The white rose I picked up cried and said she liked me.

"I have never mentioned my fiancé in front of the camera. He is Mr. Xu Nian, the current controlling shareholder of Sinian Group, the man I call 'brother'."

"When my brother was young, life wasn't just hard, it was hopeless."

"When he was 8 years old, he was abandoned by his parents and wandered alone."

"Even now, I dare not think too deeply about how an eight-year-old child, whose speech is still somewhat hesitant and who may not even be able to distinguish between hot and cold, could possibly fight against the cruelty of life in this complex and turbulent society. How could he endure countless nights of hunger and cold, dodge unexpected difficulties, and struggle to survive in a corner where no one cares?"

"But my brother knows."

"Before dawn, when it was pitch black inside, he had already groped his way to get dressed and get up, walking for an hour through the night to reach his workplace."

"Those are logistics park jobs that operate 24 hours a day in two shifts."

"A bag of rice weighs 80 jin (40 catties), and he had to carry four bags on his shoulders at the same time, which is almost three times his weight. There were piles of goods as high as small mountains around him, and behind him were leaders who had never done physical labor, who kept urging him on without any sense of hardship."

"There are no long-term workers in the logistics park; they are all day-wage workers."

"Because no one can stay in such a work environment for a full month."

"But my brother did it, not just for a month, but day after day, year after year."

At this point, Xu Xi choked up and wiped her eyes with her sleeve.

Meanwhile, the audience and the live media studios were in an uproar.

"You must be kidding! What era are we living in? How can there still be children who can't afford to eat?"

"This must be a publicity stunt, a cheap attempt to elicit sympathy. The true face of capitalists is truly despicable!"

"Heh, people who think this is fake are so naive! Do they really think that just because they've never experienced poverty or seen poverty, poverty doesn't exist in the world?"

"With the improvement of the domestic economy in recent years, there are far fewer homeless children. But when society was more chaotic in the past, there were countless examples of this."

"Then why not go to an orphanage? What are our country's charitable and welfare institutions doing?"

"I suggest you look for news about a certain Red Cross. They don't disclose where the donations go, they seal off their warehouses and don't let people in. They use the name of charity to line their own pockets. If the orphanage doesn't receive donations, where will the funds come from to adopt new children? Even the children in the orphanage are struggling to make ends meet."

"I think parents who give birth but don't raise their children are the ones who deserve to die the most, even worse than human traffickers! These kinds of people should be torn to pieces and drowned in pig cages!"

......

On stage, Xu Xi composed herself and continued speaking, her voice choked with emotion.

"I met him when he was 17."

"That year, I was 16 years old, with nothing but wounds all over my body and a hungry stomach."

I tried calling him "brother."

He hesitated for a moment, then said to me: Come home with me, I should be able to support you.

"That day, I had a place called home, a harbor where I could shelter from the wind and rain."

"But my brother's life was already difficult, and after I came along, things became even harder."

"During the most difficult times, we had to share a single boxed meal."

"His most frequent phrase is: I'm not hungry."

"He was young then, and he deserved to be cared for, but he didn't have time to care for himself."

"As time goes back, he grew up, but he also grew old."

"The suffering did not disappear; it all fell upon him."

"He has never left Yuncheng. The distance he travels in a year to make a living for us is enough to travel around the world."

"His back was bent little by little, not because he suddenly grew old, but because he was pressed down by bricks, cement, hunger, and the night, like a piece of paper that had been folded over and over again and could never be unfolded again."

"But he treated me very lightly."

"The clothes he wore were tattered and dirty, like several pieces of cloth sewn together. On that piece of cloth that barely covered his body was his last shred of dignity. Meanwhile, I was wearing decent and clean new clothes."

"When he cooks, he always picks out the best parts, the meat and eggs, and always serves them to me first, while he himself only eats vegetables and plain porridge."

"He was illiterate and didn't know the meaning of 'Every grain of rice on the plate is the result of hard work,' yet he provided me with a brand-new schoolbag so I could walk into a bright classroom."

"He has no blood relation to me, yet he loves me more than my own father, with whom I share a blood bond."

"I grew up under his care."

"I made money, money with my knowledge that he couldn't earn even if he worked day and night."

"I took him out to eat, asked him what he liked to eat, what he wanted to eat, and ordered a whole table of dishes."

He looked at the table full of delicious food, simply shook his head, and said, "I don't like it." Then he pushed it all towards me.

"Later I realized that it wasn't that he didn't like to eat, but that he had never eaten anything good in his life and couldn't bear to part with it."

"He couldn't bear to throw away any leftovers. Even when I thought they were spoiled, he ate them himself. He said, 'They're still edible, don't waste them.'"

"It was at that moment that I realized it wasn't that he was frugal, it was that when he was a child, he didn't even have the right to waste things."

"I always thought that time would be long enough to help me heal the scars in his heart, take away all the pain on his body, make him straighten his back again, and make him feel less inferior when looking at anyone."

"Until one day, time played a little joke on us."

"That year, I fell ill, not with a minor illness like a cold or fever, but with Beppo disease, an incurable disease at the time that required money to nourish and nurture life."

"In my memory, my brother never cried. His eyes were like a dry desert. No matter how hard life was, how hungry he was, or how much he suffered, he never shed a single tear."

"But after he was unable to afford my expensive treatment and had to give up treatment, he cried, and his tears flowed like a burst dam."

Do you know how much a human life is worth?

Xu Xi slowly raised one finger.

"Ten million, ten million can save me from back then and give me a new life."

"And ten million became the price my brother paid for his life."

"If there had been any other way back then, my brother wouldn't have taken the risk of taking the blame for someone else, even a death sentence, and risking his life to secure my future."

"He paid the price for it. Ten years of his life, from age 20 to 30, were buried in prison."

"Time doesn't heal everything. What truly healed me was my brother. He swallowed all the bitterness of his life so that I wouldn't have to live like that later. I can now help others and do my best to ensure that no one has to drop out of school because they can't afford education or give up their precious life because they can't afford medical care. I've become what you call a 'guardian of time.'"

"Time has taken away his youth, but it has left me with all the blessings he never enjoyed, the nights he never slept, and the tenderness he experienced in his youth."

"This time is one I will never forget, nor dare to waste in my entire life."