Miaomiao sat on her mom’s lap in the backseat of the car. Her dad was next to them, and the family of three rode together while the driver took them to the hospital.

“Mommy, when we get to the hospital, are they going to give me a shot?” Miaomiao asked, her voice tinged with worry. Earlier, the system sister had distracted her, but now that she was sitting in the car, she remembered that hospitals weren’t exactly fun places.

As a child prone to catching colds, Miaomiao had been to the hospital several times before. While she hadn’t gotten shots too frequently, the memory of having her little bottom pricked by a needle made her uneasy.

“No, sweetie,” her mom, Fu Rou, reassured her gently, stroking her hair. “We’re just going for a check-up today. No needles.”

Hearing this, Miaomiao let out a small sigh of relief. No needles meant no pain, and while shots weren’t unbearable, they were certainly unpleasant.

When they arrived at the hospital, the distinct smell of disinfectant filled the air. Miaomiao wrinkled her tiny nose in displeasure. Before her own check-up began, she turned to her dad, Wen Fuchen, and said, “Daddy, you should get a check-up too. You look so tired lately.”

Her dad chuckled. “Daddy is not tired. Daddy is working hard to make money so Miaomiao can have pretty little dresses.” He held her small hand, warmth spreading in his heart at how caring his little girl was, even at such a young age.

Miaomiao blinked in confusion. Daddy’s not going to get checked? But the system sister said he needs to!

She thought about it for a while but couldn’t come up with a better plan. Finally, she decided to play her trump card. “It’s not fair if only Miaomiao gets a check-up. Daddy and Mommy need to do it too! If Daddy and Mommy don’t go with Miaomiao, then Miaomiao won’t go either.”

“You’re becoming more and more stubborn, little princess.” Wen Fuchen tapped her nose playfully and said indulgently, “Alright, Daddy and Mommy will get checked too.”

“Actually, it works out,” Fu Rou chimed in with a smile. “We usually get our annual check-up this time of year anyway. If we do it today, we can skip next month. Last year, you were so busy with work that you had to postpone it.”

Wen Fuchen nodded in agreement, and the three of them went through the check-up together.

Since there was a lot of data to process, the final results wouldn’t be available for a few days.

Back home, Miaomiao hadn’t forgotten the matter. As her dad prepared to leave for work, she stood at the entryway in her fluffy bunny slippers and said seriously, “Daddy, you work so hard. Remember not to drink alcohol and come home early.”

She had often seen her mom stand there and say the same thing to her dad, so today, she decided to take over the job.

“Miaomiao is growing up! She knows how to care for Daddy now,” Wen Fuchen said, clearly delighted. Turning to Fu Rou, he added, “I’m heading to the office. I’ll try to come home earlier tonight.”

Fu Rou looked at him with the same loving gaze she always had, even after years of marriage. “Don’t overwork yourself, and make sure to rest.”

“I will.”

After her dad left, Miaomiao ran over to her mom, clutching her leg and looking up with hopeful eyes. “Mommy, Miaomiao wants to go play with Xiong Da and Xiong Er!”

“Have you finished your winter break homework? All you think about is playing. Did you forget the tasks your teacher assigned?” Fu Rou scooped her up and carried her to her princess-themed bedroom.

The moment homework was mentioned, Miaomiao’s little face scrunched up in dismay. “Miaomiao doesn’t want to do it.”

“No excuses. You haven’t done any of your homework these past few days. It’s time to catch up.”

At three and a half years old, Miaomiao was attending preschool. It was a private, upscale kindergarten that balanced playtime with a variety of lessons. Subjects like basic reading, math, and English were part of the curriculum, and the school even held small exams.

Fu Rou placed the workbook on Miaomiao’s small desk and handed her a pencil. “Go ahead and start. Mommy will check when you’re done. Any mistakes will have to be redone.”

Miaomiao picked up the pencil with her right hand, her expression filled with exaggerated despair as she stared at the arithmetic problems.

The first question: 4 + 5 =?

She held up four fingers on her left hand and five on her right, counting them carefully. “Nine!” she wrote confidently.

Fu Rou glanced over and sighed.

The second question: 7 + 8 =?

Miaomiao put up seven fingers, then removed her socks, using her toes to make up the remaining count. After tallying her fingers and toes, she proudly wrote “15.”

She worked through the problems like this until she reached the ninth one: 11 + 7 =?

Miaomiao paused, staring at the question with a pout. “Mommy, Miaomiao’s fingers and toes aren’t enough. Can I grow one more?”

Fu Rou couldn’t help but laugh. “What, do you want to be a six-fingered little goofball?”

“But math is so hard!” Miaomiao whined, her frustration mounting.

Math was by far her weakest subject. Reading and writing, as well as English vocabulary like fruit names, came easily to her. But every time she faced arithmetic problems, she felt completely lost.

“Mommy, why do kids have to learn math?” she asked pitifully, looking up at her mom.

“Because if you don’t learn, you might get cheated when you buy things someday,” Fu Rou explained patiently.

“But Daddy said we have lots of money, so it’s okay if Miaomiao gets cheated out of a little. Can Miaomiao stop learning math, please?” She tilted her head and gave her mom a hopeful look.

“No way. If you don’t take it seriously, no fried chicken legs for you this week.”

The thought of losing her beloved fried chicken made Miaomiao grab her pencil and start working on the problems again with renewed determination.

She struggled and strained but eventually finished her math homework.

As Fu Rou corrected her work, Miaomiao sat nearby, clutching her pencil in one hand and clenching her other into a tiny fist, nervously hoping she got most of the answers right.

In the end, Fu Rou erased 13 of her answers.

Out of 50 questions, she had gotten 13 wrong—all the ones with larger numbers that her fingers and toes couldn’t handle.

With a heavy heart, Miaomiao went back to redoing the problems, counting her fingers and toes over and over until she finally got them right.

Fu Rou had a headache just thinking about her daughter’s future. If Miao Miao relied on her fingers and toes to count in elementary school exams, would she have to take off her shoes to do subtraction addition? And when multiplication and division came into play, what would she do then?

After finishing math, Miao Miao moved on to her favourite subject, the Chinese language. Following her teacher’s instructions, she read aloud a short passage each day. The text was marked with pinyin, and her soft, childlike voice filled the room as she practiced. Afterward, she tackled a few simple vocabulary dictation exercises. Then it was time for English—looking at pictures and naming them in English.

When all her homework was finally done, Miao Miao let out a sigh of relief and plopped onto a small chair to watch cartoons.

A few days later, the hospital sent over the health check reports. As Wen Fuchen read through his, he froze when he saw the diagnosis: early-stage lung cancer. After a long pause, he picked up his phone to call the doctor. He needed to arrange a visit to discuss treatment and plan his schedule accordingly. Work would have to take a backseat—health was more important than anything else.

Meanwhile, Miao Miao was in her room working on her homework when a voice suddenly echoed in her mind. It was the system speaking to her.
“Miao Miao, your dad’s medical report is out. His health isn’t very good. It’s because he smokes that his body is having problems. You must take care of him and help him quit smoking, okay?”
“What’s smoking?” Miao Miao asked curiously.
“It’s those small, thin things your dad keeps in his pocket. They’re bad for his health,” the system explained.

Miao Miao immediately remembered seeing her dad with something thin and long in his hand before, usually when he was in the study. Whenever she entered the study, her dad would quickly toss it into a heavy little bin filled with water and open the window, telling her not to inhale the smoke.

She furrowed her tiny brows. “Daddy is so silly! He knows it’s bad to breathe in, but he locks himself in a room to do it anyway. My daddy must be the silliest person in the whole wide world!”
“Exactly,” the system agreed. “So you need to stop him. Your mom keeping an eye on him isn’t enough.”

Nodding, Miao Miao ran to her parents’ bedroom. They were in the bathroom taking a shower together. She didn’t understand why grown-ups needed help bathing. She thought only kids needed that kind of help.

Finding her dad’s pants on the bed, she fished out the cigarette pack from the pocket and opened it. Inside were rows of thin sticks. She sniffed one and found the smell unpleasant. Determined, she carried the pack to the living room trash bin, emptied it, and replaced the contents with chewing gum from the coffee table. Satisfied with her work, she returned to her room to finish her homework. If she didn’t, her mom might forbid her from having fried chicken for dinner.

Later that night, after putting Miao Miao to bed, Fu Rou returned to the bedroom and confronted Wen Fuchen. “I told you to quit smoking ages ago, but you wouldn’t listen. Now look where it’s gotten you—lung cancer!”

Wen Fuchen sighed. “It’s just a habit I picked up.”

“Can’t you quit gradually? At least try!” Fu Rou’s eyes filled with tears. “Thank goodness the cancer was caught early. But what if it hadn’t been? What would Miao Miao and I do without you?”

“Don’t worry,” he said, trying to comfort her. “It’s early-stage. Catching it now means I’ll be fine. The heavens don’t want me to go just yet.”

“What nonsense! If the heavens cared, you wouldn’t have lung cancer in the first place!”

“…But it’s still early-stage,” he mumbled.

“Early-stage or not, from now on, no smoking! I’ll even tell your secretary to report to me if she catches you with a cigarette. And if you dare smoke again, we’ll be sleeping in separate rooms!”

That last remark made Wen Fuchen panic. “You can’t do that! What if Miao Miao finds out? She might think we’re having problems. That’s not good for her emotional well-being!”

“Well, you can avoid that by not smoking.” Fu Rou glared at him coldly.

The next morning, Wen Fuchen was having breakfast when Fu Rou handed him his outfit for the day. She grabbed his cigarette pack off the table, intending to throw it away, but paused when she noticed something odd. Why was the pack green?

Opening it, she found it was filled with chewing gum. Smiling to herself, she stuffed the pack into his pants pocket before laying out the clothes on the bed.

Later, as Wen Fuchen headed out the door, he instinctively reached for the cigarette pack in his pocket. His lips curled into a small smile.
“See? My wife still cares. She might have scolded me, but she’s giving me a little leeway. Quitting cold turkey isn’t easy, after all.”

But when he opened the pack, all he found was chewing gum.

Wen Fuchen froze. “Not even one cigarette? What kind of billionaire am I if I can’t afford to smoke?”

(End of Chapter)