My Mother Ran Away, My Father Knelt Down, and I Made 100 Million

When I was eight years old, my mother passed away. She got into her best friend's white BMW and rushed into the rain without looking back. My dad knelt at the entrance of the alley for twenty-seven minutes, repeating one sentence over and over again: "Eight thousand is enough, but it won't be enough for me to move more bricks." I lay on the second floor window sill and looked at her. She turned back and glanced at me through the rain, the light, and the white breath of the eight-year-old child on the glass. Then he got in the car, closed the door, and the taillight disappeared into the alley. Later I found out that she left because her best friend Li Wei gave her a kickback of 20,000 yuan and arranged for her to be with a rich man. Later I found out that Li Wei persuaded her to leave in order to marry my father. Later I found out that the old house was going to be demolished. I waited for her for two years. Every day after school, I would lie on the windowsill and count the seconds from the little duck clock to the yellow and green leaves of the sycamore tree, seven hundred and thirty-one days. Then I stopped waiting. I wrote everything that happened after that in my diary - my mother cried in the live broadcast room and told me that I was a white-eyed wolf, the place where my father knelt turned into a milk tea shop, Li Wei's hand was shaking with the three million IOU, there was an Indian man who sold a tie clip for two and a half dollars wholesale, I stepped on a mango tree and climbed into a tin house in a Mumbai slum... Later I made 100 million. My dad knelt for twenty-seven minutes. I waited seven hundred and thirty-one days. But I'm standing now. I have kept this window closed for eighteen years. Now - I'm open.