The younger police officer began by taking photos of the scene and Gu Lihui for evidence. Seeing Gu Lihui's miserable state, a look of sympathy appeared on his face. The older officer was much more composed, showing no outward emotion. He simply took out his notepad and began his routine questioning of the people present.
The female shopkeeper had abandoned her own store to follow them. Before she was even asked, she launched into a rapid-fire account of everything she had seen:
"...That man and this young woman are husband and wife, and he's the child's biological father. But he's a real piece of work... You should have seen it. He was desperately pulling on the woman, trying to use her as a human shield. The child got frantic and gave a hard tug, and both mother and daughter fell to the ground. The little girl, especially, couldn't get up for the longest time. Her mom had to struggle to pick her up..."
The shopkeeper even demonstrated with gestures as she spoke, then lamented to the two officers, "See? Having a daughter like this is useful, right? When it counts, she's more dependable than a man."
The way the young police officer looked at Gu Lihui changed instantly. The sympathy was gone, replaced by pure disgust. He turned to the shopkeeper and retorted, "Ma'am, you can't just see this one guy and write off all the good men in the world. Scumbags like him aren't that common..."
"Right," the shopkeeper said. She glanced at the two officers, who were also men, and gave a dry laugh as she nodded in insincere agreement. But her eyes were bright with skepticism.
"Alright, stick to the facts and don't get sidetracked. Did you see anything else? Just tell us what you personally witnessed. Don't ramble on about irrelevant things."
The corner of the older officer's mouth twitched. He had remained expressionless the whole time, but if one looked closely, you could see that he, too, had narrowed his eyes at Gu Lihui in disapproval.
Nearby, Gu Lihui's face was flushed red as he glared furiously at the shopkeeper with his uninjured eye. The shopkeeper, unafraid, glared right back, cursing at him, "What are you staring at? You do nothing but shameless deeds. You cheated with another man's wife, so if they didn't throw acid on you, who would they throw it on? Keep sowing your wild oats, and you'd better watch out, or someone will get the other half of your face and your other eye, too."
The two officers exchanged a glance and looked at the shopkeeper. This time, they didn't stop her. 'It seems this woman knows quite a bit.' 'Yes, we should ask this informant more. The clue to solving the case might lie with her.'
"You... you... you're spouting lies..." Gu Lihui was so angry his face and neck turned beet red, and his whole body trembled.
"Am I spouting lies, or are you just too scared to admit what you did?" Ignoring the actual wronged party standing right beside her, the shopkeeper was filled with righteous indignation. She rolled up her sleeves and went on the offensive in Zhang Minzhen's place, pointing at Gu Lihui as she berated him. "Don't you dare say the one who threw acid on you wasn't the 'unwitting father' of your daughter's classmate? You're the one who made him a cuckold, and now you're going to blame him for retaliating? He just left you too disfigured to show your face in public, is that it?"
"You—you're talking nonsense! I don't know that person at all." Gu Lihui was utterly shocked that the shopkeeper could just blurt out the huge secret he'd been hiding. His first instinct was to deny it flatly, and then he surreptitiously glanced over to see Zhang Minzhen's reaction.
'If Zhang Minzhen finds out about this now, it'll be a disaster! Forget about coaxing her to take care of me with all her heart—it'd be a miracle if she didn't blow this whole thing up.'
Gu Lihui's obvious guilt was not lost on the officers. Not only did the older one show a look of dawning comprehension, but even the younger one wasn't blind and immediately saw something was amiss. When they saw Zhang Minzhen's wooden expression, they knew she was already aware of the situation.
Gu Nuan Nuan was inwardly ecstatic. She couldn't help but shoot the shopkeeper an admiring glance, and in her head, she gave the woman a standing ovation...
The shopkeeper noticed Gu Nuan Nuan looking at her and returned a kind smile. Just then, an ambulance arrived, its sirens wailing...
After following the ambulance to the hospital, once Gu Lihui had been wheeled into the emergency room and the police had finished taking their statements, Zhang Minzhen finally remembered that with such a major incident, she ought to call her in-laws.
'Her younger brother-in-law's family is visiting today,' she thought. 'Her mother-in-law is probably still waiting for me to come home and cook. Since our family hasn't shown up yet, she must be at home, furious and cursing up a storm.'
She gave a sarcastic smile and patted Gu Nuan Nuan's little head. "Mommy is going to your grandma's house to tell them what happened and to have them bring money to the hospital to pay the bills. Nuannuan, do you want to stay here or come with Mommy?"
"I'll go with you."
Gu Nuan Nuan replied without hesitation. She hopped down from her chair outside the emergency room, took her mother's hand, and asked as they walked, "Mom, will Grandma really give you the money?"
"He's her son, why wouldn't she?" Zhang Minzhen's lips twisted into a sarcastic smirk. "You heard him earlier. Your father said he has no money. He emptied his pockets and only had a little over ten yuan, and he still told me to 'figure something out.' But what am I supposed to do?"
She thought for a moment and decided there was no need to hide the truth from her daughter just to save face. 'My daughter is older now and can think for herself. It's better to tell her the truth myself than to have other people whisper lies to her, twisting right and wrong and making her suspicious.'
So, she said frankly, "Normally, your father manages all our family's money. I barely get to hold onto my own salary. The family's debts have been mostly paid off for two years now, but you know what we eat at home. We never see any decent food. Plus, most of the clothes you wear and things you use are hand-me-downs from your cousins on your aunt's side, so that doesn't cost much. Your father always used to say he was saving money for your education, and I believed him. But in the end, it looks like he was supporting his life on the outside..."
Zhang Minzhen paused for a moment. "And now that money is needed, he says he doesn't have any and wants me to figure it out... Heh, isn't that just his way of telling me to go 'borrow' from your grandparents? He calls it borrowing, but when it's time to pay it back, he makes all sorts of excuses. We have to get into huge fights before he finally pays it back, bit by bit, like squeezing toothpaste from a tube."
Zhang Minzhen smiled. 'Just how much nerve does Gu Lihui have? He let me find out he has another woman and even children on the side, and he still thinks I'm an idiot? The old me might have panicked and run to my parents for help without a second thought, but now that I see him for who he is, how could I possibly do that? If his family doesn't want to pay, then so be it. He can go untreated. It's not my face on the line, after all.'
"So, that means... you don't have any money on you either, Mom?"
Gu Nuan Nuan remembered that after her mother divorced her father and took her along, the two of them had gone through a period of bitter hardship, never knowing where their next meal would come from. Around that time, her maternal uncle had an accident, and her grandparents' home was thrown into chaos, leaving no one to look after the mother and daughter.
Back then, every time she visited her paternal grandmother's house, someone would whisper in her ear that her mother was hiding money to live lavishly by herself but was unwilling to spend any of it on her. They said it was because she was a child of the Gu Family, and her mother was deliberately making her suffer.
Many years later, when she chatted with her mother about it, her mom recalled that the days right after the divorce were the hardest of her entire life.
At that time, after her maternal uncle passed away, life for her mother's side of the family also became difficult. Although her grandparents did their best to help them, often bringing them food, they were getting old. They had the will to help but not the means.
For a single woman with a child, it was easy enough to farm a small plot of land in the countryside and avoid starvation, but earning any actual money was incredibly difficult.
So, for a long time, she truly had to rely on the monthly child support from the Gu Family. She saved every single penny for Gu Nuan Nuan's school fees, not daring to touch it for anything else.