Chapter 39

Tao Yan held his bowl and said with a smile, "It would taste even better if you boiled some brown sugar water and added it in."

But the weather was too hot, and Tao Yan could not be bothered to boil brown sugar. Honey would do for now, and it tasted pretty good too.

Aunt Tao's eyes lit up. "If brown sugar water tastes good too, I'll boil some tomorrow and give it a try. Brown sugar is much cheaper than honey."

Tao Yan chuckled. "Won't everyone get tired of eating jelly noodles every day?"

"How could anyone get tired of something this delicious? I could eat it every day and never get enough!" Aunt Tao shook her head.

As they spoke, Tao Yan suddenly felt something round being slipped into his pocket. Looking down, he saw a child who had somehow crawled up beside his feet, his outstretched arm slowly withdrawing.

Tao Yan pulled a plum from his pocket, its skin rubbed clean. The large, deep-red plum was plump and full, its flesh thick. Even its outer skin had been worn slightly torn, exposing the soft flesh beneath. It was obvious someone had held and played with it for a long time.

"Is this for me?" Tao Yan crouched down and asked gently.

The child shyly shrank back. His cloudy eyes, damaged by quicklime, stared blankly in Tao Yan's direction as he cautiously nodded.

He pointed at the laughing, playing crowd, then at Tao Yan, and finally at his own mouth. "Ah, ah!"

Tao Yan understood. "You mean a neighbor gave you this plum, but you couldn't bear to eat it, so you saved it for me?"

The child shrank back even more shyly. After a long while, he still nodded.

He knew these two older brothers, who could knock down traffickers, were incredibly capable. They surely did not care about his plum. But he had nothing else. This plum was all he had.

He wanted the two brothers to know how grateful he was. Grateful that, after escaping, they had still remembered to report it to the police, letting the police catch the traffickers and rescue them from hell.

He really liked his life now.

Tao Yan froze.

He had received many gifts in his life. Globally limited luxury goods, handcrafted watches, expensive cars and houses, all kinds of precious presents that had clearly taken thought and effort. Going back a few more years, during his student days, he had even received lovingly prepared lunchboxes slipped into his desk by unknown people.

But he had never received a plum whose skin had been rubbed raw.

Tao Yan suddenly felt that the plum in his hand weighed heavily. Behind him, Huo Baichuan loudly protested that it was unfair. "Why did he give it to Tao Yan but not me? We were clearly the ones who reported it to the police together."

Hearing Huo Baichuan's question, the child immediately panicked. He could not see or speak, so he could only wave his hands and make incoherent sounds in explanation.

It was not that he did not want to give Huo Baichuan a plum. He only had one. He had heard Tao Yan talking to Aunt Tao, so he had slipped the plum into Tao Yan's pocket.

Huo Baichuan could not understand what the child was gesturing anyway. He had only wanted to tease him. Seeing the child grow so anxious he was nearly crying, Huo Baichuan burst out laughing and rubbed the child's head. "All right! I was teasing you! Giving it to him is the same as giving it to me. The two of us are together anyway."

As he spoke, Huo Baichuan stuffed his bowl into the child's hands. "Eat up. One plum for half a bowl of jelly noodles. You made a profit, little guy!"

The child's face flushed red from the teasing, but he could not explain himself.

Just then, Huo Baichuan spotted the old station chief arriving late through the crowd, carrying a small folding stool. He reached out and patted Tao Yan on the shoulder.

Tao Yan understood. He set down his bowl and went straight to the old station chief. Huo Baichuan grinned and crouched beside him. "We've sold two computers over the past two days. Today's customer is even planning to bring us a big deal. They're purchasing for a TV station, ten computers in total. The thing is, the TV station doesn't have that much cash and wants to pay with an acceptance bill."

The old station chief raised a brow and asked leisurely, "So?"

The people around them also turned to watch the show.

Huo Baichuan gave a sly laugh and said with an honest-looking expression, "We're both minors! We can't register a business license, so we can't accept an acceptance bill!"

"You two are minors to begin with. According to the rules, you really can't register a business license." The old station chief saw through Huo Baichuan's scheme and said calmly, "Why don't you two think carefully about how to contact your parents? I'll help you get in touch with them. Once I send you both home, you can use your family members' ID cards to apply for a license."

"We don't remember! We were so frightened that we got amnesia!" Huo Baichuan said shamelessly. "Can't you think of some way to help us?"

The old station chief did not even lift his eyelids. "I can't."

"Come on!" Huo Baichuan kept pestering him. "I know Chief Shang must have a way. Please help us. Look at us, with no fathers, no mothers, no one to rely on here. It's not easy for us to make some money."

The neighbors who had been listening in burst into laughter. Someone teased, "If all else fails, the two of you can acknowledge Old Shang as your godfather. Then use his ID card to register the license—"

"That won't do!" Chief Shang snorted, cutting him off. "Public servants aren't allowed to do that."

The other person was about to say more when Tao Yan spoke. "If you find a way to register a private company for us, we can promise that for every computer we sell, we'll contribute ten percent of the sales revenue to help those four children get surgery."

The crowd suddenly fell silent.

Tao Yan continued, "Let them regain their sight, regain the ability to speak, have fully functioning limbs, be able to walk and hold things. I don't know how advanced medical care is right now, but as long as there's money, there's hope for recovery."

"Besides that, we can establish a missing persons assistance website, recruit volunteers across the country, gather information on missing people, and help their families find them. We'll cover all the website's operating costs ourselves. We promise to use a certain proportion of the company's annual net profits to keep the website running."

Huo Baichuan looked at Tao Yan with great interest. Everyone knew that companies in every industry became enthusiastic about charity and public welfare once they reached a certain scale. Most of the time, however, such goodwill came with a purpose.