"Neighbors, come out and have a look! My stepmother put my name down for the countryside behind my back just so her own daughter could dodge it, and now she's forcing me to pack up and go!"
"Everybody here knows I work at the supply and marketing co-op. By rights I shouldn't be sent down at all. But this vicious woman has been scheming to snatch my job and hand it to her own girl."
"And that father of mine has lost every bit of conscience too. He's siding with that black-hearted stepmother, the two of them ganging up to ruin his own daughter. Boo-hoo... I can't live like this anymore! If anyone's willing to stand up for me, I'll sell my co-op job to them."
It was 1974, in Hushi, in the family compound of the steel plant.
The morning had been quiet as could be, flat and peaceful, but the second Natalie Mercer raised her voice, the whole place blew up.
In an instant, it was like floodgates had been kicked open.
People who had been tucked away inside their homes all rushed out in a swarm to see what was happening.
They were not just there for the spectacle either. Every one of them had their eye on Natalie Mercer's co-op position.
Watching that dark crowd of neighbors surge her way,
Natalie Mercer curled her lips ever so slightly.
The audience was here.
Now this was going to work.
At once, she put on the act of a pitiful girl who had suffered every kind of grievance, tears in her eyes and voice shaking:
"Dad, I know you care about my stepmother. I also know the two children she brought with her are the real treasures in your heart. For the sake of peace in this family, for the sake of making things easy for you, and even for the sake of your reputation as deputy workshop director, I've given way to them at every turn."
"I swallowed all that, because no matter what, you still let me have food to eat. After you remarried, you didn't throw me out on the street, and you at least left me a place to stay. But Dad, when even you joined them in plotting against me, my heart really turned cold."
As she said that, Natalie Mercer suddenly lunged forward and dropped to her knees in front of her father, Franklin Mercer.
She wrapped both arms around his legs, and at an angle no one else could see, dug her nails hard into the flesh of his thigh, twisting with all her strength.
Useless coward. If you had any backbone at all, if you hadn't looked the other way, if you hadn't played deaf and dumb, the original girl would never have died because of you.
Her hands clamped tighter with everything she had, yet her voice came out soft and pleading. "Dad, can you just leave me a way to live? My mother lost her life back then over the factory property. I've got nothing left to count on now. This job is the only thing keeping me going. Dad, please spare me this once. If you let me off this time, I'll put up with anything."
Put up with it? Bah. Whoever wants to endure it can do it themselves.
She put even more force into her grip.
Franklin Mercer yelped, "Ow!" He jerked up a leg, clearly about to kick Natalie Mercer away.
The instant his leg came up, Natalie played it smart. She acted like she'd been struck, stumbled backward, and dropped hard onto the ground.
A few warmhearted aunties nearby rushed over at once and helped her up in a flurry.
At the same time, they all started laying into Franklin Mercer.
"Deputy Director Shen, this really isn't right. Natalie is such a good girl usually. No matter what, you can't force her to hand her job over to the stepdaughter."
"Exactly. She's your own flesh and blood. You don't feel bad for your own daughter, but you fuss over the one your new wife brought in? What's wrong with you?"
"Deputy Director Shen, there's something seriously wrong with the way you're handling this. Natalie Mercer's mother, Abigail Mercer, gave her life for our steel plant. That deputy director post of yours, this apartment your family got, which part of it didn't come from her sacrifice? This is plain heartless."
The aunties beside them were in full swing now, one after another, hammering Franklin Mercer without pause.
Natalie quickly chimed in too, adding fuel to the fire. "Aunties, you don't know how miserable I've been. The steel plant had kept a job opening for me because of my mother, but my father took that spot and gave it to my stepmother. To put it bluntly, their whole family has been living off my mother's blood."
"And me, her real daughter, I got nothing. Nothing at all. I just get pushed around by them every day. Before this, I kept telling myself a family should stay peaceful, so I never said anything out loud. But today I've really got no road left. Boohoo..."