On his sixtieth birthday, Chen Jianguo got a more children, more blessings System. His wife was gone, and he couldn't have children, so he turned his repair stall into a place offering “free car repairs and homework help,” gradually taking in eight girls with no one to look after them: a top student, a rebellious heiress, a martial arts girl, a fan girl, a kidnapped little beggar, a runaway escaping her family's preference for sons, a stubborn vocational school student whose parents had both died, and a girl gang leader.
The eight girls squeezed into his old 60-square-meter apartment, fighting over the bathroom, the remote, and chicken drumsticks, and making a racket every day. Chen Jianguo grumbled, “You're driving me crazy,” while secretly buying an extra kilo of pork ribs.
The System went from a cold AI to a nonstop chatterbox. Its rewards included a school-district housing voucher he couldn't afford to use, a red armband that made the neighborhood aunties suspect he'd stolen it, and an activity center converted from an abandoned public toilet, with graffiti still on the walls.
Years later, the eight girls had all made something of themselves, and the whole house was packed at New Year. Chen Jianguo sat on the sofa with his enamel mug, while behind him the house was as noisy as a pot of boiling porridge.
He secretly wiped the corner of his eye.
A house full of noise was his good fortune.
