"When I first met him, I didn't really like him. I even considered taking a swing at his head with my ice axe. Given the circumstances at the time, that would have been the most natural choice, wouldn't it?"
"Exactly. So why did you change your mind afterward?" The old man took a pack of Randoms gummies from his pocket, tore it open, and tossed a handful into his mouth.
"Because of my wife. Ever since she was young, she'd been a carefree, scatterbrained person. She muddled through every day and liked to push every problem onto the people around her, never giving anyone any peace of mind. Yet she had an innate instinct. She never took a single wrong step when it came to the major decisions in her life. I always thought that was some kind of supernatural ability too, until we got married and I found the answer."
"What was it?" The old man grew interested as well, chewing his gummies.
"No matter how cruel the world was or how much danger and malice it contained, she could always find the kindness hidden beneath that cruelty and malice—the kindness everyone else overlooked. So the world always repaid her with kindness." Zhang's Father said, "Back then, in that Underground City, we could all tell that the child wouldn't survive once he left those tentacles. Yet none of us did anything. We even secretly hoped he would die right there. But Xiao Xia was the only one who wanted him to live. She was also the first to pick up that umbilical cord and plug it into herself, using her own blood to send nutrients to him, even though I don't think she had fully considered the risks at the time.
"But that was who she was. If you