A Soft Touch

Ai Lao San finally got to eat dinner after all. Those thirty-one dollars from last time had been impossible to explain, but this time he had paid cash.

Still, he ate the meal in utter gloom, without the slightest pleasure of enjoying good food—only a full measure of pent-up frustration.

He had misjudged them in the daytime, thinking they were a few fat sheep, only to find they were tigers. He had nearly capsized in a gutter.

If Li Ye and the others had really forced him to sell them his jade ring, Ai Lao San truly would not have known how to get himself out of it. After all, they had a white companion. If they accused him of fraud, even getting hauled into the station would have been a huge hassle.

Later, he had planned to go to the Cao family restaurant and throw his weight around at that newly arrived international student, only to have another old international student ruin things.

"Damn it, a tiger fallen to the plains gets bullied by dogs. If Sixth Uncle hadn't tricked Father into going to East Asia and disappearing without a trace, how could I be swallowing this kind of humiliation?"

Ai Lao San muttered furiously to himself as he walked home. Back in the day, he had at least been a small boss with a business of his own.

But ever since his father and his sixth younger brother had vanished together, it was as if the sky had collapsed over the family. One misfortune followed another, until even the shop that had belonged to him was bought away.

Ai Lao San had spent his whole life relying on his family to "pay his salary." When that income suddenly vanished, he had no choice but to take crooked paths,