Jiang Ning would always deliberately lower the camera angle before every livestream, avoiding exposing the faces of others to her online audience.
The hand that Liu Zhaodi extended was caught perfectly within frame, a hand that had seen the ravages of time, rough yet resilient, with a constellation of wounds of various sizes on her knuckles and fingers. Most had healed, leaving only shallow scars.
Her voice sounded like that of a young girl, yet the hand that appeared before the camera was textured like that of an elderly person. If it wasn’t for her slender, fragile wrist which didn’t look like aging skin, the viewers would have been even more divided.
[Shocked, why does her hand look like that, is she the victim in Jiang Ning’s livestream this time?]
[That must be the hand of someone who’s been doing farm work for years. Young people nowadays might not have experienced this, but when I helped with farm work as a kid, my fingernails were also full of deep dirt, and I’d often get cuts, but my parents would give me gloves, so I didn’t have as many wounds as her.]
[So, she’s actually still very young?]
[Right, based on her voice, she seems like a teenage girl]
[Just a teenager, yet they call her Zhaodi... You can tell her status in the family just from her name.]
[Is the hospital environment really this poor? Where is Jiang Ning actually streaming from?]
[Didn’t Jiang Ning ask those two kids to fetch water for their sister? Why aren’t they going?]
The viewers were utterly puzzled.
Off camera, Liu Pan and Liu Jiabao sat by the hospital bed, motionless, as if they hadn’t heard Jiang Ning at all.
Liu Jiabao even looked up and snapped at Jiang Ning, "Mind your own business about our affairs!"
They had just heard Jiang Ning, who was standing by the door, and knew she was there to prevent the Great Aunt and Auntie Shen from taking their sister back home.
The Great Aunt and Auntie Shen had said that there wasn’t much money left on their sister’s phone, and if they continued to let her stay here for treatment, it would all be spent.
What a waste that would be!
After all, the money on their sister’s phone wasn’t just for her; why should it all be spent on her alone?
The illness wouldn’t kill her right away anyway. It would be better to save the money on the phone for slow usage, and wait to treat the illness slowly once they had more money, right?
All Liu Jiabao wanted now was for his sister to agree with the Great Aunt and Auntie Shen immediately, so they all could leave the hospital and go back home.
Of course, Liu Jiabao had no kind expression for Jiang Ning, who suddenly appeared and hindered them.
"Jiabao!" Liu Zhaodi hastily started speaking, quickly apologizing to Jiang Ning, "I’m sorry, I apologize on behalf of my younger brother. He’s young and has been agitated these past few days, being in a strange place..."
Liu Zhaodi felt extremely embarrassed.
She had been left to fend for herself in the hospital these past days, with neither Liu Pan nor Liu Jiabao coming to see her.
Before Jiang Ning showed up, in fact, He Cuihua and the others had only just arrived.
As soon as they saw Liu Zhaodi, they told her to go back with them, showing no concern for her well-being. It was Jiang Ning, a stranger, who immediately noticed her parched lips upon entering and realized she was very thirsty.
"An eleven or twelve-year-old is not that young," Jiang Ning saw how Liu Zhaodi protected Liu Jiabao and bluntly exposed the cruel reality Liu Zhaodi didn’t want to face, "You’re sick, yet they’re still dreaming of living in a beautiful big house, a nice trick of casting off the millstone to kill the donkey."
"What are you talking about! We’re not!" Liu Pan exclaimed indignantly, tears in her eyes, immediately turning to Liu Zhaodi, "Sister, this person is spewing nonsense. We’re not like that!"
Whenever she had done something wrong, or was faced with something she didn’t want to do, she would look at her sister with such a pitiful expression that, in the end, her sister would always relent.
This tactic had never failed Liu Pan.
Indeed, upon seeing her about-to-cry demeanor, Liu Zhaodi’s face immediately softened.
Just when Liu Pan thought Liu Zhaodi would comfort her and her little brother, Liu Zhaodi said instead, "Panpan, get me a glass of water."
Liu Pan’s expression stiffened for a moment, "... Okay."
She got off the bed and quickly left the room with Liu Zhaodi’s cup in hand.
As she exited the room with her back to everyone, the pitiable look on Liu Pan’s face shifted instantly, and even the light in her eyes darkened. She clenched the cup in her hand fiercely as she walked to the nearby water room.
[Ah, speechless, I don’t understand, I don’t understand, but I kind of dislike these two younger siblings.]
[I trust Jiang Ning, there must be something wrong with the characters of these two kids.]
[I seem to have cleared up some confusion, it looks sister named Liu Zhaodi is ill, and these Jiabao and Panpan are her younger siblings?]
[Jiabao? Panpan? I don’t know why, but I feel like I’ve seen these two names before.]
Liu Zhaodi asked Liu Pan to fetch water partly to defuse the tense atmosphere and partly because she was truly thirsty.
She licked her cracked lips, and Li Qiufeng, standing to one side, suddenly spoke up, "It’s our fault, we were too eager to get home and didn’t notice Zhaodi wanted water."
In reality, it wasn’t that they hadn’t noticed; in their hearts, Liu Zhaodi was someone to be casually pushed around and scolded, a lowly girl they despised from the bottom of their hearts.
To personally fetch water and serve a lowly girl?
However, they did need to resolve the current issue quickly.
If they didn’t get rid of the person before them, how could they persuade Liu Zhaodi to go back with them!
Li Qiufeng said to Jiang Ning with a smile, "As Zhaodi just said, we are her Great Aunt and Auntie Shen, and these two are her younger brother and sister."
"My nephews and niece have had a tough life, losing their father at such a young age. My brother’s wife wasn’t a good woman either; she just packed up and left with another man, abandoning the children."
"Zhaodi is sensible, she’s been helping with farm work since she was young. After their father died and their mother ran away, Zhaodi took care of her siblings with her grandparents."
[Damn, that’s so sad... No wonder it’s the Great Aunt and Auntie Shen who are with her in the hospital. I was wondering why the parents of these three kids weren’t here.]
[Ah, they’re orphans. Suddenly I understand why these kids turned out badly. Growing up without the company of parents is indeed cruel and can lead to many shortcomings in their development.]
[The grandparents are old and can’t earn much money, let alone support three children, so is this conflict because there isn’t enough money for treatment?]
[Dad died early, mom ran off, leaving behind her brother and sister to live with their grandparents... For some reason, I just thought of Le Zhengling; her experiences are similar.]
[Damn, damn, damn! No wonder I felt familiar when I heard the names Jiabao and Panpan. Aren’t those the names of Le Zhengling’s younger siblings?]