grabbing the money from Su Zhan’s hand and tossing it onto the floor at the woman’s feet. “Though, how am I going to deal with the fact that you hit my daughter?”
“What?”
Su Zhan and Lin Xichen were both shocked to hear that this woman had hit Lin Ruixi.
Lin Xichen began to tremble with anger. Did she just hit his little sister?
Su Zhan was furious too. How could she hit a child?
“I-I didn’t mean to…” The woman said, her voice trembling.
“You’re not getting off so easily!” Su Zhan yelled before Zong Jinghao could say anything.
“I don’t need the money, you don’t need to pay me for the damages…”
“Yes, we have to pay you for the damages, but you’ll have to explain why you hit my sister! She’s been a nuisance to me in the past, but I’ve never laid a finger on her even once! She had been my Mommy’s biggest treasure ever since she was born! If you’re not going to give us a good explanation today, I won’t let go of it forever! My daddy had said that we shouldn’t let ourselves get bullied just like how we shouldn’t bully others with our status and power!”
Lin Xichen was only five years old, yet his words were imbued with logic and reason. He looked like a mini version of Zong Jinghao beside his father.
However, all Zong Jinghao heard was Lin Xichen calling him ‘Daddy’.
Although Lin Xichen had accepted him as his father, he had never called him “Daddy”.
His heart ached for a second when he heard that.
“I said that it’s fine! Why are y’all bullying me?” The woman said, staggering backward and bracing for the worst.
She started regretting her action.
Why did she lash out like that?
However, she was truly angry since she had just bought the coat to wear for the new year; and it was ruined by this child.
“What do you by saying that we are bullying you? You started it!” Lin Xichen retorted. He would not let her turn the tables.
“That’s right! I’m sure someone here has seen the whole incident.” Su Zhan said as he scanned the crowd.
“I did,” a woman in the crowd said, stepping out. “I saw the little girl running after I came out from the bathroom, and she ran into the woman by accident. She apologized on the spot, yet the woman slapped her without any explanation.”
“She must be a really horrible person to have slapped a child like that.”
