Chapter 15 The Worried Call
Ji Shijing was forty-eight.
He had finally stopped fighting me.
He genuinely acted like an ordinary father who cared about his daughter.
At ten o'clock that night I received a furious call from him.
He demanded to know why I was not home yet and whether some smooth-talking man had tricked me again.
I was sitting comfortably at a barbecue stall, eating skewers.
Less than twenty minutes later Ji Shijing and Si Han arrived in a rush, just to check whether I had been deceived.
Si Han had seen this scene too many times.
With a face mask still on, she looked exhausted and spoke to me in a flat voice.
"Lin Yi, he is addicted to being your father. Just bear with it."
Ji Shijing rarely spoke harshly to Si Han.
"Wife, what do you mean by that?"
"She is the daughter you carried for ten months. She is the fruit of our love. I am her father. Everything I do is for her sake."
The nerve of him, taking advantage of me and dragging Si Han into it too.
"Raising a daughter is not only a mother's job. As her father I must fulfill every responsibility."
He sounded sincere.
He had completely forgotten how, twenty years ago on the day I was born, he had wanted to strangle me.
But now I was tired.
I picked up a skewer I did not want and held it out to Ji Shijing.
"Want some?"
His endless chatter stopped at once. He took the skewer and fed it to Si Han instead.
"Wife, our daughter is so good. She even buys food for us now."
I stopped him.
"She does not eat chives."
I swapped it for a crab stick covered in chili powder and offered it to Si Han.
Si Han's eyes filled with tears.
"My daughter understands me best. She really is my little cotton-padded jacket."
I said nothing.
"Sorry to interrupt this touching family moment."
The system that had been pretending to be dead suddenly came online.
Its only purpose was to assign me a new task.
"Lin Yi, clock in for overtime tomorrow. Go marry the neighboring sicko CEO, Shen Ba. The original host ran away after hearing how extreme his methods are."
"You are already in the same world. Just take a taxi."
They only appeared when they needed something.
This system was getting worse.
I sneered.
"What if I refuse?"
The system sniffed.
"Fifty thousand gold coins upon completion."
I laughed.
"Do I look like someone who bends for such a small reward? Why should the system get to notice me only when it wants and ignore me the rest of the time? I am done being your lapdog."
The system answered.
"One hundred thousand."