“Did I forget something again?” Old Man was too sharp.

“Yes, guess what you forgot?”

David Carter pulled her up and pushed him through the front gate.

All the way until they entered the house, Old Carter remained silent.

But as soon as the door opened, he shouted “Oh no, oh no, oh no!” and rushed straight to the kitchen.

There was a faint burnt smell in the air, but David Carter didn’t bother with him.

She looked around the house and saw her father’s phone on the shoe cabinet. She quietly walked over and unlocked it. On the WeChat screen was her invitation and Old Carter’s reply.

“Hey, I turned off the stove. Am I really getting senile?” Old Carter let out a long sigh of relief in the kitchen.

Watching her father’s busy, happy, blurry figure in the kitchen, David Carter made up her mind and deleted the entire conversation.

“What’s for dinner?” she put down the phone and called out.

……

She didn’t even know what she was thinking at the time. Anyway, the act of deleting the WeChat conversation lasted only fifty-eight minutes before her dad found out.

Old Carter had been suspecting she wasn’t telling the truth. After dinner, while she was washing the dishes, Old Carter went straight to the study and opened the desktop version of WeChat.

When she finished washing the dishes and came out, Old Carter was sitting on the living room sofa. The lights were off, his face was ashen, and he didn’t say a word.

The atmosphere in the air was anything but friendly.

In her memory, the last time Old Carter acted like this was back in high school, when she secretly chose the liberal arts track instead of science.

David Carter’s first instinct was to run, but her second was that she couldn’t run. She’d read too much about Alzheimer’s—emotional instability was one of the symptoms.

She braced herself, wiped her hands on her apron, and walked cautiously toward the sofa, asking carefully, “Dad?”

No response.

She caught a glimpse of the desktop WeChat faintly visible on the study computer screen and instantly understood what was going on.

She squatted down and hurriedly admitted her mistake: “I’m sorry, I just thought you’d be upset if you saw that message, so it didn’t really matter whether you saw it or not…”

“Do you think your dad’s mind is gone?” Old Carter’s tone was icy.

“No, no…”

“Then why do you think your dad would get angry over a little well-intentioned thought from his daughter?”

David Carter lifted her head a little, surprised: “Huh… then why?”

“You went on a blind date?”

She froze. She’d guessed countless reasons just now, but never thought it would be this.

Old Carter’s face was still grim—truly unfathomable.

“How did you know?”

“Heh, to tell you the truth, the director of academic affairs at your internship school is my classmate. He heard about my illness from my daughter and came to show concern. Meanwhile, he further reported to me that your blind date’s family was so magnanimous that they didn’t mind my illness and decided to keep you as one of the candidates for their son’s harem—brackets, downgraded to just a candidate—hoping we’ll keep up the good work.”

“……”

“What on earth are you thinking?” Old Carter’s tone was unusually stern.

“It’s just that I’m at the age… it seems like I should find a boyfriend.”

For some reason, David Carter didn’t explain to Old Carter that, in fact, before entering the café, she didn’t even know it was a blind date.

“Seems like? What exactly is your life plan?”

“To be a teacher.” David Carter replied.

“Oh? So you truly want to date, and you truly love students, so you want to be a teacher?”

David Carter couldn’t answer directly. She said, “Old Carter comrade, you should know better than anyone that in this world, you can’t always do what you like.”

For example, you like math, but in the end you have to give up your studies.

I like Henry Clark, but in the end I can only look on helplessly.

Growing up—isn’t it about learning to compromise with the world?

After she finished speaking, Old Carter didn’t say anything more.

Old Carter just looked at her deeply.

When she gave up continuing with math olympiad, he’d looked at her like that; when they argued over choosing liberal arts or science, he’d looked at her like that too.

He was disappointed in her decisions, but restrained himself from interfering in her life.

One must be responsible for one’s own decisions—that was Old Carter’s life creed.

David Carter took a deep breath, braced herself on her knees, and stood up.

“Have you ever thought…” This time Old Carter didn’t give up, continuing to gently guide her, “Ten or twenty years from now, when I’m lying on my deathbed, and you remember this conversation, what do you think you’ll want to say?”

“Dad, what’s the password for our bank card?”

“215000.”

After answering, Old Carter even patted the sofa as a warning: “David Carter comrade, don’t just kill the conversation like that.”

David Carter: “……”

“Think carefully—by then, will you regret not pursuing your dreams when you still had the chance?”

Standing in front of the sofa, the room dimly lit, the distant wall shrouded in shadow.

Dreams… what was her dream?

Old Carter’s relentless motivational talk was thick and rich, and she couldn’t help but recall Henry Clark’s math problem, and the frustration of wanting so badly to try but having to give up because she wasn’t good enough.

It must have been frustration…

She looked at Old Carter and said, “There’s a problem.”

Ten minutes later.